Kickstart: The Sustainability Bowl

It's getting close to college football bowl season, which means it's an opportunity to celebrate zero (zero waste that is).

A growing number of sports stadiums, from colleges to professional leagues, have been signing on with the Green Sports Alliance to promote recycling along with improving energy use and water consumption. Stadiums also contract with commercial composting facilities so that food service products from straws to forks and napkins are properly broken down.

It's not just a question of "greenwashing." In 2014, the Alliance reported that the Seattle Mariners saved an estimed $2.1 million over seven years by reducing landfill fees through recycling and composting. And beyond that, making sure PET bottles end up in the right bin helps feed the recycling stream that the Association for Plastic Recyclers says is needed to keep up with their desire to provide more recycled content in their packaging.

Everyone talks about the need to educate the next generation of plastics industry workers and leaders. So what are people doing about it?

Quite a bit, actually.

Frank Esposito writes about a donation by Lubrizol Corp. to support science education on the college level. Lubrizol awarded a $2.2 million, five-year grant to Case Western Reserve University to support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) scholarships for diverse students, internship and co-op positions, and joint research.

At the high school level, Kim Coombs of Westminster Tool funneled a $500 grant from the American Mold Builders Association, given for the Connecticut company's support of education programs, and donated it to her alma mater, H.H. Ellis High School for its SkillsUSA program.

And for middle schoolers? Maroon Group of Avon, Ohio, is supporting the Chemical Education Foundation's You Be The Chemist Challenge at the Lake Erie Science Center in downtown Cleveland. Qualifying teams of students in grades 5-8 will complete in a quiz bowl format where they collaboratively answer timed short-answer questions. The winning teams advance to the national level competition held in Houston.

The auction house Sotheby's has opened bidding for a range of vintage Star Wars toys and movie props.

Among the items available:

• A set of the 1978 Kenner figurines, still in the box, starting bid about $2,600.

• A radio-controlled R2-D2 Kenner toy, starting bid about $750.

• And a 1976 prototype Stormtrooper helmet, made by hand of powdered metal and resin and used as a model for vacuum forming the other props. Bids start at more than $28,000.

Bidding is open until Dec. 13. May the force be with you.