Kickstart: Breaking molds, taking STEPs

This week's print issue of Plastics News features Women Breaking The Mold for 2021, 50 women from a wide range of backgrounds and experience filling jobs at every level of the industry. You can also find longer profiles of all 50 on plasticsnews.com, written by Special Projects Editor Jordan Vitick. We'll link profiles in emails throughout this week. (And a shoutout to auxiliary equipment maker Conair, who made sure that its ad in this week's print issue features a female superhero.)

It's always amazing to see these women, whether on the pages of PN or (hopefully) in person at the 2021 Women Breaking The Mold Networking Forum in Austin, Texas, Nov. 11-12.

They show a passion the industry, whether they intended to enter plastics from the start or stumbled into the career. Some were born into families with ties to the plastics industry. Others found their way in initially as a good-paying job.

"When I started, I was looking for an 'opportunity' to make a new start for myself," said Roxanne Siebeneck, who is now human resources manager at Continental Structural Plastics Inc. "It has by no means been easy, but I have worked very hard to move progressively through the organization. Not only have I built the foundation for a solid career path, but I have also found my passion."

Be sure and to check out all the profiles. And if you're looking to inspire other women, PN is dropping the hard paywall on these stories for the next week to encourage sharing to a wider audience.

There are, of course, more women of note in the plastics industry than we've profiled.

Consider Neha Phadke, a senior chemist at Covestro's Baytown, Texas, facility who was among 130 women nationally to be honored in the STEP (Science, Technology, Engineering and Production) Ahead initiative.

The program is focused on closing the gender gap in manufacturing. She and other award winners will be honored at a Nov. 4 event in Washington, D.C.

Her work has involved introducing a new 3D printing product to the U.S. market, Covestro executives noted. That work required scaling up production for a type of chemistry that was not produced previously in Baytown.

"Manufacturing creates possibilities to transform customer needs into reality," Phadke said.

Could plastic seats — thousands of empty plastic seats — be a lasting image of the Tokyo Olympics?

Fans are banned at this year's games due to the coronavirus pandemic and the rising Delta variant being blamed on an increased number of cases. As a result, during the July 23 opening ceremony, athletes waved to a sea of mostly empty seats. Images showed performers and flags in a stadium built for 68,000 attendees. Fewer than 1,000 dignitaries attended.

As tennis player Naomi Osaka lit the Olympic torch, the cameras also caught the sight of rows and rows of multicolored plastic stadium seating, waiting for visitors who weren't coming.