Kickstart: The flip side of the plastic bag story

Put this under the "unexpected consequences" file.

When the state of New York passed its plastic bag ban, which goes into effect March 1, volunteers who use bags to crochet sleeping mats for the homeless suddenly found themselves facing a shortage of materials for their project.

"I was devastated. I was crushed," Gail Potter told The Buffalo (N.Y.) News.

That's because it takes 850 bags and 50 hours to crochet one 3-foot-by-6-foot-long mat, according to the local newspaper. She has distributed more than 400 of the mats since she began making them and has another 100 ready to hand out.

For now, her group, Mats for a Mission, is hoarding bags and looking for alternatives.

I live in a college town in Michigan, which means that every home football game there are a lot of tailgating parties, which means that there are a lot of returnable bottles headed back to stores come Sunday morning.

If you want all your money back from every 10-cent deposit, you'll end up standing for an extended stretch of time, slowly feeding each bottle and can into a machine. Eventually you'll get a receipt you then take to a cashier.

Norwegian reverse vending company Tomra has a better idea. Its Express concept would allow people to tip up to 100 empty containers into the machine at one time.

The machine then processes the empties, without you needing to be there. And when it's done, it'll forward the proceeds to you via an electronic deposit to your account.

Tests with the new system showed an up to 60 percent increase in the number of consumer recycling visits, our sister publication Sustainable Plastics reports, and up to 218 percent more containers returned.

Look at that colorful little thing up there. It doesn't look like it would cause much trouble and yet, it's the coronavirus now known as COVID-19, which has health officials around the world worried about how far it will spread.

News on the virus has been moving quickly as it has spread beyond Wuhan, China. Plastics News is doing its best to keep you up to date with vital information on how it is affecting the industry.

This story at plasticsnews.com is being updated regularly on information as we receive it.

If you know of an angle others in the industry should be aware of — or if your company is donating equipment or services — please contact me at [email protected] or reporter Sarah Kominek at [email protected].