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27 posts categorized "Plastics"

December 09, 2012

Molding 2013-Dec.15, 2012 Last Day for Registration Discount

Just a quick note about Molding 2013 being held in New Orleans from January 21-23

Molding 2013

Vital Technologies for Business Success in a Changing Global Market

The last day for discount registration is Dec 15th, so if you're going, get registered this week. Sounds like it is going to be very worthwhile, and they do know where to hold conferences! :-)

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

The 23rd International Conference & Exhibit MOLDING 2013 will focus on important innovations in manufacturing technologies of consumers and industrial products. Industry leaders will present the latest developments in various injection molding processes, hardware and controls with special emphasis on adding value to your business.

Important Note: The conference agenda is organized by a volunteer committee of all branches of the industry's molders, moldmakers, materials suppliers, and the trade press. Thus, the program focuses on what molders want to know more about; sales and promotional presentations are excluded. These conferences are widely recognized as a most important forum for technical information and business connections.

CONFERENCE TOPICS

REDUCING COSTS: Saving energy; Minimizing waste; Recycling scrap; lean initiatives

ADDING VALUE: Robotics; Automation; Multi-Component; In-Mold Assembly; In-Mold Decoration / In-Mold Labeling; Integrated Manufacturing

GROWING YOUR BUSINESS: Developing Proprietary products; Entering new markets; M&A; Attracting & developing new talent

MEDICAL MOLDING: Machines; Processes; Specialty materials; Clean Room Operations; Regulatory Issues

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

 (Note Plastics.com is a Molding 2013 Sponsor)

July 09, 2012

Plasticity Rio '12

(OK it's been a while, so shoot me :-)   )

Again on plastics and the environment, my favorite blogging topic.  The UN conference Rio+20 Earth Summit just completed in, well.. Rio.  They held many side events, one of which was directly related to plastics and was called Plasticity Rio '12.

Plasticity-rio-2012-398x141-logo
A few important things to note.  Here, the world's leading environmentalists are discussing plastics issues and from our industry you barely hear a whisper of it. Too bad.
Now I'm in an odd place finding myself agreeing with many points made. Anyone who has read my blogs knows I love to poke fun at ignorant environmentalists who take the simplistic attitude of 'plastics are evil'.  There's almost no one I enjoy tweaking than those folks.

On the other hand, I am an environmentalist. There... I said it.  I even have the credentials:
- Working in recycling industrial waste plastics to value added materials as a consultant (diverting landfill scrap to something useful).
- Was one of the original founders of the SPE Environmental Division (Recycling Div at the time)
- Owned a compounding company producing engineering plastics alloys from scrap feedstocks (Example; PET bottle scrap with Polycarbonate CD scrap into high end alloy sold to Bailey Mfg for auto bumpers)
- Have a recycling technology patent for bonding scrap tire rubber into plastics blends, successfully commercialized, and named a top ten new material by Design News. (Example; Replaced virgin PVC on Rubbermaid step stool non-skid covers with a blend of 40% scrap rubber, 20% scrap milk bottle HDPE and 40% scrap eva from bottle cap liners.)
- Spoken worldwide about scrap polymer environmental issues.

I'm not happy with industry talking heads who never met a plastic they didn't like. We're not industry spokespeople, we get to say what we belive. But I HATE ignorant environmentalists who just say plastics are evil!

Why? Mainly because our ubiquitous plastics are simply irreplaceable as a material in general. Of course there are many BAD plastics applications that are wasteful and bad for the environment, but I think for every bad one, there are hundreds of plastics applications that have no better environmental alternative.

As an example, the entire global warming debate. I read that humanity has modified something like 30 or 40% of the land's surface into farms, cattle land, etc. adversely affecting global climate.  Now if global climate concern is an issue of yours, then you should be supporting the vast majority of plastics usage, because the alternative would simply probably double that number.

Imagine a world without plastics. A lot of environmentalists try to, but the ones I've read ALL get it wrong.
- Imagine if there were NO plastics in clothes or shoes. What would people wear. Leather and cotton derived products!
- Imagine no plastics for manufacturing. What would be the replacements? Mainly wood (there go the trees!) and metal. Less efficient manufacturing and heavier products means more manufacturing pollution, more shipping pollution!

