Designers and manufacturers looking for ideas for making sustainable products can take some ideas from a couple of plastic products featured today in the Treehugger.com blog. One is a rotationally molded kayak dubbed the Tequila! with an unusual feature: it…
This could be the ultimate in design-for-recyclability: a team of students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have designed a teddy bear made entirely from PET. The toy, dubbed the Sustain-a-Bear, recently won first prize in the 2009 Manufacturing Student Design Competition…
Remember seeing 3D movies with flimsy cardboard glasses? If thats your recollection of 3D movies, get ready for some big changes. Todays 3D glasses are made of plastic and cost as much as $50 each. Movies like Avatar are making…
China’s plastics processing industry achieved 1.14 trillion yuan (US$166.9 billion) in sales and 64.6 billion yuan (US$9.5 billion) in profit in 2008, according to latest figures from China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
That gives the industry an average profit margin of 5.7 percent.
The industry possesses 865.1 billion yuan (US$126.6 billion) in total assets and 468.9 billion yuan (US$68.6 billion) in debt, making the industry-wide equity 39.6 billion yuan (US$ 5.8 billion), the Dec. 25 report said.
The industry consists of 95,000 registered business entities with a total workforce of 3.87 million.
Plastics materials, equipment and recycling are not included in these figures.
Strikes are pretty rare events these days — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were only 15 lockouts or strikes in the United States in 2008. With the economy slumping this year, the number is probably even lower….
The average annual compensation per job in the United States in 2008 failed to keep pace with inflation, growing just 2.6 percent to $56,116. The rate of inflation rose 3.3 percent during that same 12-month period, according to statistics just released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
The U.S. durable goods manufacturing sector — those big-ticket items meant to last three years or more — suffered the largest rate of contraction at minus 2 percent in the 2,265 small U.S. counties covered in the survey.
“Small counties” are defined as those with total compensation of less than US$1 billion. BEA said small counties represent 72.8 percent of all U.S. counties, but only 8.3 percent of total national compensation.
EBA’s definition for “compensation” is the sum of wage/salary plus employer contributions for government social insurance, employee pension and insurance funds.
Geese have a way of bothering some park visitors, but the folks in Fort Smith, Ark., may have come up with a new way to keep the birds away. The city Department of Parks and Recreation bought six realistic-looking plastic…
Maybe Santa Claus decided to cheer up in November. China’s Guangdong province, which reportedly makes more than 70 percent of the artificial Christmas trees in the world, said November exports of Christmas-themed items reached US$39 million, 78.2 percent higher than a year ago.
Further data released by the China Customs this week show, however, that Christmas-related export from Guangdong to the U.S. dropped 16.6 percent during the first 11 months, compared to the same period in 2008. The decline rate is 10.3 percent for Canada and 6.1 percent for the European Union.
Meantime, exports to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations soared 87.6 percent.
Regardless of the fluctuation, the U.S. remains the largest buyer of Christmas goods from Guangdong with total spending of US$400 million from Jan.-Nov. 2009, followed by the EU (US$180 million). ASEAN countries imported US$27.3 million in total, less than how much U.S. import decreased in the first 11 months.
No more worries about losing paper tickets or plastic admission cards — the first mobile phone admission system in World Expo history is bound to add a sense of high-tech culture to the Shanghai World Expo. All you will need to tour the event is your cell phone.
The new concept is based on a special type of cell phone SIM card that incorporate radio frequency identification technology (RFID). The Shanghai World Expo Bureau and China Mobile introduced the technology last month.
Users will be able to use the SIM card – which conveniently carries over their existing phone number – to check-in and even make payments in restaurants and shops at the World Expo.
These SIM card tickets are priced the same as regular paper tickets.
This week, the manufacturer of these SIM cards was revealed by a news report from the Jiangnan Evening News.
Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology Co. Ltd. (JCET) of Jiangyin, Jiangsu province, said the production of 3 million World Expo SIM cards began in November and will be completed in four months. Production procedures include the installation of chips, sealing with epoxy resin, cutting, and testing.
Publicly listed JCET said it is adding equipment and improving production lines in preparation for more production of such cards, up to tens of millions, depending on market response.
China’s Shenzhen Development Bank has launched two sets of biodegradable credit cards, which are said to be able to break down to water and carbon dioxide. The bank said one of the green-themed sets comes with paperless statements only, another way to protect the environment.
It’s unclear what specific material(s) the cards are made of. But the bank started issuing the first set of four “Beauty Cards” in November, targeting environmentally conscious female consumers.
The second set of four “Green Cards” made a debut in Beijing this week. These cards use electronic statements exclusively, the bank said on its Web site. Users can choose to receive an email newsletter on environmental protection from the bank. They also have the option to redeem membership points for “green products.”
According to a report from the Xinhua News Agency, China had issued 170 million credit cards by the end of 2008.
By using the images on the bank’s Web site, I compiled this low-resolution photo, just to give you an idea how the collection of “Green Cards” looks. (Yes, these are vertical cards.)
plasticsnews.com/china/english/chinablog/Cards.JPG” width=”346″ height=”489″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”" />