Positive Plastics wants to be missing link between designers, manufacturers

Friedrichshafen, Germany — Positive Plastics is a new initiative launched by three materials experts, united by a special passion for plastics. It's a passion they want to share with the designers and engineers with whom they work, to encourage them to "think positively about plastics."

They've created an innovative sample kit, which launched at Fakuma and was on display at the stands of selected partners, as a highly tangible visualization of their message.

The initiative is the brainchild of Efrat Friedland, Erik Moth-Müller and Markus Paloheimo, who, repeatedly, in the course of their work as consultants and educators in the materials and polymers field, ran up against two recurrent problems.

First, the knowledge and understanding of materials technologies, especially of polymers, among the designers, product managers and engineers they dealt with tended to be very poor.

Second, the samples they sourced from raw materials manufacturers were generally not suited for the purpose for which the materials experts needed them, namely, to show what the material could do. Positive Plastics aims to address both problems at the same time.

"Designers learn very little about materials technologies during their studies, especially plastics," Friedland said. As a materials expert with 20 years of experience working in the industry, she feels that plastics have too often been cast in the role of villain over the past years by the market, consumers and policymakers.

As a result, many designers, without having any substantial knowledge, have tried to replace polymers with other materials. They do not understand the advantages of polymers in general and how they are essentially irreplaceable, she said.

"Try to imagine your life without plastic," she continued. "Without the products and services we have all grown to rely on in almost every aspect of our lives. It seems that we can't get along without this material, but we must eliminate its waste and negative impact."

The solution, however, is not to eliminate plastics.

"There are many new grades on the market that are composed of natural materials or recycled materials or both. ... They can replace traditional, fossil fuel-based plastics in every industry and product imaginable. Sadly, very few designers and engineers are familiar with them. Our goal is to change that," Moth-Müller said.

Positive Plastics aims to introduce this group to the polymers currently on the market that offer a positive benefit of some kind in terms of sustainability and/or circular economy in an effort to create what Friedland refers to as a "more accepting outlook on plastics."

To that end, the three material experts behind the initiative decided to create a materials kit that could serve as a tool to promote a better understanding of these materials among designers and facilitate the communication between nontechnical and technical team members.

Samples sent out by polymer producers today do not provide the information needed to decide whether the material is able to fulfill the requirements of a particular application, Friedland said.

"At best, I usually get a square sample the size of a credit card, perhaps with a slight surface treatment and a uniform wall thickness. It tells me nothing about the characteristics of the material or what this material can do for me," she said. "Markus Paloheimo has therefore designed and developed an intelligent sample that demonstrates the characteristics and properties of the material in a tangible, comprehensible manner that designers could understand."

He came up with a novel design: a square-shaped sample with 13 or 14 different mechanical properties, such as an internal hinge, corners, stress points, different wall thicknesses and different surface treatments. The sample shows how the material in question behaves under different conditions, its properties and potential applications.

"Holding our sample, one can easily discover various surface structure options, different wall thicknesses, corners, hinges, fluidity indication, draft angle, shrinkage, warpage ... so many features in one piece," Paloheimo said.

The kit contains no film materials or extruded grades. The focus is on injection moldable plastic materials with a reduced environmental footprint: post-consumer, post-industrial, bio-based, biocomposite and mass-balanced plastics from various manufacturers. The packaging of the samples reflects this: They are displayed in a tray that is "grown" from mycellium.

Each sample is tagged with a label stating what the material is and what it can do. The label also bears a QR code that links to a material card on the Positive Plastics website. This card provides additional information about the material, shows a few sample products and presents case studies on where it has been used in the market.

Further information is also provided about the technical benefits, the look and feel of the material, the environmental benefits and so on.

"So, some of our materials have done LCAs [life cycle analyses], while others state, for example, the amount of CO2 emissions saved on every kilo of the material produced. Plus, we use icons representing the various industries to indicate possible applications. In short, we have tried to make all the necessary information quickly and easily accessible for designers to decide whether the material is suitable for their product or application."

Aside from the design of the samples, Positive Plastics' creative thinking stands out in other ways as well.

"It is, as far as we know, the first kit to contain samples from different producers. Normally, when a sample kit is received from a raw materials producer, it contains only the materials available from that producer," Friedland said. "This is a curated sample collection of various innovative, commercially available polymers."

The kit contains materials from companies who were invited to participate, including Arkema, Biowert Industrie, Borealis, Lignin Industries, Mocom, Sappi, Sirmax, Stora Enso, Trinseo, UBQ and UPM.

"We've included a transparent, mass-balanced grade and two white grades. Both are highly sought after by designers for their aesthetics. There is also a 54 percent bio-based TPU grade, so not all the samples are of rigid polymers," she explained.

Through their long experience in working with different members of project teams, the trio of experts behind Positive Plastics knows what is needed in the way of information. They also know how to reach the designers who need this information. So, when sending out the kit, Friedland said, it will not be sent to a random project manager.

"We will send it to the principal designer or design director of, say, the small domestic appliances department or the design director of the whitegoods division because we know them personally, as they are our clients," Friedland said.

From the point of view of the raw materials manufacturers, it is a great door-opener, she added. Usually, their contacts are with the procurement department or with a product manager, or perhaps even the engineers on the production floor.

"They rarely have contacts with the designers, and that's where we come in. We have cherry-picked 100 brands to send a complementary edition of the sample kit to, and we know it will reach the people we intend it to reach. And that is a very attractive idea to the producers of these materials," she said.

Positive Plastics has also created a form on its website that will allow designers to contact the materials suppliers directly.

"Not only will this create leads from our website directly to their mailboxes, but it will also enable us to generate quarterly traffic reports from our website to our partners," Friedland said.

Positive Plastics is confident that the number of participants in the initiative will continue to grow.

"Right now, we have 16 materials," she said. "We hope the kit will grow so that by 2022, we will have the second edition with additional and new materials to present. Because this is not a one-off product; we are in this for the longer term."