Virtually everything now made in plastic faces serious environmental consequences if switched to a alternative IF it was done on a worldwide scale.

I'm just touching on the tip of the iceberg here.

Now there ARE reasonable environmentalists, but they can be hard to find! :-)  But I met one over the phone recently which bring me back to Plasticity Rio '12.

Doug Woodring, of the Ocean Recovery Alliance, www.oceanrecov.org, is one such reasonable environmentalist in my book. Deemed so by one simply quote of his from Rio that started with "Plastic is great for many uses..."  That alone makes Doug alright in my book.

Doug is one of the founders of Plasticity Rio '12, which Plastics.com intended to sponsor but sadly late timing and technical difficulties prevented it. Plasticity strove to bring industry and concerned environmentalists togther to discuss solutions to many of our industry's problems. No blind hate, no 'just get rid of it, no "it's evil", just here are the problems, what can we do?  I really like it!

So hat's off to Doug and Plasticity Rio '12 for their worthwhile work on all our behalfs. I'm not sure what the future is for Plasticity as it was tied to that one event, but I'll be contacting Doug and I hope it continues into the future.  If it does Plastics.com will be there supporting them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 25, 2011

Plast-Ex Canada Trade Show Report by Formech Inc.

Nic Neath of our partner, Formech Inc., is reporting from Plast-Ex in Toronto, Canada where his company is exhibiting the latest in thermoforming (vacuum-forming) equipment.

His report is encouraging for the industry in general as he reports a lot of traffic, a lot of interest.

Nic's Comments from his 'Day Two' notes...

- plenty of trade thermoformers

- loads of people that are into injection molding. They are always surprised by the low cost of our machines and tooling. Some even considered Formech for their single cavity molds.

- a lot of the show goers where from Canada but there were also a lot people from the Mid-west. Plenty of traffic from the Canadian and Michigan auto industry.

This photo shows the increased amount of people.
Plast-ex-people-2011

This next photo is a pic of our 508FS demonstrating its unique 'pre-stretch' ability.

Formech-508fs-plast-ex-2011

FYI - They expected about 5,000 attendees per day, there were 723 booths available and 687 of them were rented. Just to give you an idea of volume.

Thanks for the update Nic!  Should anyone want to get in touch with Formech, here is there contact info:

Nic Neath
Formech Inc.
Head of North American Sales
773.656.2757 - direct
312.396.4072 - office
312.396.4073 - fax
[email protected]

www.formechinc.com

 

 

January 12, 2011

Free Plastics.com Buyers Guide Entry & Link Building

Hi all,

Today I want to remind folks that plastics.com has a buyers guide that allows for a free listing. Our membership includes over 5,000 members ID'ed as purchasing agent. The guide is located at buyersguide.plastics.com  

Now, in addition to us here simply wanting our directory to be very full, there is a reason that EVERY PLASTICS FIRM in the world should WANT to be listed here. That reason? Link Building!

As google's search engine algorithm has evolved over the years, mainly in trying to subvert black hat seo-ers, google has become much more sophisticated in the details of what will rank your site highly.

One of the MOST important factors now is;

  • how many external links from other sites point to your site?
  • how relevant and trusted are those sites?

 

At first, you could simply load up on junk links from anyone, and that worked. No longer. Now, it HAS to be a relevent site or you actually can get your rankings punished, if you link to many non-relevent sites or to sites google knows as link farms or any other site that has many unrelevent sites linked to it.

Now, your links MUST be relevant. Plastics.com is relevant to anyone within the plastics industry and our buyers guide provides you with that valuable link.

We need to mention Google Page Rank. It is an adequate tool for determing how important (or valuable) your site is. The rank goes from 0-9 and each step up is exponential. So an amazon.com or ebay.com will be a 9. A brand new site will be a zero. Most small business sites site in the 3-4 range.

Now, google ranks the importance of your link. So a link to your site from a Page Rank 6 site (like plastics.com) is worth literally dozens upon dozens of links from sites in the 3-4 range.

Plastics.com has what google terms as a high trust level as it is SO OLD (over ten years) and has such a lengthy history of being a valuable plastics resource.

