ACC and SPI introduce the Plastics Ambassador Program

The American Chemistry Council and The Society of the Plastics Industry are teaming up on a program designed to educate and mobilize companies and individuals within the industry to bring the positive messages about plastics to their communities.

The plastics industry has a great story to tell regarding efforts in litter and marine debris prevention, recycling and continued research in developing innovative, environmentally-friendly products. Working together, we can spread the message that plastics are a resource too valuable to waste.

This includes demonstrating industry's desire to promote product stewardship and sustainability, an awareness of the impact of our products and our commitment to be responsible community members.

The proposed vehicle for carrying out these efforts is a "Plastics Ambassador Program." This 12-month program will seek to engage employees to participate in various activities at local, state and national levels, including:

• Sharing positive plastics messages at community events, PTA meetings, recycle days, beach clean ups, legislative hearings, city council meetings, etc.
• Sponsoring PlastiVan™ visits at your schools. The PlastiVan Program is a great way to excite young people about science and the vast opportunities the plastics industry has to offer. PlastiVan's travel to schools and companies throughout North America, educating people of all ages about plastic's chemistry, history, processing, manufacturing, sustainability and application.
• Engaging with the media through letters to the editor, opinion editorials, desk-side briefings and interviews to promote the positive attributes of plastics and the industry.
• Meeting with elected officials in their home districts or inviting officials to tour your facility to provide industry perspective on related legislation.

We need your help to get the Plastics Ambassador Program off the ground! Please let us know by September 5, 2008 if your company and its employees are interested in participating in this important effort. We will be happy to provide you with additional information outlining the program, time commitment, resources, training and more.

In addition, we are interested in learning more about your individual company initiatives and successes with this type of outreach. We are seeking to gather best practices and are soliciting any current materials you have already developed for similar public relations and advocacy efforts.

For additional information, please contact Capers Brown (ACC) or Lynne Harris (SPI).

We Need to Make the Case for Energy Legislation

Here in the nation's capital, Congress has adjourned for its month-long August recess and the city's political scene has grown more quiet. After a tremendous amount of activity in the halls of Congress, our representatives accomplished only a sparse amount of work. This is particularly true in regard to the rising energy crisis and the cost of natural gas...prices that are having a direct impact on the bottom line of your business and the entire plastics industry.

Working with coalitions and allies and making our own frequent trips to Capitol Hill, SPI continues to be active in promoting legislative action to address energy issues. Frankly, we view the fact that Members of Congress are now home in their states as a major opportunity for all SPI members to step up engagement with their lawmakers and demand that they address the high cost of oil and natural gas. I urge you to make an effort to contact your lawmaker at some point during the month of August.

Catch them on your home turf! Set up an appointment with your lawmaker in their district office or phone the office to explain how the cost of energy is impacting your business. You can also invite your lawmaker to tour your facility...anything to show how urgent this issue is to the plastics industry.

SPI's Government Affairs team is available to help you contact your Member of Congress, prepare you for a meeting or help write a letter. Please know that SPI's lobbying effort in Washington is substantially enhanced when paired with SPI members from across the country actively engaging their elected representatives. Thank you for boosting our efforts by making the case for energy legislation this month.

Get Onboard – The Sustainability Train is Leaving the Station

By Bill Carteaux, SPI President & CEO

Still trying to determine what today’s green movement means to your bottom line? We all know about the environmental “scorecard” Wal-Mart began in 2005 and how it has impacted plastics suppliers—both good and bad. But there are an abundance of other examples of companies gradually transitioning to more sustainable practices – from NIKE, McDonalds and Toyota to BP, 3M and Alcoa. In a January 6, 2008 New York Times story about Clorox’s purchase of Burt’s Bees (a company known for beeswax lip balm), Clorox stated that one reason for the take-over was “to learn from the unusual business practices at Burt’s Bees — many centered on environmental sustainability. Clorox, the company promises, is going green.”

Don Carli, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Communication, recently told Advertising Age, "A profound change has taken place in the boardrooms of some of the largest corporations in the world that has redefined green in operational terms that go beyond doing the right thing and actually have to do with doing things right from a business perspective…There is a business case for sustainable practices in a company's operations.”

