Kickstart: Remembering Christo, the artist known for wrapping big things in plastic

Plastics News doesn't get to write about fine art very often, but Christo was a prominent exception. He's the Bulgarian-born artist best known for wrapping buildings, bridges and outdoor spaces in plastic.

Christo died May 31 at his home in New York City.

Steve Toloken wrote our last big Christo feature in 2016, about "The Floating Piers," a bridge made of 200,000 interlocked floating high density polyethylene cubes on Italy's Lake Iseo.

But I'll always associate Christo with "The Gates," a temporary display of 7,500 gates in New York's Central Park in 2005. Media coverage at the time described the gates as steel, but we discovered that they were actually PVC profiles.

By the numbers, the project contained 750,000 pounds of PVC, 75,000 pounds of nylon fabric and 10,000 pounds each of high-impact polystyrene and polypropylene. We know because it was all recycled in Nazareth, Pa.

Recycling everything was critical, because the artists did not want any stray gates to outlive the project. "We don't want to see Son of The Gates anywhere," recycling consultant Celeste Johnson told our Angie DeRosa at the time.

Everyone has an opinion about where the economy is headed, but I'm paying close attention to the economists who have their fingers on the pulse of plastics markets.

The latest comes courtesy of the American Chemistry Council, which posts a weekly economic trends report that has good plastics insights.

Last week's report noted that the plastics-heavy CAB leading economic indicator was down only 0.3 percent in May, after drops of 6.3 percent in April and 8.9 percent in March.

"Trends in construction-related resins, pigments and related performance chemistry were negative, as were resins used in appliances, light vehicles, machinery and other durable goods. Plastic resins used in packaging and for consumer and institutional applications were mixed," the report said. "The May CAB reading is consistent with a recession, but given the small decline, one that may bottom out."

For more plastics-related economy forecasting, I highly recommend watching the May 20 Plastics News Live with Bill Wood, PN economics editor, and Perc Pineda, chief economist with the Plastics Industry Association.

Politico.com has a newsletter called The Long Game aimed at "leaders building a sustainable future." There's frequently plastics-related content.

The May 26 report was titled "Plastics in the time of pandemic," so if you're interested in how leaders outside the industry view plastics, it's worth a careful look.

Industry executives may be enjoying some newfound public appreciation for single-use plastic, but rest assured that Politico's sustainability experts don't see things the same way. David Tulauskas, chief sustainability officer of Nestlé Waters North America, said the pandemic "increases the urgency in upgrading our recycling infrastructure to be able to process harder-to-recycle materials like flexible plastic films."