Photo courtesy of Longwood Gardens & GPTMC

Christmas is one of my favorite times of year. Part of this enjoyment stems from the fact that I have two sons, ages two and five, who are in their prime “magic of Christmas” years.  They love the decorations, the carols and the anticipation of presents. Although we are certainly trying to teach our children not to be too materialistic, there is one material that is essential for our holiday season. From the garlands, wreathes and lights that adorn the windows and porch, to the resin decorations perched on sideboards and dressers throughout the house, it is hard to imagine celebrating the holidays without plastics.

Chief among the decorations, of course, is the much revered Christmas tree. According to a list of “Christmas Tree Facts” posted by the University of Illinois Extension, 48 percent of U.S. households decorated their houses in 2002 with a plastic Christmas tree, with 21 percent choosing a real tree and 32 percent choosing no tree. The vast majority of artificial Christmas trees on the market today are made from PVC (polyvinyl chloride), PE (polyethylene), or a combination of the two. Up until very recently, most trees were made exclusively from PVC. The needles on traditional pre lit artificial Christmas trees are cut out of compressed sheets of PVC (typically recycled), whereas the branches and needles of PE artificial Christmas trees are made by filling a mold made from a real tree.

A carbon footprint study recently issued by the American Christmas Tree Association (yes, there truly is a trade association for everything!) submits that artificial plastic trees are the more environmentally friendly choice over the long-term. In the interests of full disclosure, however, the National Christmas Tree Association argues to the contrary. This debate aside, if, like me, you selected a real tree this year, you may well be relying on a high-impact polypropylene Christmas tree stand to keep your evergreen upright throughout the season. Indeed, from the durable polyethylene “Santas Secret Boots®” watering device that we use to water our tree, to the plastic train and track that encircles the tree, right up to the plastic underskirt on our tree’s angel, plastics, as in our broader lives, plays an essential function.

Plastics role in the holidays does not stop at the decorations. The 2008 Deloitte Holiday Survey reports that for the fifth consecutive year, gift cards (made most likely from PVC) were the top gift choice. Specifically, 66 percent of households planned to purchase an average of 5.3 gift cards in 2008.

And of course, my kids are not alone in hoping for toys from Santa, many of which will be made from plastics. So as you celebrate the holiday season and enjoy its visual and material delights, remember this line from Sam Wainwright in the holiday movie classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life” – “plastics, baby, plastics!”

As I was wandering the toy aisles shopping for my niece, I looked up and saw one of my favorite toys from years past – Shrinky Dinks (“the incredible shrinking plastic.”)  In case you haven’t heard of Shrinky Dinks, the base material consists of thin, flexible polystyrene plastic sheets.  Before you heat them, the plastic sheets (which are often in cool shapes and designs) can be colored with felt-tip pens, acrylic paint and colored pencils.  Once you are done with the design, then you place the Shrinky Dinks piece you created into a home oven or toaster oven for two magic minutes and watch as they shrink to approximately 1/3rd their original size and become nine times thicker.  The whole process is a great mini-science experiment – plus you can tap into your creative side as well. (By the way, this is the same process used to “shrink wrap” meats or other grocery items that have protective plastic wraps.)

Then I got thinking of my younger years and all of my favorite toys that never would have been without plastics…first off, the Rubik’s Cube – mainly made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and nylon —  is a 3-D mechanical puzzle that I spent many hours trying to solve (I’m still trying).  The Cube was invented in 1974. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have sold worldwide, making it the world’s top-selling puzzle game.

The engineer in me also loved Legos (see the basic red Lego brick above). Originally designed in the 1940s in Europe, Legos also are made of ABS and consist of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, mini figures and various other parts. Lego bricks can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct objects such as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects. This toy provides endless hours of fun and imagination.

And who could forget the Wacky WallWalker toy?  Molded out of a sticky elastomer and found in conjunction with classic 1980s cereals, the Wacky WallWalker was shaped similar to an octopus. When thrown against a wall it would “walk” its way down, which made it a hugely popular toy.

Moving on to characters, I was always partial to the Smurfs, a group of small blue creatures who lived in a village somewhere in the woods. The Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced Smurfs to the world in a series of comic strips. But in the U.S. toy Smurfs (made out of vinyl) for kids to play with didn’t become big in the 1980s until an animated series hit the TVs.

