Apparently, plastic rings got a bad rap in the animated film Happy Feet. Hi-Cone, a leading beverage packaging company, says “not fair” to the movie's presentation of wildlife endangerment from improperly discarded plastic rings from beverage carriers.
In the film, one of the animated penguin characters — voiced by Robin Williams — returns to his habitat with a ring carrier around his neck. “That's a misleading and irresponsible characterization,” says Steve Henn, vice president and general manager at Hi Cone. “It's a shame the producers of Happy Feet didn't do their homework on this subject.” Henn notes that plastic rings are designed to disintegrate almost completely from exposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays.
Henn says the packaging industry has worked for years to change misconceptions of the biodegradability of plastic rings. “Since the late 1980s, we've been trying to correct misrepresentations about ring carriers by working with scientific and environmental organizations to communicate how advances in plastics' technology have made them completely biodegradable,” says Henn. He explains that plastic rings exposed to the sun, wind and rain will break apart. “The risk for wildlife endangerment is almost nonexistent today because the photodegradable rings lose their strength and become brittle.”
Almost every automaker has had to 'pick a side' when it comes to alternative fuel options and ways to divest from a reliance on gasoline. Fiat is looking to back compressed natural gas or liquid propane as an interim solution.
Designing and filling a new type of water bottle might take less engineering work, but the description will help kids understand how science, math, and engineering influence their lives even through things that seem mundane.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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