Green Practices

Orlando-Bioplastics supplier NatureWorks LLC (Minnetonka, MN) is partnering with outside firms to augment reclaim and recycling of its material in the U.S. and Europe, saying the partner businesses will offer a competitive price for post-consumer polylactic acid (PLA) scrap, according to president and CEO Marc Verbruggen.

A recycling robot that uses sensors to detect five different wavelengths of laser beam light reflected from plastic materials, and will automatically sort six different polymer types, currently is being tested in Osaka, Japan.

The photonics sensing technology has been developed by the Idec Co. (Japan) and the Photonics Advanced Research Center (PARC) at the University of Osaka. Optical and robot technologies are supplied by Mitsubishi Electric Engineering Co. (MEE).

A new report from the Apollo Alliance and Good Jobs First says the United States must develop a domestic manufacturing capability to meet the growing demand for clean energy components and systems, or lose the race to lead that sector of the global economy, and the jobs that go with it.

Houston—The same longevity that makes plastics desirous as a material draws the ire of environmentalists who decry the burgeoning amounts of the synthetic materials piling up in landfills. At the recent Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) International Polyolefins Conference in Houston, TX (Feb.

Houston—Every other OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development) country besides the U.S. imposes fees that brand owners must pay to dispose of their products' packaging. That fact alone would suggest that America's approach to end-of-life packaging scenarios is untenable, and change does indeed seem inevitable, driven in part by what Victor Bell describes as a "perfect storm." Speaking at the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) International Polyolefins Conference (Feb.

The amount of post-consumer non-bottle rigid plastics collected for recycling in 2008 was up nearly 11% from 2007. The report, prepared by Moore Recycling Assoc. Inc. and released on March 3 by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), found that 361 million lb of post-consumer non-bottle rigid plastics were collected in 2008, with "much" of the recycled material used to manufacture new products, such as pallets, crates, composite lumber, and gardening items.

Thirty tons bigger, to be exact. That's the chilling power you can now expect from the largest unit in the portable chiller line from Conair (Cranberry Twp., PA).

Some plastics packaging processors' sustainability plans are further along than others. Among the pace setters is Innovia Films, which has earned CarbonNeutral certification for its range of cellulose-based NatureFlex coated biodegradable and compostable packaging films. 

Extrude hydrophilic materials PET and PLA with no need for pre-drying: That's the promise being made by extruder manufacturers PTi and Bandera, which have teamed up to offer dryer-less extrusion lines for processing sheet from these materials.

Did the recession slow the pace of progress at your company? Likely it did, 
but that does not mean you still aren’t striving to improve. In this, first in a 
four-part series, MPW will be tracking one company’s efforts to be sustainable 
and profitable.

Officials at Xten Industries, a custom injection molder and contract manufacturer in Kenosha, WI, believe that sustainability and profitability are not competing goals. They also are out to prove that profitable manufacturing and “Made in the U.S.A.” are not mutually exclusive terms.