Kickstart: Americans' favorite beverage? Water

There's been a lot of emphasis the past few years on using reusable water bottles. They're marketed across multiple media platforms; we carry them on trips and during workouts. "Filling stations" at drinking fountains keep track of how many single-serve water bottles have been avoided via reusable bottles.

And yet the bottled water market continues to swell. As Jim Johnson writes from The Packaging Conference in Austin, Texas, this week, the consulting firm Beverage Market Corp. says that in 2021, bottled water made up nearly 25 percent of the U.S. beverage market and surpassed the record that carbonated soft drinks previously held.

The vast majority of those sales — 71 percent — were for single-serve water bottles.

Check out Jim's stories from this week, about the growth of bottled water and alternatives to plastics packaging, and keep an eye out for more stories from the conference.

Meanwhile, California wants to get harder-to-recycle plastics out of e-commerce packaging.

State lawmakers are back with a bill to limit plastic films, expanded polystyrene and other plastic packaging materials from being used in e-commerce in the state.

The argument is that since most California municipal recycling programs don't accept flexible plastics like air pillows, bubble wrap or EPS foams, the priority should be for other protective packaging.

Similar legislation had some support last year, passing two committees before stalling on the state Assembly floor.

But supporters told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that changes were made to address concerns — the bill now exempts meat, produce and medical devices shipped via e-commerce — to increase its chances of passing.

All of us want our products to arrive unbroken, and plastic does a great job with that. But many of us also would like to be able to easily recycle those packaging materials curbside. The bill also requires retailers in the state to reestablish store drop-offs for plastic bags.

Supporters of the bill, sponsored by Assembly Member Laura Friedman, point to Amazon's decision to stop using single-use plastics in shipments in Germany and India and say they want to see that in California.

Thanks to PN's Steve Toloken for this item.
 

Commercial traffic may be flowing smoothly again between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, but the costs of a six-day blockade of the Ambassador Bridge are still being counted.

East Lansing, Mich.-based Anderson Economic Group LLC released a report Feb. 14 noting that direct industry losses from the closures protesting vaccine mandates for cross-border truck drivers amount to $300 million, including a $155 million hit to automakers and $145 million in lost direct wages due to plant shutdowns, our sister paper Crain's Detroit Business writes.

Still to be fully determined is just who will have to pay for that lost income, other industry watchers said. Those costs may depend on contract terms between automakers and suppliers, but as Dave Andrea, a principal at consulting group Plante Moran, notes, the smart thing for buyers may be to support key suppliers, rather than enforcing harsh terms on them for the force majeure situation.