Social media can be used to celebrate employees, mark expansions, communicate with your local community and seek out new workers.
It also is a way to connect directly with the general public in marketing campaigns, generate interest, show environmental concerns and discuss the big pictures facing the plastics industry.
For the 2025 Social Media Accounts to Follow, here are a few examples of how individuals and companies are using social media.
When Klöckner Pentaplast wanted to build demand for its KP Infinity expanded polypropylene foodservice packaging in Europe, it started with spuds.
It teamed up with food carts in the United Kingdom that feature stuffed baked potatoes — commonly called jacket potatoes in the U.K. One of those carts' TikTok accounts has nearly 4 million followers, meaning a lot of people suddenly had a chance to see KP Infinity packaging at work and why their favorite food influencer was using it.
The resulting collaborations have been seen by millions of people while showing off how the packaging kept the food hot without deforming. Klöckner Pentaplast says EPP meets recycling guidelines.
It's also an example of how some companies are using social media to boost their products.
For Klöckner Pentaplast, that meant creating and then building a TikTok marketing campaign.
"Education is key to preventing businesses and consumers from being misled about packaging compliance," Vincent Gass, vice president of strategic marketing and innovation for KP, said in a news release. "Our TikTok campaign is just one part of our broader strategy to lead the transition away from nonrecyclable materials in the food packaging sector and ensure that all stakeholders are equipped with accurate, up-to-date information."
In addition to featuring its packaging at food carts, KP's TikTok page includes a video showing how it's made, quick snippets asking employees' favorite take-out orders, and random dance and interview videos common on the social media platform.
The project aims to reach 500,000 food vendors per month to convince them to buy Infinity as a replacement for EPS foodservice packaging.
KP won a Flexible Packaging Association award for its marketing campaign in the United Kingdom and is expanding it to France and the Netherlands.
Signature Plastics LLC helps computer users create their own unique take on the computer keyboard, and its presence on social media provides a space for it to show off new products while fans demonstrate how they personalize their office equipment.
Signature, based in Custer, Wash., is a maker of keyboard keys and caps and was acquired by a private investment group in 2024. Its specialty is injection molding color key caps that can create a unique keyboard or mimic other products.
Its account on the new Bluesky platform allows it to show what's new, such as its own take on the computer keyboards used in the office for the Apple TV show Severance and one that has the bright colors of a 1990s Walkman.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of cargo containers fail to make it to their destination each year, washed overboard during international shipping due to storms or accidents or faulty equipment.
While those losses — the World Shipping Council says an average of about 1,400 containers were lost each year over the past 16 years — are just a small percentage of the 250 million containers shipped annually, they can lead to spills of items that wash up on beaches.
One social media account, Lego Lost at Sea, has been documenting some of those items that washed up on one section of the United Kingdom, providing a glimpse of just what is out there.
The account, as you can expect from the name, is rooted in a container of Lego toys that was washed overboard in 1997. Since then, the minifigures have been showing up on beaches and have actually become a hot item for beach-combing collectors.
But it's not just Lego pieces that they're documenting now. Beach toys, animal figurines and even a GoPro camera have been found and photographed by Lego Lost at Sea.
Chemical industry consultant Victoria Meyer launched The Chemical Show podcast in 2021 and has released more than 130 podcasts since then, talking about business strategy, regulations and sustainability while interviewing industry leaders.
Recent interview subjects include BASF's Michael Heinz, Chris Jahn from the American Chemistry Council and Huntsman Chemical Co.'s Peter Huntsman, who relayed how the chemical giant got its start by trying to find a way to get eggs to market without having them break.
"That's what the chemical industry has done," Huntsman said. "We've gone from cheap packaging all the way to where you cannot build an airplane today without our materials."
Huntsman also discussed the difficulty in weighing when and where to build new chemical plants: "If you and I decided today that we're going to go out and build a billion-dollar ethylene plant or anything, you're probably looking at two or three years to be able to permit. To be able to engineer it, another two or three years to be able to build it. So you're looking at five, six, seven years," he said. "With a product like MDI polyurethanes, you're probably getting closer to a decade. So we're going to make a billion-dollar decision today for a plant that wouldn't even be running for almost a decade."
Find The Chemical Show archives at its own website, via your favorite podcast app and on YouTube.
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