Kickstart: Penguins, paperwork errors and plastics

One of the … quirks … of the tariff announcements from the White House on April 2 were levies placed on locations that do no direct trading with the U.S. For that matter, the Australian territories of Heard Island and McDonald Islands near Antarctica have no human inhabitants. So why would penguins and seals have a 10 percent tariff placed on them?

The United Kingdom-based newspaper The Guardian thinks it knows why: A clerical error that wrongly placed a shipment of PET recycling equipment as coming from the islands that actually was shipped by Starlinger Group from Austria.

"One bill of lading, from September 2024, relates to parts for a PET recycling plant, shipped from Starlinger in Vienna to Oakland, Calif., which lists the address of Starlinger as being in 'Vienna, Heard Island and McDonald Islands,'" The Guardian reported April 4.

Another Australian territory, Norfolk Island, now has a 29 percent tariff placed on its goods. The island has 2,200 residents and no known direct exports to the U.S., officials in Australia said. The Guardian, however, noticed paperwork referring to shipments that seemed to confuse the U.K. county of Norfolk with the island.

"If you input the wrong data in, then you're going to get the wrong data out," Jared Mondschein, director of research at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, told The Guardian.

Interpreting and understanding the new tariff rules out of Washington — and tracking the potential for increased retaliatory tariffs from other countries — is hard. To be honest, we here at Plastics News are still trying to figure it all out.

But keep in mind that tariffs are just a small part of all the changes going on with public policy in local, state and national politics. Consider just a few examples: extended producer responsibility rules, bans on plastic bags, funding for recycling programs and the status of government approvals for new medical devices.

Steve Toloken, PN's assistant managing editor, has the best insight into all those aspects. He's covered public policy issues and the plastics industry for more than 20 years. Subscribers will have a chance to get his insight into public policy discussions at 2 p.m. Eastern time during the Plastics in Politics Live webcast. It's free for subscribers. Sign up here to watch it live or catch the archived version after the event.

Feel like you need a break from all of this stress? I'd like to point out that it's Updog season. The competition, recognized by the American Kennel Club, has also been known as disc dog and features "the basic game of fetch with a flying disc and expanded … into a whole bunch of fun games."

There are multiple events in the U.S. and Canada each weekend, including competitions the weekend of April 12 and 13 in sites including Manhattan, Kan.; Gretna, Va.; Yorktown Heights, N.Y.; Calgary, Alberta; and Myakka City, Fla. Dogs win points for every plastic disc-based game they play.

I'll just note that there are a lot more variations on disc catching games than I expected with contests based on speed, distance, precision and agility.