Kickstart: Plastics ready to take flight on Mars

Plastics are about to take center stage on Mars where the helicopter Ingenuity is set to take flight on Sunday.

Carbon fiber and other material from Toray Advanced Composites make up the Ingenuity's rotor blades and chassis structure. Ultralight weight is needed if helicopter is going to be able to fly in the planet's thin atmosphere.

The helicopter landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover and dropped onto the surface from its storage spot on the underside of the rover earlier this week.

NASA and JPL engineers have set the initial flight for "no later than April 11" and will have a livestream discussion of the flight at 3:30 a.m. Eastern time, open to the public, on April 12. (Click through to this website for more information and links to the discussions.)

"If the helicopter flies ... April 11, as expected, the livestream will show the helicopter team analyzing the first test flight data," NASA said.

In addition, the public may ask questions about the project by using the hashtag #MarsHelicopter on social media.

Does "passable" trump perfect?

Steve Toloken has a story that Texas legislators are being asked to consider a proposal that would place a 1-cent fee on items like PET bottles, plastic bags and takeout drink cups and use those funds to finance recycling programs.

Unlike a typical deposit program, Steve writes, consumers wouldn't return the items to stores to get their penny back. Instead, "it pays 25 cents a pound for materials aggregated and returned, as well as handling fees." Backers estimate that individuals or recycling groups would need to collect 18-20 bottles for 1 pound of material to get 25 cents.

On its own, the bill wouldn't eliminate plastic pollution in the state, but it does target some of the items most typically found in litter. And, more importantly, it has bipartisan support and backing from industry groups like the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR).

And in deeply conservative Texas, a state that is so committed to "small government" that state legislators only meet every two years, it may be able to achieve something a bigger bill cannot: Be passed and enter into law.

And if it does, it would create a fund of at least $100 million to finance cleanups and recycling infrastructure. So the question may not be whether it solves every issue, but rather whether it can establish the foundations to at least begin to improve conditions in a state where the PET bottle collection rate is less than 13 percent.

S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. has been touting its use of recycled material in packaging for a long time. And it's used social media to get the word out about its products and sustainability to try and stay ahead of complaints about packaging.

Its latest offering also puts a face on the people collecting plastic for extra income from The Plastic Bank, while also showing how bottles collected near waterways in places like the Philippines make their way into S.C. Johnson products like Windex-brand cleaners.

The step-by-step video on YouTube may be useful to others as well to show how plastic is collected, ground, shipped to recycling sites in the U.S. for further processing, then made into preforms, blow molded into bottles and filled at the company's Racine, Wis., facility.