Kickstart: Molder turns scout camp into retreat center, but will it have s'mores?

Your company may have a lot of perks. But does it have a 225-acre former Girl Scout camp for corporate activities?

Sussex IM Inc., an injection molder in Sussex, Wis., has purchased the former Camp Winding River in Neosho from Girl Scouts of Wisconsin Southeast. In addition to woods and water, the scout camp has access to 5.5 miles of trails, canoeing on the Rubicon River, camping and cross-country skiing, according to an article in Milwaukee's Business Times.

It also has existing facilities with kitchens, bathrooms, showers, beds and other amenities.

Sussex IM affiliates purchased the land for $428,000, according to state records, Business Times reported.

With many Sussex IM employees living in Milwaukee, CEO Keith Everson told Business Times said the campgrounds will provide them with the opportunity to enjoy recreating in a different setting. The new "Camp SIM" will be used for company meetings, team-building events, company picnics and will be available for employees at their leisure, the company announced to its staff last week.

Everson also recently spoke with Publisher Brennan Lafferty for our What Keeps You Up At Night feature. You can read the story here or listen to a longer discussion in our podcast.

A few years ago, broadcaster and environmentalist David Attenborough presented a video of a sea turtle having a plastic straw painfully removed from its nose, images that drove a new awareness of plastic pollution and countless straw bans.

Now can Attenborough — along with the co-founders of the environmental group Plastic Ocean — generate the same interest in chemical recycling?

A video by United Kingdom-based Mura Technology Ltd., touting its ability to turn plastics back into oil, fuel or ethylene for new plastics, features the environmentalists urging the use of advanced recycling along with better handling of plastics to improve the environment. Mura recently began construction of a chemical recycling plant in northern England.

"The only solution to our terrible plastic problem is preventing plastic from entering the environment in the first place," Attenborough says. "The good news is that this can be accomplished with improved waste management systems and new, improved technology."

Let's talk electronics. Not the big flashy items like computers or TVs, but the bits that make those flashy end products work.

First, to the SIM card, that tiny bit of plastic with embedded data that allows your phone to make connections. Our sister paper Sustainable Plastics has a story on electronics company Thales and recycler Veolia joinig forces to convert scrap plastics into SIM cards.

Sure they're small, but telecommunications suppliers use 20,000 metric tons of plastic every year to make SIM cards.

And from PN's Sarah Kominek comes a story about auto supplier Lear Corp. — more commonly thought of as a seating company — enhancing its electronics business by buying injection molder M&N Plastics to increase "Lear's vertical integration capabilities to engineer and produce complex parts for electrical distribution, including high-voltage wire harnesses and power electronics."

Those electrical systems will be key to future electric vehicles, and it sounds like Lear is setting itself up to play a big part in their production.