Kickstart: High fashion plirts

While some clothing brands are embracing more sustainability (such as a collaboration between Fashion for Good and Levi Strauss using compostable plastic bags), one fashion brand is embracing plastic.

Oh wait. Not a fashion brand, but rather a satire specialist. During its final show of the year on Dec. 17, Saturday Night Live included a video short featuring host Austin Butler for "plirts," a plastic shirt. (Also with a cameo from Lizzo, who is marking her second Kickstart appearance of the year. Bet that wasn't on her bingo card for 2022.)

Plirts have their advantages, or so the Please Don't Destroy video crew claims: Red wine wipes right off!

"And would you believe me if I told you they were good for the environment?" asks Martin Herlihy.

"Plastic shirts?" Butler replies. "No."

"Exactly. But I was hoping you would believe that."

A pharmaceutical company wants to get rid of all those polypropylene prescription containers on your counter and replace them with refillable glass ones.

The typical prescription bottle is difficult to recycle. Even after you scrape off paper labels with medical and personal information encoded on them, municipal recycling programs rarely accept them. (Although some stores have drop-off recycling sites.)

As our sister paper Crain's New York Business writes, Brooklyn-based Cabinet Health sees an opportunity to offer the glass alternative since there are so few recycling options to standard containers. Investors must see opportunity, too, because the company announced Dec. 15 it has raised $17 million in equity and debt financing to support its growth.

The funds will go toward getting Cabinet's products into retailers and pharmacies around the country, Russell Gong, Cabinet's co-founder and president, told CNYB.

At least one group out there is calling for more plastic to be used to support Mother Nature. Students and faculty are asking Northwestern University to add patterned film to the large windows at Seeley G. Mudd Library at the Evanston, Ill., campus to protect birds.

The windows can confuse birds that cannot tell the difference between real trees and their reflection.

"Every year, over 700 birds are killed or injured by flying into buildings at Northwestern as they migrate in the fall and spring," the Associated Student Government's Sustainability Committee says in a petition to university officials, noting that Mudd Library accounts for more than 14 percent of bird deaths and injuries on campus each year.

The film is printed with subtle patterns that do not disrupt the view for people inside but tell birds they should avoid the area. It has been used on other buildings, as PN's Catherine Kavanaugh wrote previously.

The American Bird Conservancy estimates than 1 billion birds die every year in the U.S. from window strikes.