Kickstart: Plastek takes home the first Bill Bregar Trophy

When Plastek Industries Inc. gets its trophy as Plastics News' Processor of the Year for 2020, it'll carry more than the company name or PN's logo. It will be the first time the award is named the Bill Bregar Trophy.

Bill visited Plastek previously, when it was a finalist in past years. He loved nothing better than getting close to the molding process, seeing parts in production and talking to people at the company — especially talking to people. (We learned a long time ago to shoot video interviews when Bill wasn't in the room, because it was hard for him to stay quiet.)

When Bill died unexpectedly in April 2020, it was just a few weeks after presenting the Processor of the Year award for 2019 to Intertech Plastics Inc.

I know he loved visiting Plastek and talking to the entire Prischak family, so seeing this renamed Bill Bregar Trophy go to Erie, Pa., seems very appropriate.

There's an interesting dichotomy going on in the film and sheet world. On the one hand, we've got states, counties and cities enacting bans on plastic bags and other single-use film, with local officials calling film "unrecyclable."

On the flip side, there's Trex Co. Inc. adding incentives to retailers and groups to collect plastic bags, newspaper wraps, cereal box liners and pallet overwrap to build up its supply of recycled polyethylene used in its composite decking.

The NexTrex program provides composite benches to groups taking part in the collection system.

"Ultimately, our goal is to make it fun and to thank our partners for the vital role they play in the recycling process," said Dave Heglas, Trex's senior director of supply chain excellence.

In hindsight, you can pinpoint the moment when resin supplies and prices went from "a concern" to "a big issue" to late August when Hurricane Laura hit the U.S. Gulf Coast.

While it first seemed that the bulk of the petrochemical plants in the region escaped major damage, power outages and damage to roads and rail tracks contributed to problems with production in the area, especially near Lake Charles, La.

Then, just a few weeks later in a very busy storm season, Hurricane Delta hit the same area, causing more outages and infrastructure damage.

Power outages and damage from extreme cold in Texas and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast in February then multiplied those problems.

While storms will still impact the Gulf of Mexico in 2021, at least we won't have Laura or Delta around anymore. The World Meterological Association announced March 17 that it is retiring the name Laura — a move made when storms are significant enough to warrant no longer using it. It is also halting the use of Greek letters for storm names in the future.

Instead, it will have a backlog of supplemental names to use in an extra busy storm season. So rather than Delta, a future storm may be named Deshawn.

Let's hope for calmer conditions in the future, though, so we never have to meet Deshawn.