Kickstart: What to do with all those yogurt cups

One of the bigger recycling challenges in plastic packaging right now is polypropylene containers, which we see all over grocery aisles protecting staples like yogurt and butter.

As packaging professionals know, it's very widely used because it performs well, but right now it's got a recycling rate somewhere near abysmal — 2.7 percent in 2018.

Enter an industry-funded group, The Recycling Partnership. It announced its first grants Dec. 8 to try to improve those statistics, earmarking $2 million to four local recycling facilities it said will expand PP recycling to an additional 4 million people.

The partnership said it's giving grants to materials recovery facilities in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

It's the first round of investments from the partnership's Polypropylene Recycling Coalition, a $35 million effort that launched in July with founding support from resin maker Braskem, the Walmart Foundation and others.

The coalition has an ultimate goal making PP a reliable third leg of plastics recycling alongside PET and high density polyethylene. It is accepting applications for its next round of funding through March 31. Here's Steve Toloken's story from earlier this year looking at the challenges and opportunities.

We write a lot about recycling and sustainability in Kickstart, mostly because the "circular economy" has returned to the top of discussions for producers and consumers.

While COVID-19 obviously continues to be at the forefront of company and government decisions, people are back to asking what happens to plastic products when we're done with them. (Just think of the mainstream news coverage the past few months about masks and gloves becoming another common piece of trash in this crazy year that is 2020.)

If you want to get even more in-depth on issues about bio-based materials, recycling and the big picture, you can download a digital version of the new edition of our sister paper Sustainable Plastics. The new issue covers a lot of ground, including its rising importance for global companies, like LyondellBasell.

"[LyondellBasell] made a very conscious decision two or three years ago when we recognized that sustainability needed to become a core of our strategic business development and not a compliance issue," Jim Seward, senior vice president of R&D, technology and sustainability at LyondellBasell, said in a Q&A in the issue. "Circularity is one of the areas that we're really, really focusing on."

And here's one more interesting article to read as you have time. Special correspondent Emma-Jane Batey talks to a lot of the people involved in getting Retal Industries to set up its first U.S. manufacturing in the struggling down of Donora, Pa.

When it was a steel town, Donora had about 40,000 residents. Now it has about 4,000.

"It used to be that each town had its own mill and there were plenty of good jobs for regular people, but as the mills started pulling out it got harder," said Elizabeth Giecek, human resources manager at Retal PA LLC.

"So to know that a big manufacturer like Retal has committed to this town is great," said Production Manager Matthew Durka. "It's great for the company too, because they have access to a skilled, loyal workforce with the right motivation to get active."