Kickstart: Is it working, or working out, at Peloton's new $400M factory?

Some of you may refer to work as being on a treadmill. Does that apply if you're actually building treadmills?

Peloton, the fitness company with "smart" exercise bikes and treadmills, says it will invest $400 million for a U.S. factory in Troy, Ohio, just south of Toledo.

Peloton Output Park (Peloton refers to it as "POP") will be a 200-acre, 1 million-square-foot plant with manufacturing, an office and amenities. It will create 2,174 jobs, the company announced May 24.

The company did not specify if it will have any in-house molding, but its bikes and treadmills both use plastics extensively, so it will need to rely on local suppliers if it doesn't make its own parts. Peloton also owns the Precor brand of exercise equipment.

Having U.S. manufacturing will help the company respond more quickly to demand, without risking the type of delayed delivery issues that have popped up during the pandemic.

"While we will continue to invest in our Asian manufacturing footprint as well as our existing facilities in the U.S. via our Precor sites, the new Peloton Output Park gives us a massive strategic lever to make sure we have capacity, quality and economies of scale ... for years and years to come," Peloton CEO and co-founder John Foley said in a news release.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is making headlines for its work in plastics pollution.

You read that right. The United Nations agency, which most often makes news for its work in the world's nuclear weapons hot spots, has launched a program to see how radiation technologies can help reduce plastic waste.

In a two-minute video, IAEA head Rafael Mariano Grossi said they can help in two ways: by employing isotopic tracer techniques to better track microplastics and developing technologies that use electron beams to break down plastics for recycling.

IAEA said it has 25 ongoing or planned technical research projects directly related to its plastics work.

The next Rubbermaid-brand storage tote you buy may be a little greener, both literally and figuratively.

Molder United Solutions announced May 25 that it has extended a licensing agreement with Rubbermaid Inc. to continue producing ActionPacker, Cleverstore, All-Access and Roughneck storage totes and added that the companies are also introducing the EcoSense brand, made from 100 percent recycled resins and fully recyclable.

The EcoSense proprietary storage containers "are made in a hunter green color to reinforce the opportunity for retailers and their customers to support a fully sustainable, closed-loop recycling initiative," the companies said.

United Solutions molds at sites in Leominster, Mass., and Sardis, Miss.