Check your web site's linkage score free, here:
        http://www.linkpopularity.com/
Check your web site google page rank free, here:
        http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker

So there isn't a site in the world that should hesitate to get a link from ANY high ranked plastics site. Unfortunately, many small business owners don't know this. Don't be one of those!

The fact that most small businesses are clueless is actually a big advantage to you (reading this). Go build some links and, all other things being equal, you will be killing your competitors on google.

Use the tools above to check your rank and your link quantity versus your competitors.

This is also an easy thing to assign to a staffer. Get (and give) links to all of your relevant contacts, clients, etc.

Now, here at plastics.com we've gone a step further. We've set it up so that YOU can have a link from plastics.com to you at no charge. Just go to the buyersguide.plastics.com and follow the instructions for the free registration.

Pdc-linkbuilding-531x167

If you have any questions or would like to do this online right along with us, simply call our staff number at 1-978-602-8123 and we'll be glad to help.

A simple win-win for everyone. See you on plastics.com!

PS: I have a Link Building article on our site as well:

Link Building 101 Article by Greg Koski

 

January 03, 2011

My News Years Resolution... Blog More and Now Some History

Ok, so I take a year off here and there, so what?

Anyway, some news on plastics.com if you haven't visited lately. 

This June 20th will mark our official tenth birthday using the domain name plastics.com!

Even older than that, we started in 1994 as polylinks, then polymers.com early in 1995!

Here is the History of Polymers.com - Plastics.com Polymers-home110x335

In 1994, a small high-tech compounder of engineering plastics, Phoenix Polymers Inc., launched the first plastics portal as part of it's corporate web site. That section of the site was known as Poly-Links.

Wildly popular, in 1995, it was spun off into it's own site with the domain name polymers.com. The site offered industry links and ares for resumes, articles, chat and much more.

Ziff-Davis named it one the ten most significant technology sites worldwide in 1996.

So popular and full of potential, key managment of Phoenix Polymers soon sold their interest in that firm to pursue plastics related internet ventures full time and in the person of Greg Koski, founder, still do today at plastics.com, llc.

This pioneer site helped influence many followup sites such as PolySort, PlasticsNet, Omnexus and more.

Polymers.com went on to win many substanial web awards during the nineties including several international awards from industry organizations as well as internet entities.

PDCTIT

Please note, the logo used above is our 'vintage' circa 1995 original logo.

TOP10MED2 A sucessful and profitable site since inception, it underwent a name change in the year 2000 to become plastics.com. Plastics.com being perceived as the better of the two names for directly serving the plastics industry.

The domain has been kept active and pointing at plastics.com since then to take advantage of search engine rankings and links.

For those interested, a web archive shows some of what the site looked like in 1997:

PDC web.archive.org 1997

Today, plastics.com carries on with the same mission and goals, servicing tens of thousands of members who make up the world's largest plastics internet community.

January 05, 2010

The Plastics Gyre... The Plastic Blob? or the newest nation on earth: plastics.com

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

200px-Network12 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

Ok, maybe I'm not 'that' mad, but almost. It isn't the first time this non-fact has gotten to me, it gets me everytime I read it.

This time it was here but I'll quote it for you;

"The famous (or infamous) Texas-sized blob of plastic now floating about the Pacific..."

There is no Texas sized blob of plastic floating in the Pacific, not even close. You'll find clumps of plastics crap but no island blob the size of Texas. If there WAS a Texas sized blob, I'd be on my way there right now to declare it the sovereign state of plastics.com and plant the plastics.com national flag.

400x400circle I've checked with the UN, I could do it. Then I'd invent a tugboat with a big scoop and start recycling my island. Yes, I'd lose real estate, but I'd be rich.  Or maybe I'd just tow it to China and sell it there, they buy a lot of scrap.

I think of myself as an environmentalist. I've worked for years in recycling and was one of the original founders of the SPE Recycling Div (Now the Environmental Div).  But in general, people that spout this nonsense aren't environmentalists to me, they are dumb, factless rumormongers or worse, liars. Environmental Fundamentalists who seem to think the means (distortion to scare people) justifies the ends of getting the problem fixed. It's embarrassing to think of myself lumped in with these eco-jugheads who don't have facts.

