Kickstart: Another year for spending at home

Thanks to the pandemic, 2020 was the year of staycation spending. It's shaping up to be a similar pattern in 2021.

This week's print issue of Plastics News includes coverage from the International Builders' Show, where Catherine Kavanaugh writes that workers in the home construction and renovation industry are keeping busy converting spare rooms into home offices and home gyms, and building additions and lavish decks to make our homes both more functional and more comfortable.

And those trends don't seem to be slowing down. Azek Co. just announced it is building its ninth plant, in Boise, Idaho, to make Timbertech-brand decking, expecting to employ 180.

Now we just need to hope for a fast recovery for resin supply chains. (And vaccines, of course.)

That single-serving ketchup packet you used for your takeout fries last week may end up on your roof in the future.

The Kraft Heinz Co. has completed a pilot project to convert recycled flexible packaging into roof boards. The Materials Recovery For the Future, a nonprofit research collaborative, worked with Kraft Heinz to "prove technical and economic feasibility to collect, sort, bale and recycle flexible plastic packaging."

Roofing panels from post-consumer flexible plastic was used for Kraft Heinz manufacturing plants in Beaver Dam, Wis., and Holland, Mich., and installed in late 2020.

The materials were turned into 4-by-8-foot boards, with 94 percent of the content from recycled plastic and fiber.

"This was an important project for Kraft Heinz because the company uses flexible plastic packaging across its product portfolio," Kraft Heinz said in a news release.

I'm not sure I'd be willing to separate and clean individual ketchup packets for recycling, but it's good to see they're thinking about it.

Proving out the effort is important as Kraft Heinz seeks ways to use more post-consumer recycled materials. It is also working toward having 30 percent recycled PET in bottles in some markets.

Happy birthday to Plastics News!
Our first issue appeared in print on March 6, 1989. We're now starting our 33rd year in publication.

Just to show our age, when PN published its first issue, the No. 1 song was Lost In Your Eyes by Debbie Gibson.

The No. 1 TV shows were Roseanne and The Cosby Show. The top movie was Lean On Me starring Morgan Freeman. The top fiction book was Star by Danielle Steele and the top nonfiction was All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghan.

Most of this year's class of Rising Stars hadn't been born yet, when that first issue arrived. And Editor Don Loepp would have found it a lot harder to find all this trivia 32 years ago, vs. the ease of Google now.