Kickstart: Will a private equity backer help make fetch happen?

Platinum Equity has had a very acquisitive couple of months.

The private equity group, which has owned machinery maker and mold maker Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd. since 2017, just announced it purchased Pelican Products, a rotational molder of high-end cases.

And in September, it purchased Texas-based injection molder Petmate, a maker of plastic kennels and crates for dogs and other pets, as well as pet toys and treats. If you've ever used a Chuckit-brand flexible plastic launcher to throw a ball for your dog (without having to put your hand on a slobbery tennis ball), then you're familiar with Petmate. The company began in 1959 as Doskocil Manufacturing.

Like its Pelican acquisition, Platinum hasn't released details about how much it spent to buy Petmate, but it has said it "expects to use its M&A resources to help the company expand."

Petmate also is behind "National Fetch Day," which was Oct. 16. Although I'm sure every dog already considers every day to be National Fetch Day.

I live in a state that has collected a deposit for carbonated drinks for decades. I'm very familiar with rinsing out, storing and returning cans and bottles to stores to get my dime back. I'm also very aware of how long the process can take.

Each can, plastic and glass bottle has to be placed into the collection machine one at a time. Then you wait for the container to spin along a conveyor system until an electronic reader confirms it's a beverage that falls into the deposit program, before you can put another container into it.

And of course there are different machines for different types of containers.

It's all very time-consuming and a reason why I often donate my returnables to charities, rather than dealing with the hassle of doing it myself.

So the news that recycling equipment maker Tomra has a multifeed machine that can accept up to 100 containers at once sounds like a winner.

Tomra said that since the R1 was introduced in Norway, Sweden, Estonia and Finland, it has been a hit. Obviously it's an advantage for consumers, but recyclers get more containers into the system — one Norwegian retailer had as many containers come through the R1 in 10 weeks than all of the previous year — while shops benefit because the machines are a draw for consumers.

The R1s are now available at some redemption centers in the U.S. Recyclers are expanding their use to Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Karen Laird from our sister paper Sustainable Plastics has more.

Toymaker Mattel Inc. says it is increasing its commitment to using sustainable materials in its packaging, a move that means using less virgin plastic and more recycled material.

To make that happen, though, the company, based in El Segundo, Calif., first had to take stock of exactly what materials it uses. On Oct. 14, it announced what it termed its baseline for improvements, with a breakdown of what it was using as of 2019.

The bulk of its packaging — 84.5 percent — was paper-based, with the remaining 15.5 percent coming from plastics. Of that 15.5 percent, 35 percent was from recycled plastics, with 99.5 percent of the plastics classified as recyclable. None of its plastic was bio-based, the company said.

Mattel has already eliminated PVC from blister packs and will attempt to use plastics that are easier to recycle in existing curbside programs. It also is eliminating the film wrapping around its playing cards, such as those in its popular game Uno, and will eliminate the inner plastic in blister packaging.

"We are specifically targeting blister packs and windowed cartons for reduction by minimizing the size of plastic windows in boxes, where possible, or eliminating them entirely," Mattel said in updating its progress. "In 2020, the vast majority of our blister packs and window cartons contained 25 percent recycled PET ... and we are working diligently to increase that to 30 percent in 2022."