Kickstart: More complications for Foxconn in Wisconsin

Foxconn Technology Group may be on the hook for more tax payments to Wisconsin after scaling back plans for a massive plant in the southeastern part of the state.

Website The Verge reports that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. has said that since the proposed 20 million-square-foot, 13,000-employee LCD display plant in Mount Pleasant isn't going ahead as planned, the Taiwan-based electronics company does not meet the terms of its agreement with the state for $4.5 billion in tax subsidies.

While Foxconn is opening a 1 million-square-foot plant there to make personal protective equipment this year, it fails to meet hiring goals noted in the original agreement, the state said.

"At the end of this year, Foxconn would need to employ at least 1,820 people, a number it is nowhere near reaching," The Verge reported.

The company also had promised more than $4 billion in spending to a local supplier base, including for plastics.

Industry groups have been hosting "fly-ins" in Washington for years. The idea is that business leaders go to the Capitol in person to promote their industries' needs with government leaders on a set day.

Yesterday, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries turned its annual fly-in into a virtual event, focusing on the important role of recycling of all types of materials, including plastics.

While events shifted away from live events for 2020, the work is still important, the Washington-based group said. By early afternoon, ISRI members "met" representatives from elected officials in Ohio, Wisconsin, Kansas and Georgia.

"The role of advocacy is critical in demonstrating the value of recycling to elected officials on every level," ISRI Chief Lobbyist Billy Johnson said. "ISRI and its members are grateful for the opportunity and look forward to providing insight on how recycling infrastructure in the U.S. touches almost every part of our economy."

Arkansas recycler Revolution Co. has already made a name for its ability to recycle difficult items through its Delta Plastics business of collecting and recycling agricultural film.

It's now taking on restaurant recycling, specifically the hundreds of thousands of plastic gloves used by workers at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants.

As Steve Toloken writes in this story about Revolution's $20 million expansion in Little Rock, the company has partnered with the Mexican food chain to help Chipotle improve its recycling work.

Revolution will collect those gloves, recycle them and use that resin to make garbage bags that go back to restaurants.

"For [Chipotle], it was finding a way to not dispose of all of these millions of pounds of gloves that they use every year, to divert those from the waste stream device, collect those and then also sell them back a product that's made with our PCR [post-consumer recycled] material," Dana Dowdy, director of marketing, said.