'I never imagined I'd be working in the plastics industry'

When Mercedes Landazuri was studying Russian, German, French and Japanese at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., her original plan was to receive her Ph.D. and become a professor to teach Russian.

While working at a digital printing company, she was contacted by a recruiter who had known about an opening in operations management at chemicals company Apex Colors Inc. in Skokie, Ill.

"I felt like I didn't really have anything else left to learn there [at the digital printing company]," said Landazuri, who works in operations management and customer relations at Apex. "I started looking around and was contacted by a recruiter who was in touch with Apex. That's really all there is. There's not much that is exciting of the story, but all of my interest in the industry happened after I was already involved. I came in knowing nothing, and now I'm completely hooked."

Landazuri also is a newly appointed board ​ member of the Color and Appearance Division of Society of Plastics Engineers.

"I never imagined I'd be working in the plastics industry," she added.

When she was doing business-to-business sales, she said one of the things she loved most was being in large factories and manufacturing plants.

"It was just the most amazing thing. … I've always kind of been thinking I would go into academia. I walked into a factory making fortune cookies once and saw all the little cookies dropping on the belt and went into a place where I saw robots, lasers cutting steel, and I was like, 'This is the coolest things I've ever seen,'" she said. "I wondered, had my life been different had I seen that at [age] 10 vs. seeing that at 27?

"The other day I was at one of our vendors and I realized I had the exact same feeling I had several years ago, walking into the fortune cookie place. Just the sheer awe at just watching things being made. That's definitely what keeps me in the industry, but I wish I had been exposed to that earlier. … Creating opportunities like that for young people to really pique their interest in manufacturing and in polymers, I think, is going to be really important moving forward," she added.

Any time Landazuri tours a plant, she said she tries to sit down and chat with the owner or president. She said the biggest concern they have is getting new talent. Although she is fairly new to the industry — Landazuri joined Apex in April 2016 — she said there's a "startling lack of diversity," adding that she would like to see "an increase in women, people of color and young professionals in the polymer industry" and the "different perspectives will help move our industry forward."

To capture that talent and bring it into the industry, Landazuri said companies need to step up their online presence, including social media and blog posts.

"Everyone these days consumes so much information through the internet, yet our industry is seriously lagging in this department," she said. "Organizations should be updating their corporate social media and publishing more articles online."

Landazuri also noted the viral story from the Shepherd Color Co. and Oregon State University.

While working with students in 2009 to manufacture materials that could be used in electronics, OSU professor of materials science Mas Subramanian and graduate student Andrew Smith took a ground mix of chemicals out of the furnace and saw a bright blue color, according to an NPR.com story that covered the incident.

Subramanian, Smith and OSU chemistry professor Arthur Sleight filed to patent the material, named YInMn blue for its makeup of yttrium, indium and manganese oxides. Then, color supplier Shepherd Color contacted them to test the pigment, using it on ceramics and metals and turning it into paints and plastics. YInMn was found to endure oil, water and sunlight better than other available blues.

Landazuri called it "wonderful publicity for the industry that has the ability to draw in new talent and get them intrigued by our work."

"[Shepherd Color was] totally not prepared for it, and their website crashed. They had never seen anything like that before. In fact, the guy at our company — our newest employee and our youngest employee — knew about that new blue before anyone else because he had seen it on his Facebook feed," she said. "To get more talent in the industry, we really just have to be better promoters of it. We really need to start marketing on the internet and on social media just to make people aware of it."

She also credited educational initiatives and the SPE's PlastiVan program to generating interest for the industry, as well as the explosion of 3D printing.

Any advice to someone considering — or maybe have not even begun to consider — a career in plastics? "Give it a shot!" she said. "It's a massive industry with room for people from all different types of backgrounds," she said. "I never would have guessed that someone like me with a liberal arts education and no STEM foundation would end up so at home here."