Kickstart: Time to meet the 2021 Plastics Hall of Fame inductees

There's a lot up in the air about what events will go ahead as scheduled in 2021. Even the organizers of NPE2021, scheduled for May 17-21 in Orlando, Fla., say "things are very fluid at this point in time."

But one thing has been set: The 2021 class of the Plastics Hall of Fame.

This year's honorees come from machinery, materials, education and automotive sectors and represent multiple countries. They are: Yoshiharu Inaba, Mayumi Kotani, Salvatore Monte, Peter Neumann, Donald Paulson, Joseph Prischak, Ulrich Reifenhäuser, Wylie Royce, Suresh Shah and Vince Witherup.

Obviously, whether there will be an in-person ceremony, like the one above from when Ed Hunerberg was among the inductees, is going to be another question that remains unanswered for now.

You can read a little more about them here, and Plastics News will be following up with profiles on all the new Hall of Fame members in the next few months.

The marketing message behind the popular Sodastream brand of home carbonation machines is that they are more sustainable because they have reusable bottles rather than single-serve bottles. (Although, of course, single-serve bottles can be recycled, but that's another issue.)

But since 2018, Sodastream has been owned by PepsiCo Inc., a major company in the single-serve soft drink market.

Now another soft drink bottling supplier is getting into the home drink business.

Coca-Cola European Partners, the world's largest independent Coca-Cola bottler, has invested in Lavit, a "leading maker of multibeverage, counter-top dispensing machines," our sister paper Sustainable Plastics writes.

"Decreasing our packaging use and waste is a core part of our strategy to reduce our carbon footprint," Graham Stokhuyzen, vice president of CCEP Ventures, said. "We will continue to develop and invest in 'drinks on demand' dispensed delivery innovations to offer consumers choice, personalization and convenience in the most sustainable ways possible. This will also enable us to reduce our use of single-use packaging.”

Now that a COVID-19 vaccine is making its way into individuals' arms (although it will take months before most people can access it), businesses may be facing a new question: Can they require their employees to get the vaccine?

"While a mandate could help companies more quickly resume business as usual, it also could expose them to lawsuits from employees who object to the vaccine for various reasons or those who have adverse reactions to the shot," Stephanie Goldberg from our sister paper Crain's Chicago Business writes. "On the other hand, employers that don’t have a mandate could be liable in the case of a workplace outbreak."

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seems to say yes, although there's also a complication under the Americans with Disabilities Act if employees indicate they cannot receive a vaccination due to a disability. 

"From a business continuity standpoint,” it makes sense to require that workers get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, David Zieg, a partner and clinical services leader at the Mercer consulting firm, told Crain's Chicago's Goldberg.

“But the vaccine was moved through [the federal authorization process] very quickly, and there’s a lot of individual skepticism,” Zieg added, noting that a mandate could plunge companies into the political controversy surrounding the vaccine and spark resentment among employees who belong to ethnic groups that have expressed serious qualms about the shot.