Kickstart: Holy LCA Batman!

A couple of superheroes in some celebrity banter over single-use plastic water bottles. Holy life cycle analysis Batman!

Jason Momoa, of Aquaman fame, wound up apologizing to Guardians of the Galaxy (and Parks and Recreation) star Chris Pratt, after Momoa singled out Pratt on social media for holding a single-use plastic bottle in promo materials for a new project.

People magazine covered the good-natured back and forth. Pratt used the opportunity to tout water in reusable bottles, with a "reduce, reuse, recycle" message, while Momoa talked up a new company he's formed, Mananalu, and its line of water in aluminum cans.

Not to be outdone, the reality star Kardashians had their own plastic water bottle dustup. Kim noted in the last few days that she had tossed plastic bottles from her house, after her sister Kourtney was criticized on social media for using a plastic bottle in a Dec. 1 episode of their TV show.

Makes you wonder if plastic bottles could be going the way of smoking in how it's portrayed in TV and movies.

A Singaporean professor and F&N, a soy beverage maker, say they're working on a way to take leftovers from the production of tofu and turn it into plastic wrap.

William Chen of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University told CNN that he and F&N see promise in the soy residue because it can address some of the challenges around bioplastics. To make it into a plastic, microbes eat nutrients in the residue, leaving behind cellulose.

The partners are working out questions of commercialization and scalability.

The material doesn't compete with food materials because it's made from residue from soy manufacturing that would normally be thrown out, and the material degrades on its own, without needing high-temperature facilities that some bioplastics need to break down, Chen says.

Chen's also working on a way to take the husks of durian, a nasty smelling fruit known in Asia as King of Fruits, into a plastic.

It's interesting to see the family connections that run through manufacturing companies. Those connections, and that question, were inherent in a story this week from my colleague Rhoda Miel, who profiles industry executive Patricia Miller.

Five years ago, Miller left a career in the biotech and medical device industries to take over her grandfather's injection molding company in Woodstock, Ill. Before she took over running the company, Matrix 4, she says her grandfather asked her, "who goes into manufacturing?"

Given how tough the business can be, it's a fair question. Miller's clearly trying to bring some new ideas. The story is a good read about continuing to build a traditional injection molding company while trying to mix up the culture, like beginning an artist in residence program and launching a consumer product line.

The last two weeks may also qualify as Miller's 15 minutes of fame in Plastics News. From her role on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, she's been part of the NAM's push for passage of the replacement of NAFTA, the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, as she told us last week.