Kickstart: Sun, sand and reusable bottles

The view outside my home office window today is icicles and snow on the branches of a pine tree. While that may sound idyllic for a Christmas card, by mid-February I'm daydreaming about warm sun and beaches.

Just don't expect to escape plastics sustainability issue once we're finally free to travel post-pandemic.

Club Med has announced that its "Bye Bye Plastics" program will see it ban single-use plastics at bars, restaurants and rooms by 2021. That includes straws, dishes and in-room amenities. Plastic bottles may be in use at some locations, but only using 100 percent recycled plastic, the resort company said.

"In the mountain villages of Europe [and] Africa, plastic water bottles are no longer available for hiking departures from the summer 2019 season. Water fountains, available in the resort, enable our teams to fill customers' [reusable] bottles," Club Med officials said.

In addition, the company has recycled PET from 200,000 bottles into textile for staff uniforms.

Westfall Technik has been very, very busy with acquisitions. Now the company is focusing on consolidating all of the 14 acquisitions between October 2017 and April 2019 into one united company.

As fourteen separate companies, Westfall's holdings included some intriguing capabilities. As a single entity, Westfall becomes one of the biggest injection molders and toolmakers in North America.

"There's been a lot of work, as you can imagine, when you buy that many entities and you try to put things under one brand, under one umbrella, under one culture," Merritt Williams, chief sales and marketing officer, told Don Loepp. "Now, our capabilities, our culture and where we want to go with our customers is starting to resonate."

We all know restaurants that added dining tents or plastic igloos to be able to offer meals to customers during COVID-19 shutdowns. Our sister paper Crain's Detroit Business has a report on a company that began with igloos, then added food.

EastEats began by working with a food truck to supply the dining domes. When that truck wasn't able to keep up with COVID-related rules and was forced to halt operations, EastEats developed a "cloud kitchen," a commercial space that has no physical restaurant, just takeout food.

"'Cloud' or 'ghost' kitchens were already becoming popular before the pandemic but their growth has accelerated as restaurants adapt to social distancing and indoor dining closures," Crain's Detroit Business wrote. "They save owners money on labor and fixed costs and have helped independent restaurants weather the pandemic."