And indeed there is a problem, a serious crisis of a problem.  But the reason I can't tow my island to China or chop it up in my recycling tugboat grinder is because there is NO ISLAND.  The problem is much worse than that. The vast amount of plastic in the Gyres is broken down into sizes, some so small you have trouble seeing them and suspended under the water, not floating on top.  And therein lies the real problem: There is no simple method to clean it up yet. I'm not even sure there is a complicated solution on the table.  You can't simply filter it as it will take all the good stuff as well, plankton, etc.  Or so I understand. I read little about solutions, mostly it's hyperbole about the giant island.

And the plastics industry does little to acknowledge the issue and promote a solution. On the left we have what I call Environmental Fundamentalists yelling "Plastics BAD" and industry spokespeople countering with "Plastics GOOD". [Insert sigh here]

We need solutions, not ridiculous exaggerations, we need accurate reporting to counter points made that simply are not true.  For every accurate article I see regarding the Gyre problem, I seem to see ten talking about my non-existent island.

Too bad it isn't an island, I'd be on my way with my flag right now.


August 03, 2009

Plastics Internet History - Polylinks

Polylinks circa 1994 Harken back to yesteryear again, this time for Poly-Links!

Poly-Links is plastics.com's grandfather (polymers.com is the father) and was the very first plastics portal or plastics community ever.

While rummaging through our archives I came across an almost intact version of our very first site, Poly-Links. And I came across our 'exact' birthday, November 7th, 1994. Previously we only had this date down to the month of Nov. Now we can hold a proper birthday party. You're all invited.

Poly-Links predated all other plastics sites except for an uploaded set of images from the GE Plastics brochure. At first it linked engineering links and polymer academics as they were the only useful links around, but it grew quickly.

Poly-Links, which was renamed polymers.com in 1995, then plastics.com in 2000, and predated all other plastics pioneers; polysort, plasticsnet, etc.

Modeled like an early day yahoo, it was clean and simple. Of humorous note, we even had foreign 'mirror sites' because international internet connections were tenuous and very slow at the time!

In any event, we put it back online for those archivists and plastics historians who want to... 'Harken Back to yesteryear' circa 1994.

July 31, 2009

Living a Lego Life

Thanks for the following to Barbara Ortner over at ICIS. These bare repeating...

First - Living Legos

Brit to build in, and live albeit temporarily, a plastic house built of LEGOs! As part of his BBC series 'Toy Stories', James May will build a two story Lego house and live in it for a couple of days!

He needs bricks, ha, no surprise there.

Why didn't Lego think of this?

We'll try to report on construction with photos as it goes on. Can't wait to see it.


Second - Mating molecules?

My only question is... Is it a joke or for real? It sure looks scientific to me, really, go see the link.


Matingmolecules






 

July 08, 2009

Plastic: What is it good for? Absolutely Lots!

Image from fakeplasticfish.com
My anti-plastics environmentalist friend, Beth Terry in her plastics waste costume!

OK, so I'm engaged with the 'anti-plastics' environmental movement. Typically, the people who HATE plastics. I observe this group because their strong feelings have the potential to do the industry harm AND because so many of their facts are not true or highly distorted. That said, I found one anti-plastics person whom I like. Beth Terry from fakeplasticfish.com.

While committed to her cause, she isn't all wrapped up in the 'hate' emotion I see from many. We had a great discussion the other day which she blogged about briefly and she asked her readers seven questions related to the topics we discussed.

So I thought I'd answer her questions from my perspective as an industry person. Keep in mind our site is not paid to promote plastics, but as an individual I've been very active and concerned regarding these issues. I worked in recycling for many years, patented and commercialized a recycle process, and was an original founder of the SPE Recycling Division (Now the Environmental Division).

What do you see as the major problems with plastic?

  • Bad product design (wasteful)
  • Ocean gyre issues
  • Inadequate of industry-led solution activity
  • Littered plastics hang around
  • Recycling is at odds with bio-degradable
  • Wasteful use of plastics (ie. packaging)


What uses for plastic (if any) are necessary and beneficial to society?

