Kickstart: Can more 'green' work yield higher plastics enrollment?

My colleague Jim Johnson had a story recently on falling enrollment in plastics programs at U.S. universities. It's been popular with readers, even if the topic's not exactly uplifting.

One reason academic leaders gave for the drop in enrollees in plastics engineering programs is society's growing distrust of plastics. That's why a presentation I saw last month from the global rotomolding firm Rotovia had me wondering whether serious environmental commitments can serve as a counterbalance.

CEO Daði Valdimarsson told the Rotoplas conference about how Rotovia plans to increase its recycled plastic use fourfold by 2028 to a 20 percent level, how it's building product take-back programs to make that a reality and how it is moving away from fossil fuel-based power.

One reason for the major effort, he said, is that its younger employees want to work for a company that takes environmental issues seriously.

"The generation which is coming up today, they don't want to be employed by companies who are not running the business in a responsible manner," he said. "We see this clearly from the younger generation in our company, that recycling of polymers is important for them."

I saw Valdimarsson's comments as food for thought. Maybe would-be plastics students aren't seeing enough of the changes, whether it's recycled content or moving away from fossil feedstocks, that would attract them.

A coalition of community, labor and faith groups says employee deaths in Hurricane Helene-related flash flooding at Impact Plastics shows that the state needs stronger worker safety laws.

In particular, the group Tennessee For All said in its Oct. 14 petition to state officials that the Occupational Safety and Health Act lacks protections for workers who choose to follow public safety recommendations in disasters.

"OSHA can't protect workers from climate disasters," the group said, calling the deaths preventable.

The family of one worker killed in the Sept. 27 flash flood at Impact's plant filed a wrongful death lawsuit this week. Other nearby factories and public buildings had closed for the day, but the lawsuit said Impact Plastics "ignored every warning" and opened for production.

The company maintains it closed with enough time for workers to evacuate.

Research on plastic ocean pollution casts a wide net these days, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations body that both promotes the peaceful use of nuclear energy and monitors military uses.

IAEA also has a project to explore how nuclear technologies can make plastics more circular.

The agency more known for sending weapons inspectors around the world recently dispatched scientists to Antarctica as part of its NuTec Plastic Initiative, where they studied microplastic pollution.

No report yet on their findings, but the NuTec project says it has two primary ways it can help: by using gamma and electron beam radiation technologies to complement mechanical and chemical recycling, and by using isotopic tracing to monitor marine pollution.

The organization wants to build a global marine monitoring network and said in this video it wants to better understand levels and impacts of plastic pollution in Antarctica.