Kickstart: Recycle this email sustainably

It's America Recycles Day on Nov. 15, so expect to see a lot of email and social media blasts today about recycling and sustainability.

As reporter Jim Johnson noted in this blog about Berry and Sabic joining forces in a recycling venture, America Recycles Day is a big hook to time an announcement about your corporate policies or new bottle or cup reuse programs.

If you're looking for a slightly more unique way of celebrating, consider the candy wrapper recycling event in Toledo, Ohio — nicely timed for the post-Halloween season — or perhaps this Tulsa, Okla., event on Nov. 16 in which the Hardesty Fab Lab will use laser cutters to turn plastic bags into Christmas ornaments.

American Outdoor Brands Corp., the parent company of gun maker Smith & Wesson, announced Nov. 13 that it is spinning off its iconic firearms division into a separate company that will be called Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. That includes its in-house injection molding business, Smith & Wesson Precision Components.

Firearms represent 75 percent of AOB's sales, but gun sales have fallen, and analysts say dealers already have a big backlog of unsold guns to sell, while some retailers, including Dick's Sporting Goods, are looking at exiting gun sales.

Smith & Wesson bought the former Tri Town Precision Plastics Inc. in Deep River, Conn., in 2014. At that time it had 45 injection molding machines in a 95,000-square-foot facility, molding frames and components for popular military and police weapons. S&W says the site now has 51 molding machines from 28-730 tons in capacity.

AOBC will retain its outdoor gear brands, which includes Old Timer and Schrade knife brands and fishing equipment and apparel maker Bubba.

Expect this story to turn up in your social media and news feeds soon, if it hasn't already. A report released Nov. 14 by international and Indonesian environmental groups say that toxic chemicals released by burning plastics for fuel in an Indonesian city is resulting in dangerous concentrations of those chemicals in eggs laid by free roaming chickens.

A news release from the International Pollutants Elimination Network in Gothenburg, Sweden, said that the eggs sampled from Tropodo are second highest ever registered, only behind those sampled at a site in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, where soil was contaminated by Agent Orange. The New York Times has already featured the report.

Tofu factories in Tropodo burn unregulated plastics during production. Both Tropodo and the village of Bangun have seen plastic waste import volumes double from 2017 to 2018 as China closed its doors to most scrap plastic.

Yes, you can obviously argue that the plastics manufacturing industry has no control over what happens to scrap plastic in Indonesia, and that your firm participates in Operation Clean Sweep and the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. But don't expect that will help the industry avoid even more scrutiny from environmental watchers.