Herein is one of the misconceptions many activists have.  I don't like a no-plastics discussion because they usually seem based in severe ignorance of facts. I love a plastics versus other-material discussion because nothing should be made out of plastic without good reasons.

The fact is that with today's population level and technology level, plastics are not just needed but are required to maintain civilization without going back to a pre-industrial era or without doing WORSE harm to the environment.

So we don't (most of us) really want to get rid of plastics. We want them used responsibly and with care towards the environment and waste.


Would you like to see a world without any plastic at all? What would that look like?

This is my biggest point for simple 'anti-plasts'. What do you think is the alternative? If you want to go back to a pre-industrial era, so be it, but with today's population most of us will die from starvation and disease.

If you simply want to make everything out of anything BUT plastics and live happily ever after, it simply isn't possible.  The absolute fact is that if most things that are made of plastic were made of alternative materials, it would cause massive pollution, have huge global warming effects and would lessen the quality of life of virtually everyone.

The reason things are made of plastics is almost always this: it's cheaper. We don't care about that, its just businesses getting rich, BUT, the reason plastics are cheaper than alternatives is because they use less overall energy than the alternatives. Now this HAS to interest us.

When a product uses significantly less energy to manufacture, distribute and use then it also uses less oil, gas etc. to produce (less pollution), less oil, gas, etc. to distribute (less pollution), and less oil, gas, etc. to use (less pollution).

An example; automobiles. Many plastic parts in an auto replace MULTIPLE metal parts with one part with the energy to make ALL of the previous parts being much more energy-wasteful than the one plastic part. I can't barely imagine a car without plastics other than a primitive, heavy monster.  Now for the distribution, plastics cars weigh less than the alternatives and everything made has to be shipped. The shipping of ALL manufactured goods has a huge effect on pollution and it is weight and volume based. The less wight or volume, the less pollution created in the shipping stages.  Lastly in usage, an auto that is much lighter due to plastics uses less fuel. Less fuel means less pollution.

This example repeats itself over and over with virtually all use of plastics. Less pollution (energy) to make, ship and use than the alternatives.

So can we do without plastics? Not without making things worse. I'd like to see intelligent debates of plastics versus alternatives, not just anti-plastics. What is better on a case by case basis then multiplied by the entire population doing it?

A world without plastics would require unbelievably massive amounts of additional animals for leather, wool, etc and plants, for cotton and so on. And the effect ALL of the additional animals raised and grazing and forests cut down for crop land is staggering. I saw someone do the math once and it occurs to me that no environmentalist should be anti-plastics for just this reason.  We either cut way back on population and go to a sustainable civilization based on lower technology or we find responsible ways to use plastics and solve environmental issues.


Do you trust the plastics industry to tell you the truth about their products? Why or why not?

Well, personally I don't trust governments or large corporations to tell the truth always. There's too many instances of the opposite to have blind faith. Also, most plastics organizations have an agenda to promote and protect themselves. It's good to have a healthy skepticism.


Do you trust the American Chemistry Council to tell you the truth?

Same answer, see above


What questions would you ask a plastics professional if you could?

This happens everytime I talk to myself!


What role do you think the plastics industry should play in solving the environmental problems associated with plastic?

A leading role, and right now I see way too much defense of indefensible positions and simply promotional campaigns designed to make you appreciate plastics. Bah! The industry needs to admit the serious environmental and health issues, help study them and develop solutions.  Companies do this when there is a profit motive but the industry as a whole seems to be all deny, deny, defend, defend. I don't see much of an effort to acknowledge and lead here.


What else would you like to share?

Summaries. questions, replies to Beth's commenters, facts or opinions not covered

  • Plastics will be made in the future with algae, bacteria, plants, etc. Running out of oil is not a plastics future problem.
  • Wasteful use of plastics, think packaging,ought to be a crime. There is nothing defensible about idiotic design using copious amounts of plastic that just gets tossed.
  • There are applications where alternatives are preferred over plastics. Approach it on a case by case basis as to what is responsible, what is better than alternatives.
  • Beth and I agree that wasteful design and wasteful consumption of plastics is a very bad thing.
  • Plastics should not be used when an alternative that scales up to the population is environmentally better.
  • I think ALL material choices need to be defensible environmentally versus alternatives, not just for profit or other benefits
  • Tameson, you can't fix the ocean gyre problem by simply fishing for plastic as most of it is tiny and you'd get plankton as well.
  • Tameson, plastics aren't more biodegradable or recyclable because enough of the public isn't demanding it. I recommend demanding it rather than just saying 'Plastics are Bad'
  • May, a world without plastics is not as simply as 'look back at old photos' because the population has grown to a point where the alternatives are worse for us now.

