Kickstart: Just buzz or a big sustainable business?

UBQ, an Israel-based company with a thermoplastic made from landfill refuse that also goes by the name UBQ, has been getting a lot of buzz lately, including being featured at COP27, the big United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Egypt through Nov. 18.

While it has a pilot plant in operation and its material is being put in floor mats for Mercedes, you may be asking if the hype is based in reality, or if it is just marketing smoke and mirrors.

James Snodgrass, editor of our sister paper Urethanes Technology International, was careful to note some skepticism when writing about a scene-stealing presentation during K 2022 as "a rousing address" by UBQ's Albert Douer that was "equal parts Greta Thunberg at her most demanding and Elon Musk at his most unbelievable."

Douer was careful to point out that simple mechanical recycling for items such as PET bottles isn't being targeted by UBQ. Instead it will capture waste from landfills. "The stuff that no one else wants? That's what we take," he said.

We may have a better handle on the hype vs. reality scale next year when a plant is set to open in Bergen op Zoom, Netherlands, with annual capacity of 80,000 metric tons.

The political fight over plastics is increasingly being taken to the state level in the U.S.

PN's Steve Toloken has an overview of what is expected following the Nov. 8 midterm elections and notes that a stalemate in Congress will likely restrict action on big federal efforts, but four states in particular — Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota — will enter 2023 with Democratic legislatures and governors.

"The map [in the states] has expanded for potentially significant plastics policy," Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association, told Steve.

Maryland may be the next state to take up extended producer responsibility requirements. It had considered EPR earlier this year, although it hasn't taken any official action on it yet.

I may be a few months late in picking up on the viral sensation of STEM education coming from the Texas A&M's physics and astronomy department's TikTok account, but I still highly recommend checking it out for anyone looking for ways to get kids excited about science.

As in, kids being so excited that they literally jump up and scream as faculty member Tatiana Erukhimova creates a "cloud" inside a classroom (with 11.7 million views on TikTok), freezes a banana to turn it into a hammer or shows how physics make it possible for planes to fly by using a roll of toilet paper and a leaf blower.

"Our success on TikTok is the result of hours of work and brilliant ideas of our marketing team. I'm happy to hear that millions of people are watching physics videos. They're watching them and enjoying them. Isn't that great," she says in a Facebook post posted in May by Texas A&M.

You can find the physics TikToks here. (You don't need an account to see them, so don't worry about adding another social media app to your life, unless you want to.)