Kickstart: 'We don't change until we freaking have to'

This seems an easy way to boost demand for recycled content plastic: curbside trash and recycling carts made with recovered plastics.

Rehrig Pacific Co. became the latest with a June 24 announcement it was supplying the city of Baltimore with 205,000 residential recycling carts made with post-consumer plastic, including from recycled laundry baskets and toys.

The company's press release does not mention the percentage of recycled content in the carts, but a similar announcement last year from Waste Management and Cascade Cart Solutions said its carts were being made with 10 percent post-consumer plastic content.

It seems like a no-brainer as long as the carts are durable. Trash cans are a good place for recycled content: The plastic doesn't need to meet the purity requirements for food applications, for example, and minor color variations from recycled resin wouldn't bother me on my recycling cart.

This also seems like an area ripe for federal or state laws. If California can require recycled content in soda and water bottles as it does now, then writing recycled content into law for things like trash carts seems a no-brainer way to get some demand boost.

The Rehrig Pacific announcement quotes the Recycling Partnership, which is part of the Baltimore effort, as saying it's the first big project that meets the recycled content requirements of the partnership's grant-funded carts program.

Here's another no brainer in the area of design for recycling: making PET soda bottles from clear rather than tinted plastic.

Coca-Cola Co. announced last week it's switching more markets for its Sprite brand from the green-colored plastic to clear, because it's easier for recycling and better for making back into new bottles.

It said it's moving Sprite bottles in Kenya to transparent PET, following similar moves elsewhere in Africa, Southeast Asia, Western Europe and the United States.

Green bottles have been part of Sprite's brand image since the 1960s. Here in the U.S., it said earlier this year that all Sprite bottles will be in clear PET by the end of 2022.

The winner of this year's Mold Builder of the Year award certainly didn't take the easy path.

Ray Coombs, the founder of Westminster Tool Inc., told an audience at the American Mold Builders Association conference in late June that things looked bleak in 2013: His company had a $1 million budget shortfall, he faced losing his home and was having a near-nervous breakdown.

As Catherine Kavanaugh reported for us from the conference, Coombs told the crowd how it sparked a reinvention for him and the company.

"It's amazing how we don't change until we freaking have to," he said. "I realized at that time — with a little bit of help — the biggest problem with my company was me and I had to do better."

The company plowed ahead with training, talent development initiatives and investing in new equipment. Beyond those more traditional turnaround paths, the company and Coombs focused on cultivating emotional intelligence and listening skills.

It's been, in the words of one of Coombs's colleagues, a "cultural transformation" for the small mold making shop.