Kickstart: Manufacturers run into new opposition

The concept of NIMBY (not in my backyard) seems to be at play in some upcoming manufacturing projects.

The pushback involves major projects such as vehicle battery plants planned for Big Rapids, Mich., and Marshall, Mich. — a venture involving Ford Motor Co. that would employ 2,500 — have led to backlash from some residents trying to block the projects.

In Marshall, 800 people signed a petition trying to stop the Ford site, although community leaders rejected the petition, as Reuters reports.

But anti-manufacturing moves are also impacting far smaller projects.

In New York, the environmental group Beyond Plastics is calling for community leaders in Lockport to lock out a company that plans to open a thermoforming and injection molding plant.

SRI CV Plastics Inc., based in Perundurai, India, has proposed building a 13,870-square-foot factory on land that it would purchase from the Lockport Industrial Development Agency. It would employ 20 people.

Beyond Plastics has pointed to the derailment and fire in East Palestine, Ohio, that led to the release of vinyl chloride monomer, a PVC feedstock, as an example of what can go wrong with plastics production.

But Varunkumar Velumani, the head of SRI, told PN Editor Don Loepp in a statement that the company would make only finished products, not resin. Local production adds jobs to communities and shortens supply chains, which reduces the environmental footprint.

A hearing on the Lockport project is set for July 13.

Office furniture makers have put a lot of effort into improving the sustainability of their products the last few years. They've used more recycled and reclaimed materials, reduced the variety of plastics used, and made them easier to disassemble and recycle at the end of their life.

But since the start of COVID, as companies reduced office size and dumped unwanted office furniture, many of those same products are ending up in landfills.

The New York Times followed companies handling warehouses of high-end furniture left behind as companies downsized corporate offices.

Trevor Langdon, CEO of Green Standards, a sustainability consulting company, said more than 10 million tons of office furniture in the U.S. end up in landfills each year.

On its website, Green Standards pushes for companies to take the extra time and effort to handle excess furniture properly.

"Every office that liquidates or landfills its surplus furniture simply loses out on what value was left and shows no concern for unnecessary waste," the Toronto-based company says.

If you want an idea of just how intense upcoming negotiations will be between the "Detroit 3" automakers and the United Auto Workers, then consider this: The UAW has said it won't participate in a traditional handshake photo-op with leaders of General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the owner of Chrysler.

"The members come first," UAW President Shawn Fain said July 10 in a statement, our sister paper Automotive News writes. "I'll shake hands with the CEOs when they come to the table with a deal that reflects the needs of the workers who make this industry run."

Negotiations open with Stellantis on July 13, Ford on July 14 and GM on July 18.