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April 14, 2022 08:30 AM

Kickstart: Sustainability and millennials

Rhoda Miel
Managing Editor
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    M4
    Patricia Miller, CEO of injection molder M4.
    Sustainability and millennials

    Millennials often are a target of ire from the generation of business entrepreneurs who began companies in the 1970s and 1980s. It is misplaced, as far as I'm concerned. Just because the next generation consumes news in a different way or listens to music that's not to your taste or "spends too much time on their phones" (even as bosses demand they be available for emergencies), it's not a bad thing.

    But millennials are also looking at the tasks ahead of them as they take on more and more responsibilities in business and the world. One of those big issues? Sustainability.

    For her new blog Fake Plastic Trees (yes, the name was inspired by the band Radiohead), Plastics News reporter Sarah Kominek is looking at a generational attitude and approach to big issues in sustainability. She kicks things off this week by interviewing Patricia Miller, owner and CEO of Woodstock, Ill.-based injection molder M4 Factory, and Tim Ponrathnam, sustainability director at Evansville, Ind.-based Berry Global Group Inc.

    "There's a generation wanting to create business in a different way," Miller said.

    And yes, millennials know that there are costs to making the industry more sustainable. But there are also costs to ignoring sustainability. This generation is just looking for the opportunities to help make those decisions impacting their future.

     

    Kalliopi Monoyios, Twitter
    A portion of the "Year of Plastics, Family of Four" piece on display.
    Plastic consumption and art

    A Colorado museum is helping people understand just how much plastic they go through in a year.

    The Littleton Museum is housing the exhibit Patterns of Consumption by artist Kalliopi Monoyios through June 26 with a centerpiece called "Year of Plastic, Family of Four," which is, as the name implies, the collection of plastic items used by one family throughout 2019, collected into a quilt of snack wrappers, bottles, flexible packaging, rigid packaging, contact lens containers and even wires. It also covers, The Denver Post reports, 676 square feet in the museum.

    Monoyios' work has featured plastics before, with the sculpture "Landlines" made from wires and telephone cables and "Drops in the Ocean" made from single-use plastic packaging.

     

    Rebecca Kanthor
    Plastics News correspondent Rebecca Kanthor with her family in Shanghai on their way for required COVID-19 testing.
    'People are very frustrated'

    What is it like living in Shanghai under some of the most restrictive COVID isolation rules?

    PN's Shanghai-based correspondent Rebecca Kanthor spoke with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about the shutdowns that have left people scrambling for food deliveries, ways to entertain their children and even problems taking pets out to relieve themselves.

    "I've seen and I've talked with friends who have created these — they call them DIY nature toilets inside their homes. So they, like, bought a patch of grass [and] they collected some old leaves as a place for their dogs to [do their business]," she said.

     

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