Kickstart: Wilkommen back to trade shows

This week, most of the Plastics News staff is in Friedrichshafen, Germany, for the Fakuma trade show, and it all feels a bit odd.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I kept expecting a sudden announcement that it would be cancelled or postponed. And yet, it's on, and so are daily issues of Plastics News (and Sustainable Plastics) for three days this week. Watch your email to grab a digital edition if you won't be there in person.

What do we expect? Based on smaller events that have taken place in the past few months, such as Plastec West in Anaheim, Calif., in August, attendance will probably be down. Company booths may be smaller and have fewer representatives there each day, concentrating on "quality rather than quantity" sales leads.

But there will also be reunions between business contacts who haven't seen each other face to face since the K show in 2019.

If you're there, stop by and see us. PN will have a booth in Hall FW (Booth FW-65) and our reporters will be making the rounds of the show floor.

It turns out there's a phrase for the labor shortage being seen in every industry right now: The Great Resignation.

Anthony Klotz, an associate professor at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, is credited with developing the phrase to sum up why employees are leaving their jobs.

The concept isn't new, of course. Employees frequently leave jobs they find unrewarding, but Klotz notes that the big social and business changes caused by COVID-19 have prompted more people to seek out something better.

"Workers from across the spectrum are saying: This pandemic has been horrible, but could one silver lining be that we make the world of work better coming out of it?" Klotz in a Q&A with website The Verse.

Klotz notes that employers should be thinking now about what they can do to provide workers with reminders of "how their job contributes to the well-being of the world" rather than leaving them with the question: "What am I doing for eight hours a day?"

One way to do that is to be able to call your business one the Best Places to Work in the plastis industry. (How's that for a transition?)

Plastics News' annual ranking of the Best Places is handled by an outside consulting group, and companies that make the list have another recruiting tool to cite when they go out to hire new workers.

The deadline to apply for Best Places to Work is Friday, Oct. 15. Go to www.bestplacestoworkplastics.com to start the process.

(I go into more detail on the subject in this week's Viewpoint column. You can find it here.)

Plastics reductions by some big names are making the news again.

McDonald's Canada announced last week that it would stop using plastics for straws, cutlery and stir sticks. The change impacts 1,400 restaurants across Canada.

On Oct. 6, Walmart Inc. announced a goal of a "15 percent absolute reduction of our virgin plastic footprint" by 2025.

"Our virgin plastic footprint includes any plastic that is produced from new materials, rather than recycled ones," Jane Ewing, senior vice president, sustainability for the retailer, said in a statement.

And on Oct. 8, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, and U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Illinois, reintroduced the Reducing Waste in National Parks Act to restore guidance from President Barack Obama's administration to "ban to sale of single-use plastic water bottles in national park facilities, where possible."

In 2017, President Donald Trump's administration reversed those Obama-era guidelines. Quigley's office said that the previous guidance saw Zion National Park in Utah eliminate the sale of 60,000 bottles by installing bottle-filling stations and selling reusable bottles.