Green Practices

Berry Plastics (Evansville, IN) is deploying polypropylene (PP) ropes, booms, and flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBCs) made its Atlacomulco, Mexico manufacturing site to help in the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill clean up and containment. Marketed under the brand name X-Sorbs, the Pom-Pom Ropes and Sorbent Booms act as adsorbent rather than absorbent products.

Novomer Inc.'s (Ithaca, N.Y.) work with Albemarle Corp. (Baton Rouge, LA) and Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, NY), to develop a process that converts waste carbon dioxide into polycarbonate (PC) for use in packaging was one of six projects to be awarded additional funding from the U.S. federal government on July 22. U.S.

A company founded in 2001 by a 19-year-old Princeton University freshman is increasingly finding a home for "un-recyclable" plastics and bridging the gap between consumers of everyday items like drink pouches and the brand owners that create them. Now, Tom Szaky, a grizzled 28-year-old that was named to Inc. magazine's 30 under 30 list at 24, and his company, TerraCycle (Trenton, NJ), are reaching out to the plastics industry.

Automotive underhood applications are the target of a series of polyamide (PA) 6 grades derived from post-industrial recycled material that will debut from the end of 2010—with first commercial applications following in early 2011. The grades will officially debut at the upcoming K Show.

Ending a lengthy search for the right biodegradable, compostable molding material, the Brazilian company S.R. Promocionais will begin producing its Eko BIO pens using Cereplast (El Segundo, CA) 1001 Compostable resin to mold the pen's structural components, marking yet another application for Cereplast in the Brazilian market.

German tenter frame producer Brückner (Siegsdorf) has formed a joint venture with Seebach (Vellmar, Germany) to produce melt filter elements for its and competitors' lines with the creation of Brückner Seebach Filter Solutions India (Pune, India). According to Uwe P. Thönniss, co-managing director at the company's service subsidiary Servtec, production has already started and the first supply of a range of filter products should be available from the company by autumn.

As it reaches the quarter-way mark of its two-year span, an ongoing collaborative effort focusing on REACH legislation in Europe has reached some preliminary conclusions. For instance, the project has identified varying levels of awareness of REACH at processors across the EU member states and what the group's members call "a severe lack of specific information" about REACH relating to the plastics industry.

A new additive gives processors' products the same brilliant red coloration they need while also responding to their customers' concerns about halogen-bearing products.

The United Kingdom's polyester extrusion and recycling industries have grown significantly in the past years, so this supplier of equipment used in these processes sees a good opportunity to bring together a group of experts, processors, recyclers and more to spend a day discussing the industries' changing face. Among the presenters will be a Coca-Cola executive responsible for the company's initiatives in PET collection and bottle-to-bottle recycling.

The problems with injection molding conventional PLA are well known, not least of which are its low heat resistance and limited injection-molding capability because of PLA’s increased cycle time. Teijin and Panasonic Electric Works announced their joint development of heat-resistant polylactide (PLA) molding compound made from 80% plant-based renewable feedstock and providing significantly reduced molding cycle time of around half that of conventional PLA compounds.