Kickstart: Thinking outside the bottle

Monday is America Recycles Day. I think I've been covering recycling long enough to be excused for being a little cynical.

At its worst, the day can be a cliché — I've gone to recycling day events that celebrate the individual person recycling but gloss over the hard questions, like exactly how can we build systems to raise the U.S.'s dismal 26 percent PET bottle recycling rate.

But times are changing. There's a lot more serious thinking going on today. Case in point: an industry group, an environmental NGO and a research firm Nov. 11 came out with a joint proposal around how to build a well-designed, nationwide container deposit system.

The Can Manufacturers Institute, the US Public Interest Research Group and the consultancy Reloop North America put out a statement describing using the private sector to build out infrastructure, following oversight and targets from governments.

There's a lot of "outside the bottle" thinking these days. It reminds me of this mid-September call from the National Association for PET Container Resources, CMI and the Glass Packaging Institute, for similar, well-designed deposit systems.

All the plastics industry's trade groups, like the American Chemistry Council and the Plastics Industry Association, should get on board with NAPCOR and the others. Deposits seem like a no-brainer to us, like this column from my boss, Plastics News Editor Don Loepp, explains.

Today's Kickstart is sandwiched between one holiday, Veterans Day Nov. 11, and another that maybe should be a holiday in our post-Glasgow COP26 climate summit world, the aforementioned America Recycles Day coming up Nov. 15.

In yesterday's Kickstart, we highlighted work that the mold making industry is doing to support disabled veterans with the iWarriors.org project. As well, I've seen companies on social media, like Confer Plastics in New York and Hoffer Plastics in Illinois, highlighting veterans on their teams.

So a series of tweets on Veterans Day from a former U.S. Marine involved in plastics got my attention.

Marcus Eriksen, a 1991 Gulf War veteran and co-founder of the NGO 5 Gyres Institute, wrote that his work around plastic pollution and clean communities shares something in common with his time in the military – a diversity of voices working on a common mission.

As in the military, he noted a growing diversity of voices around plastic environmental pollution.

"In the plastic pollution movement, I've watched the diversity of voices grow across the globe. At every point of the supply chain of plastic, up and down the economic scale, there are more voices being heard," Eriksen wrote.

"The pluralism of the plastic pollution movement is driving a common ethic, whereby the concept of trash and the act of trashing people or communities is deeply unethical and a threat to everyone. It is our tribe, our common mission. This is what #VeteransDay means to me."

Continuing on the theme of diversity and unity, Dow Inc. this week was highlighting its own.

The company Nov. 10 said four of its employees were recognized as leaders, allies or future leaders in the LGBT+ community on lists put together by Yahoo Finance's OUTstanding initiative.

Dow said that both Louis Vega, president of North America and vice president, government affairs and advocacy, and Javier Constante, president of Latin America and Brazil, were named to the 100 leading LGBT+ executives list.

As well, General Counsel Amy Wilson was named a top 50 ally on the list, and Jarrod Trusler, product manager, polyurethanes, was named to the 100 LGBT+ future leaders list.

Dow said someone from the company has been on each list every year since 2014. Wilson described it this way: "Significant progress has been made, but the journey is far from over. And we will continue to work at the forefront across public and private sectors to advocate for full inclusion in all facets of our society."