Kickstart: A New Jersey response to bag bans

What happens when New Jersey launches what it terms the strongest retail shopping bag ban in the U.S.? Some stores say that customers who forget their own bags are simply walking off with the stores' hand baskets.

"They are just disappearing," Louis Scaduto Jr., CEO of Middletown, N.J.-based Food Circus Super Markets, which owns four Super Foodtown stores, told the Asbury Park Press and USA Today. "I may actually have to just do away with them soon, can't afford to keep replacing them."

Unlike many other bag restrictions, New Jersey's targets both plastic and paper bags at checkout, although small shops can still use paper bags. The ban went into effect in May.

Since then, there have been anecdotes from stores and shoppers alike of consumers simply grabbing something handy to replace the bag, such as reusable baskets and even carts. The New Jersey Food Council, which represents grocers in the state, calls the basket disappearances "a short unintended consequence of the new state law."

Patience paid off for Helmut Mueller as he sought just the right spot in suburban Chicago to house his two businesses.

Helm Tool Co. Inc. opened in 1977 as a mold builder, and when he had enough interest from customers, he created Intermolding Technology Inc. in 2005 to test out molds and do some contract molding.

But Helm was in Elk Grove Village, Ill., while IMT was in Des Plaines, about 3 miles away, which meant that tools made at one facility had to be loaded on a truck and shipped to the other. So Mueller began looking for one building that could house both firms, he told Plastics News' Catherine Kavanaugh.

But like the story of Goldilocks, Mueller kept finding sites that weren't just right. They were too small to house both companies, or too big. Then after four years of searches, he got a call about a warehouse in Schaumburg, Ill.

The facility needed some work, but the companies are settling in and finding the benefits of co-location.

"If a tool goes down on the IMT side, it can easily be transported and repaired on the Helm Tool side," Mueller said. "If we finish a tool on the Helm Tool side, it can easily be taken to the IMT side and put in a press for prototyping or tryout."

A grand opening is set for Sept. 16.

German athletic shoe and clothing company Adidas and 3D printing firm Carbon say they're moving closer to making a mass-market shoe with a midsole made through additive manufacturing.

The Futurecraft 4D project wants to replace the complex midsole in an athletic shoe now made using a variety of materials and techniques with one 3D printed piece. But traditional 3D production systems and materials couldn't meet demands for mass production.

Carbon said in a news release that its digital light synthesis printing system is hitting Adidas' goals and the shoes will be sent to "select athletes" for feedback.