Kickstart: An eXXXtra special sustainability ad

Should today's Kickstart have a content warning? I hope not, but the topic is rather ... adult. The canned water company Liquid Death has a new ad out with adult film star Cherie DeVille, who praises the recyclability of the aluminum cans the water brand uses, rather than a plastic bottle.

The ad uses some suggestive language (even when bleeped) and imagery, so you may not want to click through if sensitive ears are in the room, but essentially the message DeVille uses is to proclaim that plastic water bottles are the items that are not safe for work, our sister paper Advertising Age writes.

Liquid Death, of course, overlooks any complications related to aluminum recycling (including many of the same recycling infrastructure shortcomings as plastics) and emphasizes that its work with adult film stars is similar to other marketing from the brand.

"What we've always done as a brand is find ways to make health and sustainability a lot more fun and irreverent," CEO Mike Cessario told Ad Age. "There's no reason that unhealthy brands like energy drinks and candy and alcohol and beer get to have all this fun, hilarious, bold marketing, whereas healthy brands are all quiet and not fun."

There's another snarl in the global supply chain, this time coming from the Mexico-U.S. border in Texas, where state leaders are requiring that commercial vehicles undergo extra inspections, slowing the flow of goods by hours or sometimes days.

About a week ago, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, ordered state police to question drivers coming from Mexico, even after those trucks made it through normal U.S. Customs and Border Patrol inspection points. That has resulted in backups near border crossings, while truck drivers in Mexico have halted traffic heading north across the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge to protest Abbott's moves, The Texas Tribune writes.

While Abbott has since removed some inspection points following agreements with officials in Mexico, other sites continue to target trucks for extra scrutiny. The wait time for commercial vehicles at the Bridge of the Americas in El Paso, Texas, on the afternoon of April 14 was 270 minutes, up from a normal wait time of 46 minutes, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website.

Abbott called for the extra inspections after President Joe Biden's administration said it was eliminating some of the COVID-related rules regarding migrants.

Texas shares more than 1,000 miles of border with Mexico, and the slowdowns and closures are impacting deliveries of produce, auto parts and a range of other products used on both sides of the border.

L.O.L. Surprise, the toy brand with lots of small items wrapped for the joy of unwrapping, is dropping plastic packaging.

L.O.L. is owned by MGA Entertainment Inc., the same company that owns Little Tikes. It announced April 14 it will no longer use plastic for the spheres to hold its toys, but instead it will use bamboo, wood, sugar cane and other compostable materials.

The first nonplastic packaged items, called Earth Love, will be released in time for Earth Day on April 22. By the fall, 65 percent of the plastic balls will be replaced, the company said in a news release.