Kickstart: About those convention plans …

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via Plastics News

If you run, plan to exhibit at or want to attend a trade show or convention in 2021, you’re probably wondering just how seriously you should take your travel planning at this point.

It’s complicated, obviously. No one wants to be part of a superspreader event, and everyone wants to resume business as normal. It’s important to be able to meet customers, see new equipment and renew contacts.

Read the full story here: https://www.plasticsnews.com/blog/kickstart-about-those-convention-plans

Plastic Fuels: Do They Fix Waste Or Greenwash It?

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via Forbes

Marketed as a solution to the environmental and waste problems the plastic industry is currently facing, recycled carbon fuels are problematic. And they will be at odds with Wednesday’s vote from the EU Parliament backing a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

A briefing published by Zero Waste Europe shows that these fuels are produced by converting plastics back to their original fossil form. As they are burnt and carbon is released to the atmosphere, they are ultimately exacerbating climate change.

Read the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emanuelabarbiroglio/2020/10/08/the-pros-and-cons-of-plastic-to-fuels/#4508a3ce48cb

New enzyme cocktail digests plastic waste ‘six times faster’

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via Circular

The scientists who re-engineered the plastic-eating enzyme PETase have now created an enzyme ‘cocktail’ which can digest plastic up to six times faster.

A second enzyme, found in the same waste dwelling bacterium that lives on a diet of plastic bottles, has been combined with PETase to speed up the breakdown of plastic.

Read the full story here: https://www.circularonline.co.uk/news/new-enzyme-cocktail-digests-plastic-waste-six-times-faster/

SeaChange uses plasma arc technology to save the oceans from plastic waste

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via Inhabitat.com

SeaChange will outfit its ships with something called the Plasma Enhanced Melter (PEM). The PEM uses plasma arc technology to zap plastic and other trash before it enters the ocean. Plastic is shredded before it enters the Plasma Arc Zone.

Instead of leaving harmful residues like conventional waste treatment methods, plasma arc technology uses high temperature and high electrical energy to heat waste, mostly by radiation. Organic material can be burned down into a combustible gas called syngas, which can be used as clean fuel for SeaChange’s ships. Inorganic components wind up as glassy slag. This reusable black glass is said to be nontoxic and safe for marine life.

Read the full story here: https://inhabitat.com/seachange-uses-plasma-arc-technology-to-save-the-oceans-from-plastic-waste/

Google’s new phone case is beautiful—and it’s made out of water bottles

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via Fast Company

While we’re busy toting our reusable bags to the grocery and desperately recycling takeout containers, plastic is hiding in plain sight in everything from our computer cords to remote controls. Every year, 10 million tonnes of plastic goes into electronic products, very little of which is recycled.

Industrial designers at Google are trying to reverse this trend. They’ve been incorporating recycled plastic into their suite of products, including Nest mini speakers and Pixel phones, and this week, they launched a new Pixel phone case with a knitted texture, made from 70% recycled plastic.

Read the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90537055/googles-new-phone-case-is-beautiful-and-its-made-out-of-water-bottles

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

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via NPR

Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.

None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.

“To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust,” she said. “I had been lying to people … unwittingly.”

Read the full story here: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

An audio version of this story aired on NPR’s Planet Money

Kickstart: NPE? Already?

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via Plastics News

[M]aking major plans for the first half of 2021 may be just a little difficult to imagine right now.

But the difficulties of 2020 may be exactly the reason to invest in NPE2021, according to organizers the Plastics Industry Association.

“Given the challenges of the past six months, it is vitally important for the plastics community to come together and support each other with a positive outlook to the future,” Tony Radoszewski, president and CEO of the association, said in a news release. “NPE2021 will be the place not only to highlight key contributions in the world’s response to the coronavirus but also to see what’s coming from businesses across an industry that will transform tomorrow.”

Read the full story here: https://www.plasticsnews.com/blog/kickstart-npe-already

Domino Plastics Company will be exhibiting in the South Hall at booth S24119.
NPE 2021 – The Plastics Show

Perspective: Plastics Industry Association CEO: Plastic saves lives

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via Plastics News

In Pennsylvania, employees at a Braskem plant lived there for 28 days to make raw materials for PPE. In Tennessee, Eastman employees donated material to colleges and universities across the state, where engineers are using 3D printing technology to manufacture face shields for medical personnel.

Placon worked with engineers at the University of Wisconsin to adapt assembly lines and manufacture up to 5,000 face shields per hour for hospitals. Berry Global supplied free face shields to its Evansville, Ind., community. Across the country, Amcor has donated thousands of bottles to distillers producing hand sanitizer.

Read the full story here: https://www.plasticsnews.com/perspective/perspective-plastics-industry-association-ceo-plastic-saves-lives

Plastic trash flowing into the seas will nearly triple by 2040 without drastic action

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An ambitious plan, two years in the making, might have the solution.

via National Geographic

THE AMOUNT OF plastic trash that flows into the oceans every year is expected to nearly triple by 2040 to 29 million metric tons.

That single, incomprehensibly large statistic is at the center of a new two-year research project that both illuminates the failure of the worldwide campaign to curb plastic pollution and prescribes an ambitious plan for reducing much of that flow into the seas.

Read the full story here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/plastic-trash-in-seas-will-nearly-triple-by-2040-if-nothing-done/

Oceans’ plastic tide may be far larger than thought

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Artificial fibres now go everywhere. The oceans’ plastic tide may reach their whole depth, entering marine life and people.

via Eco-Business

The world’s seas could be home to a vast reservoir of hitherto unidentified pollution, the growing burden of the oceans’ plastic tide.

Up to 21 million tonnes of tiny and invisible plastic fibres could be floating in the first 200 metres of the Atlantic Ocean alone. And as British research exposed the scale of the problem, American chemists revealed that for the first time they had found microplastic fibres incorporated within human organ tissues.

Read the full story here: https://www.eco-business.com/news/oceans-plastic-tide-may-be-far-larger-than-thought/