April 22, 2009

An Earth Day Post Plastics-Haters MUST READ!

I like to blog about way out there plastics, like plastics from algae, and I like to write about industry trends but my favorite topic is addressing poor misguided folks who think we need to eliminate plastics from our lives.

With that in mind, today's blog is dedicated to EARTH DAY!

Ballerina

Fat people cause global warming


I knew it! Now I'm not against fat people, but according to the UK Sun they are selfishly causing global warming problems. They equate being fat with driving a gas guzzling SUV.  The study by Dr Edwards and colleague Ian Roberts is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

"The scientists say providing extra grub for them to guzzle adds to carbon emissions that heat up the world, melting polar ice caps, raising sea levels and killing rain forests."

Should we round them all up? Unless Global Warming isn't even real, then we can leave them alone.

UPDATE:Nalgene no longer sells water bottles made with Bisphenol A. Number 7 as a plastic type means any plastic that is not in the first six, so having number 7 on the bottom does not necessarily mean that it contains BPA.

Stainless Steel vs. Plastic Water Bottles


Great blog by Doug Smock on this issue. According to the NY Times factual, scientific (cough,cough) report, Stainless is better environmentally than plastic. But they use such shoddy math and faulty logic that someone should be arrested. This is why all these poor people are confused out there. Well meaning but dumb people slant reports to say what they want, thereby causing a panic.

Even they admit:
"One stainless steel bottle is obviously much worse than one plastic bottle."

But they are only comparing a reusable steel bottle to a one use throw away plastic bottle. Even by their own logic, a solid plastic reusable PLASTIC bottle will be better than STAINLESS!!!  Oh, and just get a BPA free bottle to avoid that whole topic.

UPDATE: Nalgene no longer sells water bottles made with Bisphenol A. Number 7 as a plastic type means any plastic that is not in the first six, so having number 7 on the bottom does not necessarily mean that it contains BPA.


Dogclothes

Eliminate Plastic in clothing, Use Pet Fur

You know plastics in clothes HAS to be a bad thing right? Even aside from all the dicso polyester clothes jokes, right? We should all be wearing leather shoes and cotton clothes to save the world? WRONG! If everyone did that the deforestation to grow additional crops and grazing land, not to mention all of the extra animal flatulence would be FAR WORSE for the environment than some plastic in our clothes.

But! Don't worry, now their is a solution: make your clothes from pet fur! Hmm, but they look really warm, maybe we won't need clothes at all, what with the global warming and all.

Or we could start a black market in kidnapped dogs for their fur. No more waking up in a bathtub to find your kidney gone. Now your DOG wakes up in a hotel bathtub...naked... shaven clean!  We must do something to protect our pets.  Hmmm, cat fur might make good ear warmers. Here kitty...

Cork tree

Use a Plastic Cork, save a tree, save the globe!

You think a plastic cork MUST be bad for the environment, right? Well tree huggers, what about the tree? Did you know cork is the bark of a Quercus Suber tree and that it is stripped off the living tree painfully, worse than waterboarding! And a tree's bark is its outter-wear, its protection from the elements. And worse, as soon as the bark grows back they strip it off again!  Where is the compassion for these poor tortured trees? Wouldn't a little recyclable plastic be more humane than this!  This tragedy is one of those points that splits the liberal crowd wide open! Which is worse, tree torture or use of a plastic? Maybe we should ask the NY TImes, they'll straighten us out.

Greenpkg2

From little acorns grow mighty environmentally sound ideas

Now here is a plastic alternative I love. Replacement of Styrofoam with an plant waste based organic alternative! Yes folks, there are plastics alternatives I prefer and here's one. In every possible way this is SOO much better than Styrofoam EPS plastic. Comes from a waste source; ice hulls, corn husks, etc.  Totally biodegradable. Moldable. Not Plastic!  Oh look, now I've done it. I find myself in agreement with the NY Times on an issue! Ugh.