I totally agree with that. In fact, my hope is that our industry’s executives will come to see that the term “green” signifies the money and market share available to those companies that stop being defensive and begin to act on sustainability. I know from talks with plastics CEOs across the globe that many companies have already taken on the challenge. Sustainability feedback cards received from our members, articles in the trade press and the Society of Plastics Engineer’s (SPE) annual environmental award winners all reveal that our industry is already showing innovation in the areas of product design, recycling, materials recovery, bio-based resins, energy efficiency, worker training and environmental management system certification. In January, Sabic Innovative Plastics earned wide-spread publicity at the North American International Auto Show for its technology responsible for plastic parts found throughout a Ford Lincoln MKT that were derived from 2,000 plastic water bottles.

SUSTAINABILITY MEANS BUSINESS
Many company executives have also asked me what its trade association is doing to protect its bottom line in this every changing marketplace. One of our central missions is to help foster growth for U.S. plastics companies in the global marketplace. Toward that end, we have begun to initiate programs that will help companies take gradual steps toward viewing sustainable practices as a sound business decision.

Because SPI represents all facets of the plastics industry on both sides of the tracks, we have spent months hammering out what sustainability means to our industry today and how we intend to resource new sustainability initiatives. At our last meeting SPI’s Executive Board finalized its official position declaring that SPI “will support the development and adoption of sustainability principles through ongoing interactions with manufacturers and customers as well as codes, standards and regulatory bodies.” Using our policy statement as a springboard, our Material Suppliers Council recently took the lead in developing a general action plan that will guide SPI’s sustainability activities in the future.

We have made it a priority to make sustainability a prominent theme at NPE2009 – SPI’s International Plastics Showcase set for June 22-26, 2009 in Chicago. Innovations in plastics products and technologies, as well as the issue of sustainability, will be covered on the show floor and in the conference’s educational tracks. McCormick Place’s new West Hall will feature specialty pavilions dedicated to advancements in the areas of energy, biopolymers, new technology and sustainability. NPE2009 will be co-located with SPE’s ANTEC ™, the leading forum for cutting-edge technological solutions and access to proprietary research. SPI will once again offer a comprehensive NPE recycling program for recycling all the plastic scrap generated during the show.

In addition to new initiatives, SPI will continue its long-standing programs, such as Operation Clean Sweep ™ -- a program launched in 1996 to ensure spilled resin pellets do not make their way into local waterways that now boasts 130 participating companies. SPI's Occupational Health and Environmental Issues Committee (OHEIC) provides leadership and guidance toward achieving continuous improvement in environmental, health and safety performance in the plastics industry. The Committee’s Worker Health and Safety Task Group provides information and tools for members to continuously improve their safety performance. Since 2002, SPI has enjoyed a formal alliance with OSHA to promote a safe and healthy work environment in plastics facilities, and our annual Occupational Safety and Health Survey collects plastics industry illness and injury statistics while recognizing work sites that have excellent safety records.

Working with Seetha Coleman-Kammula (co-founder of Simply Sustain, who has more than 25 years of experience with petrochemical corporations) and other sustainability experts over the past several months, I have learned a lot about both the challenges and opportunities that sustainability offers our industry. In my opinion, plastics companies must add sustainable thinking to their business plans or risk missing out on financial opportunities. Becoming a more sustainable business is not an overnight process, but I encourage CEOs to take a long-term view because the sustainability train is already leaving the station.

SPI is here to make it easier for you to get onboard.

Making Sure Our Future Workforce is Ready to Do Business

By Bill Carteaux, SPI President & CEO

Today’s marketplace is increasingly complicated…. Globalization, rapid communication technology, sustainability and a torrent of economic and public policy issues combined make for a challenging road ahead. As I work to help my own kids launch their careers, I am convinced that business skills will be just as critical as science, math and engineering to gain a competitive advantage in tomorrow’s workforce. The trick, of course, is convincing them of that!

A 2007 National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) study cited recently in USA Today reveals that “about 20 percent of small to midsize manufacturers -- those with up to 2,000 workers -- cited retaining or training employees as their No. 1 concern.”

