Consumer goods

Packaging guidelines that mandate suppliers reduce the use of plastic in product packaging, encourage the switch to glass when possible, and limit acceptable packaging materials to those that are easily reused or recycled, and/or feature the highest percentage of post-consumer recycled (PCR) content became effective at retailer Whole Foods Market (Austin, TX) Sept. 1, 2010.

Products associated with three of the world's most recognizable brand names soon will be packaged into high-density polyethylene based on ethylene derived from sugarcane. Procter & Gamble will introduce the new packaging starting in 2011.

It’s summertime and the livin’ is fairly easy with some of the new lawn and garden products on the market that promise to make mowing and trimming a breeze.

Once the e-mail came down from the corporate office, Fely Seabrooks and her employees immediately went to work on the baby bottle display. Within hours, shelves at the Babies"R"Us that were once full of polycarbonate (PC) baby bottles were now completely empty.

The printable electronics industry is in its infancy but is expected to be worth tens of billions by the end of this decade, and plastics suppliers have been busily jockeying to acquire the technology needed to ensure their success in this rapidly expanding field.

Processors and parts designers attending the K show this fall have a golden opportunity to put a new haptic test through its paces. By monitoring how test persons touch an object, and comparing this with the stated objective perceptions, the test can help determine if a part's haptics really are as pleasing to potential customers as its designer had hoped.

Two parts are combined into one—and a metal die-cast part gets replaced with plastics—as a power tool now entering the market offers another showcase for thermoplastics' potential.

This supplier of polycarbonate has developed a new hardcoated film that, despite its scratchproof coating, can be shaped three-dimensionally. The film produces 3D component surfaces with a deep-gloss finish and supposedly outstanding abrasion resistance.

A product called UltraChrome from Ampacet (Tarrytown, NY) is said to create visual excitement with a luxurious mirror-like finish that teases the traditional boundaries between polished aluminum, chrome, and plastic materials.

Rapid prototyping with Somos NeXt resin enables part designers to reproduce designs with an "unprecedented combination of stiffness and toughness which typically characterizes thermoplastics, yet with all of the high-feature detail, dimensional accuracy, and aesthetics offered by stereolithography."