Kickstart: Mold making and warriors

In 2011, a small group of mold makers launched a program to donate iPads, earbuds, cases and other items to wounded U.S. soldiers to help them recuperate. Ten years in, iWarriors has provided the tablets to more than 1,000 veterans, with donations still continuing.

The American Mold Builders Association and its members have been involved with the program since Tim and Kim Bartz, the former owners of Mold Craft Inc. in Willernie, Minn., challenged fellow toolmakers to support wounded veterans. Other mold making and mold component supply companies have joined in. Just in the past few months, supporters have raised more than $25,000 to finance future purchases.

In testimonials, veterans who received iPads said they helped them connect with doctors and others through Zoom, use apps to aid in mental health exercises and track new business ventures. One 96-year-old World War II vet uses it for music therapy sessions.

More information is available on LinkedIn and at iWarriors.org.

Plastic waste linked to the COVID-19 pandemic is back in the news this week after researchers in the U.S. and China published a report saying that 8 million metric tons of pandemic plastic waste has been created by 193 countries, with 26,000 tonnes now headed into the world's oceans.

The Washington Post reports that the findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"As of July, there were 61 recorded instances of animals being killed or disrupted by pandemic-linked plastic waste, according to a Dutch scientist-founded tracking project," Washington Post reporter Amy Cheng wrote. "Among the widely publicized examples are an American robin found wrapped in a face mask in Canada and the body of a perch wrapped in the thumb of a disposable medical glove, which was found by Dutch volunteers."

There are, of course, also plastics firms looking at ways to combat medical waste generated by the pandemic. Recycler Pure Loop GmbH, for instance, discussed the potential to recycle single-use masks during the Fakuma trade show in Germany last month.

This week's print issue of Plastics News featured our annual ranking of North American blow molders.

As she crunched those numbers, Hollee Keller, editorial research coordinator for PN, said one clear trend quickly showed up: It was a good year to make bottles.

Total sales for the 2020 fiscal year for bottles were up 8 percent vs. 2019. On the flip side, industrial blow molders saw sales drop 7 percent.

"During the pandemic, we saw a lot of manufacturers providing their bottles for hand sanitizer. I even spied a whiskey maker pitching in," Hollee wrote in her All Things Data blog.

Check out more insight from her blog this week, including the company with the biggest growth rate in 2020. (No surprise that it's a bottle maker.)