Kickstart: Everyone is going green

Before anyone knew anything about COVID-19, sustainability was the biggest issue facing the global plastics industry.

This week at Fakuma 2021, it appears the industry is picking up on sustainability issues exactly where it left off in October 2019 at the K show. The need to be green — whether in terms of bio-based plastics, increased recycled content in consumer products or machines that use less energy — permeated the show floor in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

"[There is] a lot of pressure now as our climate is getting worse and worse and everyone is aware of it," Andrea Kossmann of recycling equipment maker Gneuss Kunststofftechnik GmbH told Plastics News' Jim Johnson.

In particular, she added: "Younger people are saying you can't do that anymore."

Or as Michael Heitzinger of Erema Engineering Recycling Maschinen und Anlagen GmbH puts it: "Recycling is coming from a niche product to mainstream."

As if small- and mid-sized businesses don't have enough on their plate, a consulting group says "Main Street" businesses are increasingly seeing cyberattacks.

The percentage of businesses reporting some kind of cyber attacks is relatively small — a little less than 12 percent of all those surveyed by CBIZ Inc. in the past year — but of those hit by criminals, nearly 40 percent had "significant or moderate impacts" on their operations. In addition, 7.8 percent of those companies targeted said there were significant impacts to their customers, with another 12.9 percent reporting moderate impacts on clients and customers.

That is in addition to scams related to international sales and patent disputes that already complicate operations that have already had business owners on the alert.

All of that means, CBIZ said, is that many companies are taking "advanced action" to protect their digital information with enhanced security.

Add the venerable Deere & Co., the maker of John Deere tractors, to the list of companies where workers have walked off the production line.

While Deere isn't really a plastics processor, it is a steady user of big structural plastic parts for everything from riding lawn mowers to massive harveting combines. Its parts frequently broke new ground in processing awards in the past.

On Oct. 14, 10,000 Deere employees, or about 14 percent of the workforce, went on strike, calling for improvements in pay, retirement benefits and work rules.

The last time Deere workers went on strike it was 1986 and the strike lasted more than 150 days. The Deere walkout comes about a week after Kellogg Co. workers remain on strike, marking its first walkout since 1972.

As Bloomberg writes, the strike also comes at a time when Deere in the midst of its most successful year ever, while workers are seeing a labor shortage as a chance to force the company to provide better wages and conditions.