Kickstart: Keeping a focus on the Grenfell fire

It's been nearly six years since 72 people died in a fire at a London apartment tower. The fire started in one kitchen but spread quickly up the building as flames spread to exterior cladding — made in part with polyisocyanurate insulation boards produced by Celotex and Kingspan Group — trapping residents in their homes.

The Grenfell fire remains a big topic in the United Kingdom. Our sister paper Urethanes Technology International writes that U.K. Housing Secretary Michael Gove has warned shareholders in cladding manufacturing firms that there will be "severe consequences" if they do not assist in efforts to remove similar systems at other residential buildings.

Filmmakers are finding stories to tell about the fire and its aftermath.

Director Steve McQueen's film Grenfell is now showing at London's Serpentine Gallery through May 10.

And the BBC recently announced it will air a three-part series on Grenfell that will provide multiple points of view from before, during and after the fire.

The series' creator, Peter Kosminsky, told BBC.com that he wanted the show to examine "how such a thing can have happened; [and] how we can avoid it ever happening again."

Bans have been big for expanded polystyrene, straws, foodservice cutlery and plastic pipes. Now AstroTurf is the focus of an ad campaign calling for it to be dropped.

Artificial turf (often made with polyethylene) is being targeted for removal from NFL stadiums in favor of real grass. Buffalo Bills linebacker Von Miller appears in a new ad from lawn care company Pennington in a campaign called "#FlipTheTurf."

The ad campaign claims artificial turf causes more injuries to players. Miller's 2022 season ended when he injured his knee in a game against the Detroit Lions.

Our sister paper Advertising Age writes that the NFL "disputes the idea that turf is more dangerous than grass."

Pennington told Ad Age it planned to run the ad during coverage of the NFL draft this week, but it was rejected.

There are designers and there are molders. And sometimes those two groups don't communicate very well, leading to cool-looking products that are difficult to produce and items that are easy to make but not desirable.

This year's finalists for the Design Innovation in Plastics competition for undergraduate students in the United Kingdom and Ireland, however, may be able to better work in both worlds.

For 2023, students had to focus on functional items for the kitchen or bathroom, primarily made from plastics, that is an original concept or a "significant improvement" on an existing product, sponsor Covestro said in a news release.

In addition to the prize, the six finalists — Frederick Blake of Bournemouth University, Kyle Farquhar of Edinburgh Napier University, James Forrest-Smith of Northumbria University, Christopher Kenny of TU Dublin, Scott Rutherford of Edinburgh Napier and Teresa Zheng of Loughborough University — will attend a two-day training course on design and plastics at injection molding equipment maker Sumitomo (SHI) Demag's training academy in Deventry, England.