Kickstart: Well, poop

An Australian packaging company has a very distinctive way to let the public know about plastics pollution in the world's oceans.

Better Packaging Co.'s own product line uses recycled ocean-bound plastics, paper and bio-based plastics. Earlier this month it said it was "kicking up a stink" about how a "pile of plastic [stuff]" enters the world's oceans every 30 seconds. It used "mostly recycled-waste plastics and secondhand fishing nets" to create a giant replica of a poop emoji placed on Sydney's famed Bondi Beach to mark the United Nation's World Environment Day.

Better Packaging — an Australian company with headquarters in New Zealand and additional distribution in the U.S., United Kingdom, European Union and China — makes bags and flexible packaging under the brand name Pollastic.

"First and foremost, we're about making a positive impact on our planet and its people," the company said about the emoji statement. "Packaging is the way we've chosen to do that. … We believe that packaging doesn't have to be the villain in the environmental story, but a hero instead."

Since appearing at Bondi, the emoji has been placed in storage, but Better Packaging hopes to bring it out for future displays.

A lack of recycled plastics — specifically the limited amount of chemically recycled polypropylene — has led to a delay in more sustainable plastic cups at Wendy's restaurants.

As PN's Steve Toloken writes from an American Chemistry Council event, Wendy's and its manufacturing and supply partners, Berry Global Group Inc. and LyondellBasell Industries, made headlines when they announced in 2021 that the fast-food restaurant would switch to PP cups from plastic-lined paper. The PP was to be partially supplied through chemical recycling.

But the supply of chemically recycled PP hasn't met the projects' demands, Liliana Esposito, Wendy's chief corporate affairs and sustainability officer, said at the ACC's Innovation and Circularity Summit.

"We can't say to 7,000 restaurants, 'Oops, in February we couldn't get access to the material we needed, so you need to change out your cups,'" she said.

The partners haven't given up, though.

"I think we will get there, but there's still some work to do," she said.

You can find the full story here.

I'm not a purse person, so I don't really understand the thinking behind spending hundreds — or thousands — of dollars on a bag. But even fans of the most exclusive brands may be questioning the $63,750 someone spent to buy a Louis Vuitton knockoff measuring 657 by 222 by 700 micrometers.

The "art collective" MSCHF, based in Brooklyn, created a version of a Louis Vuitton bag using 3D printing with a photopolymer resin. (No, the fashion house was not a collaborator on the project. MSCHF told The New York Times earlier this month that it preferred to "ask forgiveness, not permission.")

Bidding on June 28 for the bag began at $15,000. The successful buyer was not identified.

But at least the bag comes complete with a microscope with a digital display, so the owner can see it.