Kickstart: A Target-shaped shadow over retail expectations

There's a big shadow hanging over what is typically the biggest week of the year for retailers — a shadow with a very specific Target shape.

Target Corp. announced Nov. 16 during its quarterly earnings report that while sales were up for the third quarter, those sales were below expectations and it is preparing for an expected slowdown in consumer spending by trimming its costs.

"The company announced today it was undertaking an enterprisewide effort to simplify and gain efficiencies across its business with a focus on reducing complexities and lowering costs while continuing to support its team," the Minneapolis-based retailer said. "The company believes it can save a total of $2 to $3 billion over the next three years through this work."

Target officials did not specify where it expects to see those savings, but Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiddelke said executives are "in the initial stages" of exploring ways to cut costs and they will share more at a later date in 2023.

Indonesia is getting some extra attention from efforts to create recycling systems.

Last week, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste said it will invest $36 million to develop a range of sustainable projects in Indonesia to reduce ocean plastic pollution by 70 percent by 2025 and achieve "near zero leakage" by 2040, Karen Laird from our sister paper Sustainable Plastics writes.

The Alliance has been developing projects in Indonesia since 2019, mostly working with Eliminasi Sampah Plasik on the island of Java.

That announcement was followed just a few days later by ExxonMobil, PT Indomobil Prima Energi and chemical recycler Plastic Energy saying at the G20 Bali Summit that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to "assess the potential for large-scale implementation of chemical recycling technology in Indonesia."

The groups aim to use chemical recycling on some 100,000 metric tons of waste per year, with the first phase of the project to be completed in 2025. The companies also will look to improve plastic waste collecting and sorting systems, Karen writes.

We already know that NASA and its partners use a lot of composites in their spacecraft. So the Nov. 16 launch of the Artemis I rocket and the unmanned Orion spacecraft on a flight to the moon was another big spotlight for the performance of plastics.

How about a quick moment here to recognize a couple of people whose names also saw a spotlight with Artemis?

Charlie Blackwell-Thompson was the launch director for Artemis, becoming the first woman to serve in that role. The launch director has the final say on whether a launch proceeds.

"The responsibilities of the launch director is to make sure in the planning phase that we have the products, the services, the capabilities and our team is ready for launch," she said in a NASA podcast.

You can watch her going through the final approvals in a video from NASA here.

And while the flight is unmanned, there is a high-tech mannequin (made with polymers, of course) riding along, named Moonikin Campos, in honor of Arturo Campos, the electrical engineer who oversaw the electronics system on the Apollo 11 and oversaw an emergency reworking of the system on the Apollo 13 mission that was able to get the astronauts home safely.

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