Lastly what about the Cabbage Patch Kids?  A doll brand originally created in the late 1970s, Cabbage Patch Kids had large, round vinyl heads and soft fabric bodies and were all the rage.  I remember that parents camped out a toy stores when they heard a new shipment of Cabbage Patch Kids were arriving. This TIME magazine article discusses the Cabbage Patch riots and hysteria of 1983.

Plastics made these great toys possible. Lite Brite and Barrel of Monkeys are other plastic-based old favorites that come to mind. Ah, the joys of childhood and toy nostalgia. The walk down memory lane brings a smile to my face and makes me thankful for plastics and the role they played in my youth.

I miss my plastic yogurt lids (like this one or these).

As a woman who is attempting to exercise regularly and eat a semi-decent diet of something other than gummi bears and Twizzlers, I like to put a single serve yogurt into my lunch several times a week. I like yogurt.  It’s not horrible (like carob or wheat germ) yet it’s still nutritious.

I have one particular brand that I gravitate towards.  Over the past few years, yogurt companies have stopped including plastic lids on single serve containers. This used to be the top barrier above the foil seal.  In an effort to reduce packaging, and become more sustainable, the lids were deemed excessive and only the foil seal remains on top.

I believe the foil seal on the particular yogurt I buy is not adequate enough.  Why?  Twice this week, the foil has peeled back on the edges of the container, leaking yogurt goo all over the rest of my lunch. This is annoying. Not to mention the fact that I then question the viability of my yogurt.  Is it safe? Is it still good?  Did it inherit some sort of contaminant? Obviously packaging ranks as a key factor in food safety and this sometimes poses challenges to reduce packaging.

Food is expensive.  In fact, food costs are rising at almost monthly rates.  For all I know, the organic yogurt I like may come from special cows that like tropical locations and long walks on the beach. This makes it even more expensive.  I don’t like having to throw away a yogurt on mere speculation that the foil seal has failed.

Give me back my lid.

Instead of eliminating packaging to the point where damages become greater, why don’t we work more on recycling?  Polypropylene yogurt cups are recyclable, but are not widely accepted by municipal recycling outfits. If we could generate efforts to get more polypropylene recycled, plastic lids would not be such a big deal.

I regularly wonder about the damages that reductions in packaging cause, and how the cost savings of packaging reduction are likely eaten up by the amount of product loss due to shipping, retail store or consumer damage.

I do believe we should all work to “build a better mousetrap” and engineer the best possible packaging for the products we use and buy.  But if the costs outweigh the benefits, shouldn’t we work a little harder to solve the problem?

In my case, this means a better foil seal on my yogurt – one that won’t peel back from the sides prior to opening. Or,  just give me back the plastic lid until something better can be invented.

In the meantime, I guess I could just stop eating yogurt. But then I might have to actually eat flaxseed, seaweed and the like to get vitamins and minerals.  So, I will continue to suffer with inadequate packaging and carry my yogurt in one of those Gladware or Ziploc storage containers (also polypropylene).  While this truly is excessive, I can reuse the storage container and my yogurt doesn’t end up all over the place. Maybe I’m the one who has to do damage control these days.

Photo courtesy of Xenith

Bone crunching tackles made by huge and fast athletes, graceful fingertip catches, surprising last-second upsets… It’s no wonder that football is the most popular sport in the United States.

The rise of personal computers and the Internet in the 1990s added to the football hysteria via the fantasy football craze in which fans participate in competitive online leagues, earning “fantasy points” based on the performance statistics of real pro football players. My friends and I end up rooting for yardage and scores for the National Football League (NFL)  players we have each selected in a “fantasy draft,” while conversely cheering for interceptions, fumbles, and minor game-day injuries for the players “owned” by our opponents.

Unfortunately, as of November 22, thirty-one NFL players had been listed on injury reports this season with concussions — including several marquee stars. Although this trend may be responsible for my current fantasy football losing streak, I am more concerned with the impact concussions have on NFL players.

