Kickstart: Stocking up on medical supplies

Medical supply company Medline Industries is planning for the next supply chain shortage by securing $500 million in inventory, creating a stockpile worth $4 billion.

"Our inventory management strategy has always been designed with one goal in mind — ensure that the right products are available at the right time to meet the demands of our customers and the patients in their care," Medline President Jim Pigott said in a news release.

Medline, based in Northfield, Ill., owns 20 manufacturing facilities in North America.

With the investments to support its supply, the company says it now owns 50 distribution centers and its own MedTrans fleet of 1,300 trucks that can supply customers within one day to 99 percent of the U.S.

Medline makes masks, surgical gowns, gloves, diagnostic equipment and other supplies, a business that sees it providing 200 million health care procedure kits each year.

Liz Truss had just been in office as the new prime minister of the United Kingdom for a few hours on Sept. 6 when executives from the recycling industry began reminding her of commitments to support a circular economy.

"There are several initiatives that require the PM's immediate attention to ensure valuable time and momentum are not lost. These include the government's plans for the ambitious waste collection and packaging reforms agenda," Lee Marshall, policy and external affairs director of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM), said in a statement.

Truss, selected by the Conservative party to take over party leadership — and the prime minister post — is a former head of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but hasn't been vocal about recycling. She has emphasized the need to reduce food waste, however.

"I was an environmentalist before it was fashionable," she said during a July debate hosted by the BBC.

That should, at least, be an improvement from Boris Johnson who made headlines in 2021 when he told students that recycling "doesn't work."

Fans of muscle cars may like to refer to the "music" their cars make when you rev the engine. Volvo has a different kind of music in mind, and a different way to produce it.

In a new promotion for its XC60 plug-in hybrid, the carmaker hired techno musicians Andrew Huang and Keeley Bumford, who goes by the name Dresage, to use sounds made by the car and convert it into a song.

They collected noises from turn signals, closing doors, sun visors, seat belts, seating adjustments, adjustments to vents and other elements from the car, tweaked them electronically to vary pitch and create rhythms and ended up with a one-minute song.

"We made a banger out of car sounds," Bumford says in a behind-the-scenes video from Huang on YouTube.