Kickstart: Dreaming of a bioplastics revolution? 'Dream big'

The European plastics industry has been talking about bioplastics and its potential to lower the carbon footprint of plastics for a long time. In the April Sustainable Plastics Live webinar, Karen Laird — editor of our sister paper Sustainable Plastics — noted that the White House's unexpected announcement of a target to convert 90 percent of plastics to bio-based feedstock within 20 years took the industry in Europe by surprise.

"They don't spend money on this thing; we spend money on this thing," Karen said. "How are we going to keep up?"

The goal announced by President Joe Biden's administration in March is "bold," as the White House calls it, but "if you're going to dream, dream big," Karen said.

"If you don't have a goal, you don't have anything to work to," she said. "Whether it's achievable in the time frame that's been set here, I don't know, but I think that given the knowledge that we have, given the situation regarding climate change, given the fact that most people somehow do want a better environment, yes, I think that it is possible, but it's not easy."

A replay of the webinar is available here and you can download the latest issue of Sustainable Plastics here.

The start of Passover at sundown tonight apparently means that it's also prime time for yellow caps on Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. drinks to designate that they're "kosher for Passover."

I use quotes because although there are plenty of news stories and videos about the use of a yellow cap to signify that the cola meets dietary restrictions — using an alternate sweetener to meet religious requirements — I have yet to find an official statement from a soft drink maker or bottler. The fact-checking website Snopes says the earliest mention it can find is from the late 1990s.

Stories about the seasonal appearance of yellow caps go back for at least 10 years. The story of how Coke adapted its storied secret recipe to make a Passover-friendly version begins in the early 1930s, the New York Times wrote in 2011, when Tuvia Geffen, a rabbi originally forced out of Lithuania following a pogrom, was leading a Jewish congregation in Atlanta. Being Atlantans, the people in his community loved Coca-Cola but wanted to be assured it was allowed.

"We should note that … Geffen had some significant earthly help in the person of Harold Hirsch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola's corporate lawyer," Samuel G. Freedman wrote.

Following up on some news from last month, when General Motors Co. said it would offer buyouts to most of its salaried employees: About 5,000 of them took the carmaker up on its offer.

GM Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said at a conference that the voluntary departures represent about 6 percent of its 81,000 salaried workers and is enough to ensure the company doesn't need a "companywide involuntary separation program," Lindsay Vanhulle from our sister paper Automotive News reports.

Employees had to decide whether to take the offer — with a payout based on the number of years they worked at the Detroit-based company — by March 24 and must leave the company by the end of June.