With so much negativity in the press about plastics, the next generation of industry employees has to learn the truth about plastics’ role in society. There’s no better way than to bring young people into your plants to show them how things really work, like this program for high schoolers at PTI Engineered Plastics, Macomb, Mich. (Photo: PTI Engineered Plastics) Of all the challenges that plastics manufacturers face today, at…
President Biden recently called for more biomaterials. I’m not surprised. He knows that the use of fossil fuels will put more carbon dioxide into the air, which will collect “up there” to insulate the Earth so it gets warmer. This isn’t belief or magic, but heat transfer, which we should understand. It isn’t political, either. The rules of science apply to everyone. Carbon dioxide is one carbon atom plus two oxygens,…
Precision medical extrusion and catheter firm Zeus Co. Inc. is expanding geographically, opening a catheter manufacturing plant in Minnesota.
Medical device contract manufacturer Biomerics LLC has expanded its Athens, Texas, facility by 24,000 square feet to meet demand in the single-use endoscopy market.
The iconic food container maker were on the decline long before its warning to Wall Street as sales fell dramatically during the past decade.
The Lego Group broke ground on its $1 billion factory near Richmond, VA, yesterday. The company’s first plant in the United States will be the size of 260 football fields — 340 acres — and an on-site solar plant is designed to match the total energy consumption, making the facility carbon neutral. Construction is expected to be completed by 2025. The groundbreaking ceremony on April 13 was attended by Lego Group Chief…
Bio-based materials supplier NatureWorks has developed a softer, stronger biopolymer for hygiene applications. Ingeo 6500D for nonwovens also features improved fluid management when combined with a hydrophilic surface finish technology. “Building on our expertise in bio-based nonwovens, we developed a product that, based on our rigorous testing, can improve the softness of spunbond nonwovens by 40% over nonwovens made with generic PLA,” said Robert Green, VP of Performance Polymers at…
Extended producer responsibility laws are conceived as tools to improve the management of target materials, thereby limiting negative impacts of their use. Rather than prescribe solutions, the laws generally set targets and leave the problem solving to an extended producer organizations (EPRO), an industry group incentivized to minimize the environmental burden of waste materials, but also given authority to determine the best way to do so. Producers who prove they…
Japanese Tier I auto parts supplier Toyoda Gosei has reportedly developed the world’s first automobile brand emblem that is both transparent to millimeter wave radar and luminescent. This product will be used on the new Lexus RZ battery electric vehicle (BEV) from Toyota. Toyoda Gosei has previously provided millimeter wave radar compatible emblems, which offer both an attractive metallic appearance and transparency to millimeter wave radar for advanced driving support…
More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the area April 11. Two warehouses storing recycled plastics caught fire at around 2:30 p.m. on that date.