Kickstart: One last colorful work of art from Christo

The artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, are wrapping one more thing in plastic, or at least representatives for their studio are, and people able to travel to Paris in the fall will see one last exhibition from them.

From Sept. 18 to Oct. 23, the Arc de Triomphe will be wrapped in recyclable polypropylene, fulfilling a project the pair first planned in 1962 but thought they would never be permitted to carry out. Jeanne-Claude died in 2009, Christo in May 2020.

Work on L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped will begin just after Bastille Day on July 14.

"A photo montage of how it would look was done but they never proposed actually doing it because they thought they would never get the necessary permission," Christo's nephew Vladimir Javacheff told The Guardian.

The artists often used plastics in their works, such as The Gates in New York's Central Park, which used 750,000 pounds of PVC, 75,000 pounds of nylon fabric and 10,000 pounds each of high-impact polystyrene and PP, and The Floating Piers, which placed 200,000 blow molded high density polyethylene cubes on Italy's Lake Iseo.

I'm pretty sure this is how a future post-apocalyptic movie series will begin. According to Phys.org: "Researchers have discovered that the common bacteria E. coli can be deployed as a sustainable way to convert post-consumer plastic into vanillin, a new study reveals."

In general, the concept seems solid. Take a waste material — in this case post-consumer PET — and find a way to recycle it into something the market wants. Pure vanilla begins as a bean. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh used lab-engineered E. coli to transform it into a high-value vanillin via chemical reactions, the journal writes.

Vanilla is used in a wide range of food products, from cakes to cookies to ice cream.

While the researchers say it is a way to upcycle waste into a valuable product, it still requires "further experimental tests."

I love cakes, and I'm all for finding a more sustainable option for post-consumer PET, but ... I'm going to pass on this one.

There's been a lot of talk from environmental groups, industry leaders and politicians about the potential for extended producer responsibility fees on plastic packaging. Essentially, it would involve having packaging producers pay a fee that would be used to support recycling infrastructure.

Maine may become the first U.S. state to pass an EPR measure, if a bipartisan proposal moves forward.

The Washington Post has a story on the ground from Maine, where many communities halted recycling programs due to a lack of funds, showing just why some local leaders want EPR.

A recycling facility in Hampden closed last year, impacting more than 100 communities. Now materials end up in a landfill or an incineration facility.

"We have to face this problem and use our own American ingenuity to solve it," state Rep. Nicole Grohoski, D-Ellsworth, the bill's Democratic sponsor, told the Post.