Kickstart: Notre Dame honors a petrochemical activist

A retired Louisiana teacher is receiving a top award from the University of Notre Dame for her environmental activisim, work that has included legal action to try to stop a new Formosa Plastics operation.

Sharon Lavigne, founder and director of Rise St. James, will receive the Laetare Medal, which Notre Dame calls "the most prestigious award given to American Catholics."

The annual award was created in 1883.

Lavigne and Rise St. James sued to try to stop the $9.4 billion Formosa Group LA LLC resin plant called the Sunshine Project in early 2020. In November 2020, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it would review the project's impact. As of August 2021, the Corps said it would require a far more extensive study. Formosa has said it is assessing the project.

In announcing the award, Notre Dame said Lavigne has watched the community between Baton Rouge and New Orleans shift from farms to a hub of the petrochemical industry.

"Why would they put the plant over here? Because they knew that people weren't going to speak up," Lavigne said in the university's announcement. "And they were right. The people weren't going to speak up. That's when God touched me and told me to fight — and that's what I did."

It's not often that local officials are willing to turn down a big investment, but back in January, Macon-Bibb County in Georgia did just that, with the mayor withdrawing support for what Brightmark Energy had said would be the world's largest chemical recycling plant.

"After careful consideration of the Brightmark project, I believe it is in the best interest of the people of Macon-Bibb County that we withdraw our support," Mayor Lester Miller said in a letter to the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority. "While you should and will continue to support green energy, economic development and technology jobs, we cannot ignore the long-term safety concerns of this process that have been raised in the last several weeks."

Now Brightmark has pulled out of the proposed $680 million project, saying the company and the authority "reached the conclusion that without local support the project would not be in the interest of either company or authority," PN's Jim Johnson writes.

The story of Brightmark's move in Georgia also raises questions related to another project in Indiana, Jim writes.

Brightmark uses pyrolysis, a form of chemical recycling where plastics are heated in the absence of oxygen to create hydrocarbons that can then be used to make various products, including naphtha, fuels and waxes.

Your next set of tires may run on recycled PET bottles.

German tiremaker Continental AG has introduced the ContiRe.Tex, a tire made using recycled polyester fiber in place of virgin PET. A set of standard tires features around 40 recycled PET bottles, the company said.

While I would love to see PET bottles be recycled back into PET bottles, I know that's a complicated issue. And let's face it, bottles going into tires is better than bottles going into landfills.

For now, the tires will be made at a Continental plant in Portugal and will be sold only in Europe.