Kickstart: Breaking up is hard to do

An Irish environmental effort wants to turn Valentine's Day from a celebration of love to one all about splitting up.

Clean Coasts, part of Ireland's Department of Housing, Planning and Local Development, has designated the holiday as one to find alternatives to single-use plastics. "Stuck for a last minute #ValentinesDay gift?" the group asks in a social media post. "Why not give your loved one a gift to help them #breakupwithplastic?"

The Dublin Independent noted in a recent story that Ireland is the top plastic pollution producer in the European Union and has the fourth-lowest recycling rate.

"Once again, we're asking people to stop and think how they are using plastic and educate themselves about its impact," Sinead McCoy of Clean Coasts told The Independent. "We now need, more than ever before, to discover ways to move away from the overly convenient individually packaged lifestyle we have adopted and find a way to break up with single-use plastic."

A relatively new, vertically integrated health care company used the Super Bowl on Feb. 13 to introduce itself.

Cue Health, a San Diego-based maker of at-home tests, bought an ad for the third quarter of the game just a few weeks before kickoff and filmed it with less than two weeks to spare.

The company focused on its at-home test for COVID-19, but the company says its simple white diagnostic box can be used for other tests, ranging from pregnancy to the flu. For its debut, Cue hired Gal Gadot — aka Wonder Woman — to provide the voice for its system, our sister paper Advertising Age writes.

Cue launched in 2017 and has its own in-house manufacturing. (It doesn't break down exactly what processes it has at its facility, but the company employee ranks include people with a work history at injection molding equipment firms.)

"We are positioning [Cue] as the next smart device for your health, so that is bigger than just COVID — right now, the only proof point is COVID, but that's just the beginning," Nitin Duggal, Cue's chief marketing officer, told Ad Age. "You have all these gadgets around you which are smart taking care of your needs, but do you have a smart device for your health?" he added.

You're probably going to hear a lot over the next few weeks about a new global plastics treaty, a sort of Paris climate accord for polymers.

Negotiations will kick off in late February at a key United Nations environment meeting, but the U.S. and France got an early start Feb. 11 with a joint statement endorsing the treaty.

The announcement was praised by environmental groups for its endorsement of a "full life cycle" approach, which some interpret as diplomatic language that the treaty should look beyond waste management into broader questions around plastics.

Plastics industry groups have also given their thumbs up on a treaty, putting forth their own five-point plan in September.

There will be a lot of differing approaches to try to resolve in the negotiations, which could take another two years past their formal start this month before a formal treaty is presented.

But there's already been a lot of interest from the business community, with some arguing a well-structured treaty could lead to more green investment around plastics.

Thanks to PN's Steve Toloken for this item.