Anti-bag

The problem is not your dog lady, the problem is YOU!!!


Now granted this is probably my favorite topic, plastic bags. I'm the first to be anti-litter, I hate it. I loved the Keep America Beautiful ads as a kid that featured the litter surrounded crying indian...errr...native american (sorry).

As Cesar Milan, the dog whisper inevitably says, "the problem is not the dog lady, the problem is you" and so it goes with litter. All of this misguided folks blaming the plastic bag as the evil daemon without so much as a mention to the fact that PEOPLE littered those bags individually or corporately.  The problem is YOU, not the bag.

I'm not FOR the bag, I just strongly dislike the blame being put on the bag instead of on ourselves. Reusable bags? Way to go, all the way, nothing is better. But paper versus plastic bags? A whole essay can be written on how plastic may be environmental better than plastic. That said, you've GOT to see this anti-plastic bag video on you-tube.  It's very well done and persuasive and likely the best tool the plastics haters have ever made. Check it out, for better or worse.

Oceangarbagepile

The Great Big Pacific Plastics Garbage Patch


Again, I don't like litter, but the answer is to be anti-litter, not anti-any particular material. One of the largest misconceptions is the alleged giant plastic trash island floating in the pacific. It's a bad thing, no question. My problem is the false impression that is repeatedly made.

Environmentalists have made it sound like it is a giant Sargasso Sea of plastics, so big and thick that you could build on it.  Other than occasional small patches that make for good photography, this plastics patch is actually widely dispersed and not an island or even a contiguous mass of plastic the size of a continent, according to what I've read.  I don't like it, but I dislike the distortion and exaggeration of the story even more, and it makes me doubt everything.  This image, this blog source, accompanies an article titled Garbage Island, but I'd bet anything that the photo is from a landfill, not the ocean.  But the public reads it and imagines this horrific continent of plastic crap, it simply isn't accurate. And again, people are anti-plastic instead of anti-litter, not a peep about that!

Note: I don't like the 'real' ocean plastic garbage patches and I'm even more disappointed by the plastics industry lack of a response to it, but hey, lets tell the truth, not lie about it to scare you.



Nanofarm

Good News! Torture no longer needed to make plastics!


I reported earlier that plastic an now be made by physiologically stressing (torture) plump bacteria, turning it into a cool biodegradable plastic.  But the torture thing ate at my karma. Now I'm glad to announce, thanks to Al Fin's blog, that gentle nano-milkers can safely take the oil from algae without algae-pain! Thank God! Now our future is safe and guilt free. Algae to Oil to Plastics. I like it. Will anyone say 'Save the Algae?'

Cornkids

For Earth Day, A Public Service Announcement, Corn Based Plastics For Kids!

Here you go folks, guilt free plastics made from corn. Includes kids eating plates and utensils as well as pacifiers and toys!  Oh, there is one problem. Making plastics from food crops has big issues down the road as plastics would compete with hungry people for the source material. Better still to make it out of tortured bacteria or gently nano-milked algae so we can have our cake and eat it too!


Blest Plastics, use less or use it better?

Plastic can now be easily turned back into oil rather than landfill it. Recently, I've seen two announcements on it, one from a Japanese technology developer, and one from a recycler in Washington state using a US based technology.


The morale of the story


Happy Earth Day everyone. My suggestions and conclusions to help us all...

  • Don't pollute, give a hoot (Ok so I stole that)
  • Don't lie
  • Don't exaggerate just to scare people to your side
  • Don't slant the facts
  • Don't believe everything you hear and read
  • Get BOTH sides of the issue
  • Don't litter
  • Be an anti-litter activist

and for my friends in the plastics industry..

  • Don't pollute
  • Don't lie
  • Don't exaggerate
  • Don't slant the facts
  • Don't be silent to the critics
  • Find and spend the money to tell the truth
  • Admit when a bad plastics choice is a bad plastics choice
  • Err on the side of people, regarding health issues

 




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