News

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

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/

How a company is turning PET into durable asphalt

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via Plastics Recycling News

A California company is using glycolysis to depolymerize PET scrap for use in an asphalt binder. The pavement it produces is stronger than traditional hot-mix asphalt.

TechniSoil Industrial has recently garnered widespread media attention because the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) used the company’s asphalt binder to repave a segment of highway last month. Asphalt binder is essentially the cement that holds aggregate together in pavement.

Read the full story here: https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2020/08/19/how-a-company-is-turning-pet-into-durable-asphalt/

Kickstart: No rest for the mattress business

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via Plastics News

It’s a booming year for mattresses, with imports to the U.S. up 39 percent in the first six months of 2020 to 8.8 million mattresses, according to our sister publication Urethanes Technology International. Production of those mattresses has been shifting away from China to regions such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia in addition to new production in the U.S.

Purple Innovation, based in Lehi, Utah, said its sales climbed 54 percent in the first half of 2020.

Why all the growth? Most likely, the coronavirus pandemic. With travel plans canceled, people are staying home and putting their vacation dollars into items like decks, pools and beds instead.

Read the full story here: https://www.plasticsnews.com/blog/kickstart-no-rest-mattress-business

Upcycling plastic waste toward sustainable energy storage

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via UC Riverside News

Simple process transforms PET plastic into a nanomaterial for energy storage

What if you could solve two of Earth’s biggest problems in one stroke? UC Riverside engineers have developed a way to recycle plastic waste, such as soda or water bottles, into a nanomaterial useful for energy storage. 

Mihri and Cengiz Ozkan and their students have been working for years on creating improved energy storage materials from sustainable sources, such as glass bottles, beach sand, Silly Putty, and portabella mushrooms. Their latest success could reduce plastic pollution and hasten the transition to 100% clean energy.

Read the full story here: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2020/08/11/upcycling-plastic-waste-toward-sustainable-energy-storage

National Science Foundation Awards Grant to Rensselaer Polytechnic for Research into New Plastic

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via Plastics Today

With the support of a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, chemical engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, aim to develop a new polymer that can replace polystyrene (PS). While PS is inexpensive and easy to make, it is difficult to break down into its original components for re-use through a process called depolymerization. Founded in 1824, Rensselaer is America’s first technological research university.

Read the full story here: https://www.plasticstoday.com/materials/national-science-foundation-awards-grant-rensselaer-polytechnic-research-new-plastic/21414866763275

Polystyrene ball-stick model with 11 countable monomers. PakpongICCH444 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

COVID-19 Lays Waste to Many US Recycling Programs

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via Manufacturing Business Technology

Many items designated as reusable, communal or secondhand have been temporarily barred to minimize person-to-person exposure. This is producing higher volumes of waste.

Grocers, whether by state decree or on their own, have brought back single-use plastic bags. Even IKEA has suspended use of its signature yellow reusable in-store bags. Plastic industry lobbyists have also pushed to eliminate plastic bag bans altogether, claiming that reusable bags pose a public health risk.

Read the full story here: https://www.mbtmag.com/home/news/21138099/covid19-lays-waste-to-many-us-recycling-programs