Kickstart: Spreading praise for plastics to Congress

The Plastics Industry Association is working to make sure federal leaders know of the many ways processors and suppliers are working to support the fight against COVID-19.

Association CEO and President Tony Radoszewski sent letters to every member of the U.S. Congress to update them on a range of projects, such as:

• Thermoformer Placon's work as part of a project to turn out 5 million face shields per week for health care workers.

• Westfall Technik donating thousands of parts for respirator masks as well as offering its clean rooms, molding, micromolding and tooling for projects.

• Novolex's shift from making packaging bags to producing 500,000 hospital gowns per month.

• Berry Global manufacturing 150,000 face shields per week.

"The hardworking men and women of the plastics industry are helping the world to defeat COVID-19, and as the United States safely re-emerges, our members' workshops and factory floors will be as critical to economic recovery and job creation, as they are to public health," Radoszewski wrote.

Housewares molder and outdoor furniture maker Keter North America Inc. is now also making face shields to help protect front-line workers.

Keter converted production at plants in Anderson, Ind., and Milton, Ontario, to begin making shields. Both sites have capacity to mold 50,000 face shields per week.

Keter, an Israel-based company owned by private equity group BC Partners, already had a medical product division, AP Medical, with a major emphasis on making large medical waste containers for hospitals and nursing homes.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, AP led a companywide effort to develop a shield that covers the entire face and can be cleaned and reused.

In addition to the sites in Indiana and Ontario, the shields are being made at Keter plants in Europe and Israel.

While Midland, Mich., is dealing with days of heavy rains that caused two dams to fail, leading to catastrophic flooding in the city impacting Dow Inc., here's a follow-up to another flooding story that, so far, is turning out much better.

Earlier this year, the city of Detroit invested $2 million in a flexible vinyl Tiger Dam system for neighborhoods along the Detroit River and nearby canals in an attempt to hold back flooding that damaged the neighborhoods in 2019.

Crews finished rolling them out just days before the same rainstorms that hit the Midland area also roared into the Detroit area.

The system hasn't been 100 percent effective, with some residents saying water still made it past the Tiger Dam, but city officials said most response has been positive.

(Check out a video of the dam being installed in late April.)