Plastics: "The Graduate" should have listened

By Ray Kulwiec -- Modern Materials Handling, 12/1/1998

In the 1967 movie, "The Graduate," Dustin Hoffman is approached by a family friend at his graduation party who utters one word: "Plastics." The guest's intent was to encourage Hoffman's character, Benjamin, to enter the promising field of plastics. Unfortunately for his financial future, Benjamin doesn't get it.

Since that time, plastics has been a lucrative and innovative field but for a while, it looked as though environmental concerns might limit further growth of plastic products. Also, questions about long-term stability and fire safety had been raised.

Today, a new generation of plastic products with superior performance has opened the floodgates to a range of plastic packaging innovations. I saw a number of them at Pack Expo and heard others discussed. Examples include the following:

- Dean Foods' new Chugs milk container has created a stir and repositioned a staid, traditional product for new growth.

- Proprietary shaped containers such as Vittel's distinctive ribbed, "square" water bottle are being used as identity icons.

- Miller Brewing's new plastic beer bottle represents a major innovation in the beverage field.

Plastic bottles were shown to advantage in a depalletizer displayed by Busse (Pinnacle). Layers of bottles are quietly swiped away from their base without the traditional clanking sound of glass bottles.

Also at the show, Cookson introduced an edge-rackable plastic pallet that uses a unique combination of GE resins to retain rigidity in storage racks while receiving UL approval for fire protection. A first for the plastic pallet was gaining UL fire protection listing said to be equivalent to that for wooden pallets.

Materials handling expertise will work with these new plastic products in a variety of applications. Based on what I saw at Pack Expo, the future is bright indeed.

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