While most players make a speedy recovery from immediate concussion symptoms (including memory loss, confusion, blurred vision and nausea), those who have multiple concussions or continue to play while suffering from one may be at risk of debilitating conditions later in life.  The recent rash of concussions has brought out news reports of former players — including Larry Morris, Mike Webster and John Mackey – still tragically suffering from dementia and other symptoms. A recent Associated Press story found that nearly one out of five NFL players surveyed acknowledged that they have downplayed the effects of a concussion in order to get back out on the field.

I applaud the recent strides taken by the NFL to protect players and study this potentially deadly condition.  Obviously, making the NFL a two-hand touch sport is not realistic and violent collisions will always be part of the game.  So, improving the protection offered by football helmets is a place to start.

Plastics are at the forefront of new helmet designs that may reduce the number of concussions. Currently, most football helmets incorporate hard  polycarbonate shells lined with dense foam padding (either polyurethane, polystyrene, polypropylene, ethylene vinyl acetate or a combination). The design challenge is that helmets must be soft enough to cushion routine blows, hard enough to absorb helmet-to-helmet hits and strong enough to last through several weeks of use. As spotlighted recently in a Washington Post article, many experts think Xenith’s X1 helmet (pictured above) holds promise. Instead of traditional foam, the X1 incorporates an adjustable cap of 18 polyurethane discs. Each air- cushioned disc is hollow with a tiny hole at the top.  According to the article:

When a player wearing an X1 takes a relatively mild hit, the pressure forces air out of the pinholes, dispelling force by deflating the absorber until it’s as flat as a saucer. When the pressure is removed, the absorbers reinflate quickly… and the helmet is ready for the next impact. During a more violent collision… the higher level of force tries to displace the air more quickly than the pinhole can accommodate, thereby increasing the air pressure inside the absorber. That pressure stiffens the disk, offering skull protection much as traditional helmets do.

Another manufacturer, Riddell (which conducted a 2006 study with the University of Pittsburgh on helmets and concussions) has developed  the “Revolution Speed” helmet, which is  lined with synthetic rubber and polyurethane. In addition, some Riddell helmets can be accessorized with  the Head Impact Telemetry System(HITS) which incorporates sensors that send a wireless alert to a team’s trainer when a player absorbs a potentially dangerous hit.  Schutt, yet another manufacturer, designed its ION 4D helmet with a lining of  cushions made of thermoplastic urethane. (If you are a real geek for the technical details, this illustrated diagram and this Michigan sports blog discuss the latest helmet designs more thoroughly.

While plastics is doing its part, most coaches and trainers believe  teaching and employing proper tackling technique — keeping the head up and avoiding helmet-to-helmet collisions — is the best way to reduce football-related concussions.

Inside-the-beltway types contend with daily acronym overload, a non-stop alphabet soup denoting different agencies, policies and programs. Compounding the confusion for plastics industry professionals is that there’s often overlap with our own initiatives (OCS, for example, is short for both Operation Clean Sweep — an SPI environmental stewardship program — and the energy-rich offshore area known as the Outer Continental Shelf).

CRS stands for Congressional Research Service and, while largely unknown outside the world of public policy crunchers, they’re the legislative branch’s non-partisan research arm, functioning as a sort of in-house think tank for Congress. And one of its recent studies stood out from the myriad other government reports that SPI regularly reviews and digests.

On the subject of natural resource availability and cost, today’s popular media often paints a gloomy picture of our nation’s future, suggesting a bleak and desolate America marked by scarcity, sky-high prices, rationing — an overall diminution of prosperity.

CRS says otherwise.

In a recent report, CRS puts U.S. combined reserves of natural gas, oil and coal ahead of every other country in the world at 1321 billion barrels of oil equivalent. And this doesn’t even encompass reserves in known but harder-to-access resources such as oil shale. Russia comes in a close second, at 1248 billion, but then the field drops off dramatically. Saudi Arabia? Third, at just 543 billion. China’s next at 494.

The technological know-how exists to develop these resources efficiently, cleanly and safely. Skeptical? Think about the offshore platforms that withstood Hurricane Katrina.

Long story short: the U.S. can create its own energy future. The only question is, will we? For our industry – dependent on these resources for both feedstocks and fuel – it’s a question that can have only one answer.