Kickstart: Making the news

We try not to toot our own horn in public too much here at Plastics News, although we do celebrate good work amongst ourselves quite often. A couple of recent items, though, I thought were worth bringing up here.

First, let's talk bioplastics. When the White House announced a massive new target for the use of bio-based plastics to replace traditional plastics, we obviously had extensive coverage from the start. But in addition, Editor Don Loepp hatched a plan to create something special so we could go in depth even more than we would normally. After all, he reasoned, within the Global Polymer Group plan — with includes PN, Sustainable Plastics, Rubber News and other papers — we had expertise on materials supply, public policy and just what the term "bioplastics" even covers.

And not only do we have in-house knowledge, we have contacts with people who can bring their knowledge on the subject. So on May 17, Plastics News and Sustainable Plastics will host the Bioplastics Live special webinar, with free access to subscribers.

Speakers in addition to PN and SP staff are Rafael Auras, Amcor endowed chair in packaging sustainability at Michigan State University; Kelvin Okamoto, CEO of Gen3Bio LLC; and Conor Carlin, president-elect of the Society of Plastics Engineers, managing director of Illig North America and co-author of the second edition of Plastics and Sustainability. You can sign up now.

Also for a different kind of look behind the PN editorial curtain, when a storage site for recycled plastics in Richmond, Ind., caught fire on April 11, the thick black smoke and evacuatation of 2,000 people quickly turned it into a national news story.

It was an event PN was watching too, but we wanted to make sure we had the right information before we published anything. There was a lot of speculation about what company was involved and a lot of discussion between PN staffers before Frank Esposito wrote the first story for Plastics News.

When we did, we could identify the name of the company — My-Way Trading Inc. — along with background on how the facility came to have so much recycled plastics on site.

You can get Frank's update from April 17 here.

One thing we don't expect at Plastics News, however, is to end up being used in testimony in a California legislative meeting. And yet on April 10, there was PN being held up by Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, during a hearing in the California State Assembly on whether the state should require bio-based plastics in beverage bottles.

"Making plastics out of plant waste material is happening. In case you didn't have a chance to read last week's Plastics News," he told lawmakers, holding up a copy of the March 27 issue which featured the White House's bioplastics initiative.

About 10 minutes later, the top-ranking Republican on the committee, Vice Chair Heath Flora, R-Ripon, led off his question time by noting that the testimony was the first time he had heard of Plastics News, and he and Murray had a short, joking exchange.

"Learned a couple of things today: That plastics actually has a newsletter. So that's impressive. Plastics News," Flora said.

(For the record, we're not a newsletter of the plastics industry, we're a business magazine covering plastics. But I'm sure some companies and trade associations would prefer if we were.)

And while it's cool being an example in an official hearing, it's still not as cool as when our former sister publication, Waste News, was used as a prop in an episode of The Sopranos.