I think it is more than appropriate to begin my last column of 2017 with a poem by Matthew Olzmann of Dartmouth College. It’s a cry for change and a voice we need to hear and heed. “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” first appeared in “Poem-A-Day” from the Academy of American Poets:
Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,
the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations
of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.

It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing
but benzene, mercury, the stomachs
of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic.

You probably doubt that we were capable of joy,
but I assure you we were.

We still had the night sky back then,
and like our ancestors, we admired
its illuminated doodles
of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles.

Absolutely, there were some forests left!
Absolutely, we still had some lakes!
I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide.
There were bees back then, and they pollinated
a euphoria of flowers so we might
contemplate the great mysteries and finally ask,
“Hey guys, what’s transcendence?”

And then all the bees were dead.

Admittedly, Jack Kenny’s recent L&NW column, “Waste: Not Just Packaging,” provoked me a bit. But between Jack’s message and Matthew’s poem, it’s a great introduction to a scorecard of environmental issues by Purbita Saha, found in the Spring issue of Audubon.

I don’t want to go political in this holiday issue. However, if you take a look at Saha’s scorecard, nothing is sacred and environmental progress seems to have stalled. 

Take a look:

ITEM                     CURRENT ACTIVITY
Climate Change      An attempt to replace the fight against global warming with “A n America First” Energy Plan, as well as exiting the Paris Accord.

Habitat                 Establishing House Proposal # 5, which hands protected federal land to the states for economic value. This means a reduction of prairie
                                 grasslands and wetlands that support wildlife. Also has proposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for exploratory drilling.

Energy                  A shift in decisions to stop the completion of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. Also an effort to eliminate restrictions on offshore
                                 drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic. (The future of the Clean Power Plan is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court).

Water                   An elimination of the Steam Protection Rule, which barred coal companies from dumping heavy metals into waterways (I’ve written about this).

Wildlife                 Attempting to pass a bill that would take birds and animals off the endangered species list. Has also put into effect a hiring freeze that
                                   has already affected the understaffed Fish and Wildlife Service.

Air                       Many actions and proposed changes could reduce current EPA Standards for mercury and air toxic standards. Also the possibility of changing
                                   the requirements for minimum fuel economy standards. (California is fighting this one.)

So, while Jack talks about garbage and the “ugly” facts, I’m informing you of specific changes that potentially could create “more garbage and pollution than ever!” From a professional point of view, what really brought this home is that as a business we just submitted our ninth scorecard to be LIFE-certified. LIFE (Label Initiative for the Environment) is the Tag & Label Manufacturers Institute’s (TLMI) environmental management system that measures annual improvement in reduction of energy, waste and water usage. As mentioned, this is Channeled Resources’ ninth year of participation with the TLMI program. I am so proud of our team’s effort over the years to achieve environmental excellence. There are 31 metrics, all focused on improvement and reduction. There are no perfect scores, just year-to-year measurement.

When I look at our effort and compare it to the proposals outlined in Saha’s scorecard, it belittles the effort our team is trying to achieve in environmental excellence. Sorry to deviate, but the messages from Matthew, Jack and Saha are antithetical to our effort.

All is not doom and gloom, however. The above is just a summary of the landscape and the difficulty of a “green” journey. To be sure, there are changes and research projects that make this Christmas season especially exciting. First, most of you are aware that several years ago UPM Raflatac introduced Profi. Profi is a wood/plastic composite, manufactured in Europe, that uses a percentage of matrix in the composite that is used for decking.  At Labelexpo in Brussels in September, Avery Dennison introduced its composite on its exhibition stand. The composite uses a percentage of matrix and is made into building panels.  This is a wonderful example of diverting our byproduct into a useful application.

As most of you know, the current “linear plastics” system is broken. Globally, only 14% of all plastic packaging is recycled. 

In fact, there are estimates that upwards of $100 billion, not million, billion, of plastic is being discarded every year. “A staggering one-third of all plastic packaging leaks into the environment – a rate so high that by 2050 there could be, by weight, more plastics than fish in the ocean.” (Mats Linder, NPE) To address this problem, major consumer goods companies have come together and formed an organization called the New Plastics Economy. I will write more about this organization in 2018, but, suffice it to say, its objective is to change linear culture into circular, and develop and stimulate long-term solutions, as well as innovation that will reduce plastic packaging waste. This is a daunting task, but finally we have a non-profit that is focused on developing solutions for the industry.

Not to be outdone by the New Plastics Economy, researcher Federica Bertocchini, in her lab at Spain’s IBBTEC institute, is working with a “waxworm paste” that eats plastic waste. Can you believe it?  And this is true, not fake news. Listen to this!

Bertocchini keeps bees, and one day when checking her hives she found them infested with waxworms. These caterpillars are the beekeeper’s nightmare because they eat the wax that bees use to build their honeycombs. Bertocchini picked out the caterpillars and put them in a plastic bag while she finished working on the hives.  When she returned to the bag she found it full of holes. “The waxworms had eaten their way out!” In an article in The Atlantic, author Ed Young notes:

Plastics make for good packaging – and even better pollutants – because they are so hard to degrade.  They’re very long chain-like molecules with lots of powerful carbon-to-carbon bonds, which can’t be easily broken by bacteria, fungi, and other organisms that normally decay organic matter.  So when plastic enters the environment, it usually stays there.

Other scientists have also discovered plastic-busting species, including various fungi and bacteria. Last year, a Japanese team identified a previously unknown bacterium that can degrade PET. And in 2014, Chinese scientists suggested that two species of bacteria from the guts of Indian mealmoths, a type of waxworm, can degrade polyethylene (PE) – the world’s most common plastics.

Bertocchini saw that her waxworms were working very quickly.  When she put them in a polyethylene bag, holes appeared within 40 minutes and after a few hours the bag would be a shredded mess.  So she “mushed” them into a paste and applied the paste to polyethylene.  After half a day, 13% of the bag had disappeared. “Even a waxworm smoothie can destroy polyethylene.”
I’m not into “waxworm smoothies,” but if this exciting, by chance, discovery can lead to a solution for reducing plastic packaging waste, I would agree to a taste. After all, I’ve had a bite of a hat!

Bertocchini considers her discovery as an opportunity to find the molecule/enzyme in the waxworm that causes polyethylene to degrade. While there is much work to be done, “the hunt for organisms that degrade plastics is on.”

Bertocchini’s discovery, Avery Dennison’s composite panel using matrix, and the new plastics economy are great Christmas presents, don’t you think? And, I can’t think of a more fitting way to say Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all and a wish to all that you have a wonderfully healthy and prosperous 2018.

Another Letter from the Earth.


Calvin Frost is chairman of Channeled Resources Group, headquartered in Chicago, the parent company of Maratech International and GMC Coating. His email address is
[email protected].