Certainly, if we hope to solve the serious shortage of skilled workers in the plastics industry, the U.S. must improve science and math education in our elementary and secondary schools, chemistry and engineering in our universities and job training programs in our workplaces. But I think our industry’s future workforce will also need to add analytical thinking, organizational change management and other strategic business skills to their knowledge base in order to successfully navigate the sea of challenges. We are going to need scientists and engineers who understand the “big picture” of a business challenge, think through a solution and communicate a strategy – all within a rapidly changing business environment.

That’s why I was pleased to read in a January 28, 2008, Washington Post article about a growing national graduate school program that is trying to instill both science and business skills in its students. Have you heard of a Professional Science Master’s (PSM) degree? Apparently it is a science version of the MBA degree. According to the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), which has spear-headed the initiative since 2001, the PSM program “provides students with a science or math curriculum comparable to that of a traditional master’s program, augmented by coursework that develops communication and professional skills, and a working knowledge of business principles.” The PSM is touted as a “degree option for bachelor's graduates in the sciences, mathematics, or engineering who… need additional training and skills to compete in today's global market place.” Approximately 1,300 students are currently enrolled in PSM programs at more than 50 schools nationwide and the programs have already graduated 1,200 students. According to the CGS, “The demonstrated attractiveness of PSM degrees to students will help expand and diversify the science and engineering workforce.”

I certainly hope so. But our first challenge is to turn our elementary and high school kids on to science and its application to the business world. The PlastiVan™ science education program is an excellent way for our industry to do just that.

Developed by the National Plastics Center with support from the Society of Plastics Engineers and the Society of the Plastics Industry, the PlastiVan curriculum is geared to excite kids about science as well as convey that our industry offers an excellent career path where business skills are of paramount importance. Geared for students in grades 3 – 12, the program uses hands-on classroom activities to teach students about the chemistry, history, processing and sustainability issues involved with plastics. In addition (and this is a key component), representatives of sponsoring companies are allotted time during the program to talk with kids about what their company does, how its different departments function, all of the different jobs that are involved and the benefits their work brings to society.

I urge you to get your company involved as a sponsor of PlastiVan™ in your community. While the hands-on activities teach the kids about the thrill of scientific discovery, your company’s presence takes all that fun and places it in the real context of the business world. By sponsoring a PlastiVan™ visit and taking part in the presentation, your company reinforces the fact that the classroom activities have practical applications and offers a viable career path. In essence, sponsoring companies nurture the development of our industry’s future workforce. Additionally, PlastiVan™ benefits the sponsoring company by increasing the company’s visibility in the community and enhancing the public’s perception of the industry.

Our industry needs to take an active role in developing its own future workforce – one that has both an enthusiasm for science and the business sense to apply it. With a nominal $1500 sponsorship fee, companies both large and small have supported the PlastiVan™ program over the years. To sponsor a PlastiVan visit in your local community, contact Betty Coleman via email or call (781) 337-7127.

"Green to Gold" author Andrew Winston to keynote Sustain '08 -- Get your seat at the table!

Climate change, carbon footprints, plastic litter and marine debris, retailers and government agencies deselecting plastic products ˆ where do plastics industry executives start finding sustainability solutions geared for their customers? SPI and Plastics News Global Group have joined forces to co-sponsor "Sustain '08: Plastics Business Summit," a landmark sustainability conference for the plastics industry that will be held November 5-7, 2008, at the Intercontinental Chicago in Chicago, Ill. Keynote speaker Andrew Winston is co-author of the best-selling book "Green to Gold"-- a guide to what works and what doesn't when companies go "green" -- and is founder of Winston Eco-Strategies. This C-level event provides the perfect forum for plastics executives to get to work developing a business plan that not only meets consumer demand but grows the company's bottom line. At Sustain '08, you will get the expert tools you need to view sustainability as a strategy toward reducing costs, eliminating waste, maximizing profitability and increasing market share and longevity.

Online registration opens August 18th at the Sustain '08 web site. Go there for constantly updated details on speakers and a special preconference workshop on energy efficiency.