Kickstart: This should be simple: A PET preform is not a test tube

This has been an unusual year for business, and a lot of companies have found themselves making new products this year — respirators and face shields, for instance — while repurposing equipment originally intended for another use.

But investigative journalists at ProPublica have a story on a Texas company, Fillakit LLC, that won a multimillion- dollar contract to supply test tubes for COVID-19 tests, but delivered PET preforms for 2-liter bottles.

The company was formed just days before winning the contract, ProPublica reported.

The preforms "don't fit the racks used in laboratory analysis of test samples," ProPublica wrote. "Even if the bottles were the right size, experts say, the company's process likely contaminated the tubes and could yield false test results. Fillakit employees, some not wearing masks, gathered the miniature soda bottles with snow shovels and dumped them into plastic bins before squirting saline into them, all in the open air, according to former employees and ProPublica's observation of the company's operations."

You can read the whole story here.

Salaried employees at Ford Motor Co. can settle in to their home offices for a few more months.

The Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker said June 17 that it was extending its work-from-home rules for office workers through the end of 2020.

It's the second time Ford has extended the date for reopening offices since employees left their corporate desks in mid-March. Originally, Ford set July as a return date, then shifted it to September. Now it will survey its 30,000 employees during 2020 to shape its work policy for 2021, the company told Automotive News.

"As we make plans to bring back the remote workforce, many team members favored these new ways to work and found them empowering, flexible and cost-effective," Ford said in a statement. "This has inspired us to expand the optionality for this work arrangement beyond September, allowing employees to share their preference — remote, on site or a hybrid approach — in a survey that will be issued globally to the virtual workforce."

As gyms reopen across the U.S., gym owners are working on ways to get customers back in the door while still keeping them safe.

One Southern California gym owner thinks he found the answer by making individual workout "pods" with makeshift, but cost-efficient, materials.

"We were looking at plexiglass and it would've cost us $10,000 for all of these pods," Inspire South Bay Fitness owner Peet Sapsin told TV station KTLA. "So we came up with this idea with PVC pipe and shower curtains."

Sapsin said each pod had its own weights, bench, foam roller and antibacterial wipes. One side of each pod was open to allow access.

You have a few more weeks to submit nominees honoring Women Breaking the Mold for 2020.

Plastics News has honored more than 120 women so far, and this year's profiles of women in the plastics industry will run in the Aug. 3 edition.

Past honorees include company owners, leading executives, engineers, managers and some women just getting started in the industry but with a passion to make a difference.

You can self-nominate or nominate someone else. The deadline for submissions is July 6. You can apply at www.plasticsnews.com/wbmsurvey.