Rethinking the paper cup — beginning with extrusion process optimization for compostability and recyclability

More than 50 billion disposable paper cups used for cold and hot beverages are sold within the United States each year. Most of the cups are coated with a thin layer of plastic — low density polyethylene (LDPE) — to prevent leaking and staining. While the paper in these cups is both recyclable and compostable, the LDPE coating is neither. In recycling a paper cup, the paper is separated from the plastic lining. The paper is sent to be recycled and the plastic lining is typically sent to landfill. In an industrial composting environment, the paper and lining can be composted together if the lining is made from compostable materials. Coating paper cups with a compostable performance material uniquely allows for used cups to be processed by either recycling or composting, thus creating multiple pathways for these products to flow through a circular economy. A segment of the paper converting industry frequently uses an extrusion grade of polylactic acid (PLA) for zero-waste venues and for municipalities with ordinances for local composting and food service items. The results among these early adopters reveal process inefficiencies that elevate manufacturing costs while increasing scrap and generally lowering output when using PLA for extrusion coating. NatureWorks and Sung An Machinery (SAM) North America researched the extrusion coating process utilizing the incumbent polymer (LDPE) and PLA. The trademarked Ingeo 1102 is a new, compostable, and bio-based PLA grade that is specifically designed for the extrusion coating process. The research team identified the optimum process parameters for new, dedicated PLA extrusion coating lines. The team also identified changes to existing LDPE extrusion lines that processors can make today to improve output. The key finding is that LDPE and PLA are significantly different polymers and that processing them on the same equipment without modification of systems and/or setpoints can be the root cause of inefficiencies. These polymers each have unique processing requirements with inverse responses. Fine tuning existing systems may improve over-all output for the biopolymer without capital investment, and this study showed an increase in line speed of 130% by making these adjustments. However, the researchers found that highest productivity can be achieved by specifying new systems for PLA. A line speed increase to more than 180% and a reduction in coat weight to 8.6 µm (10.6 g/m2 or 6.5 lb/3000 ft2) was achieved in this study. These results show that Ingeo 1102 could be used as a paper coating beyond cups.

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Solar Renewable Energy Credit Price Volatility and Investment Returns: Have Policies Stranded Capital Investment?

Commonwealth ◽

10.15367/com.v19i1.135 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Somayeh Youssefi ◽

Patrick L. Gurian

Keyword(s):

Solar Energy ◽

Capital Investment ◽

Supply And Demand ◽

Price Volatility ◽

The United States ◽

Investment Model ◽

Capital Investments ◽

Demand Model ◽

Market Prices ◽

Investment Returns

Pennsylvania is one of a number of U.S. states that provide incentives for the generation of electricity by solar energy through Solar Renewal Energy Credits (SRECs). This article develops a return on investment model for solar energy generation in the PJM (mid-Atlantic) region of the United States. Model results indicate that SREC values of roughly $150 are needed for residential scale systems to break even over a 25-year project period at 3% interest. Market prices for SRECs in Pennsylvania have been well below this range from late 2011 through the first half of 2016, indicating that previous capital investments in solar generation have been stranded as a result of steep declines in the value of SRECs. A simple conceptual supply and demand model is developed to explain the sharp decline in market prices for SRECs. Also discussed is a possible policy remedy that would add unsold SRECs in a given year to the SREC quota for the subsequent year.

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Hard Times: Routine Schedule Unpredictability and Material Hardship among Service Sector Workers

Social Forces ◽

10.1093/sf/soaa079 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Daniel Schneider ◽

Kristen Harknett

Keyword(s):

Service Sector ◽

Food Service ◽

The United States ◽

Economic Security ◽

Work Schedules ◽

Material Hardship ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Hard Times ◽

Advance Notice ◽

Food Service Workers

Abstract American policymakers have long focused on work as a key means to improve economic wellbeing. Yet, work has become increasingly precarious and polarized. This precarity is manifest in low wages but also in unstable and unpredictable work schedules that often vary significantly week to week with little advance notice. We draw on new survey data from The Shift Project on 37,263 hourly retail and food service workers in the United States. We assess the association between routine unpredictability in work schedules and household material hardship. Using both cross-sectional models and panel models, we find that workers who receive shorter advanced notice, those who work on-call, those who experience last minute shift cancellation and timing changes, and those with more volatile work hours are more likely to experience hunger, residential, medical, and utility hardships as well as more overall hardship. Just-in-time work schedules afford employers a great deal of flexibility but at a heavy cost to workers’ economic security.

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Corporate Governance, Economic Entrenchment, and Growth

Journal of Economic Literature ◽

10.1257/002205105774431252 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 43 (3) ◽

pp. 655-720 ◽

Cited By ~ 841

Author(s):

Randall Morck ◽

Daniel Wolfenzon ◽

Bernard Yeung

Keyword(s):

Corporate Governance ◽

Capital Investment ◽

Corporate Control ◽

Political Influence ◽

Institutional Development ◽

The United States ◽

Firm Level ◽

Control Structures ◽

Resource Misallocation ◽

Property Rights Protection

Outside the United States and the United Kingdom, large corporations usually have controlling owners, who are usually very wealthy families. Pyramidal control structures, cross shareholding, and super-voting rights let such families control corporations without making a commensurate capital investment. In many countries, a few such families end up controlling considerable proportions of their countries' economies. Three points emerge. First, at the firm level, these ownership structures, because they vest dominant control rights with families who often have little real capital invested, permit a range of agency problems and hence resource misallocation. If a few families control large swaths of an economy, such corporate governance problems can attain macroeconomic importance—affecting rates of innovation, economywide resource allocation, and economic growth. If political influence depends on what one controls, rather than what one owns, the controlling owners of pyramids have greatly amplified political influence relative to their actual wealth. This influence can distort public policy regarding property rights protection, capital markets, and other institutions. We denote this phenomenon economic entrenchment, and posit a relationship between the distribution of corporate control and institutional development that generates and preserves economic entrenchment as one possible equilibrium. The literature suggests key determinants of economic entrenchment, but has many gaps where further work exploring the political economy importance of the distribution of corporate control is needed.

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Child Labor

10.1093/obo/9780199756797-0208 ◽

2021 ◽

Keyword(s):

Child Labor ◽

Formal Education ◽

Food Service ◽

Population Group ◽

The United States ◽

Consumer Products ◽

Adverse Outcomes ◽

Forced Labor ◽

Daily Work ◽

Safety And Health

Globally, around 200 million children, or minors seventeen years old or younger, are involved in child labor in various industries (including food service, manufacturing, and construction), and about 20 million children are involved in forced labor. In the United States, consistently federal agencies conservatively estimate about 200,000 children are injured at work each year. Among many potential activities available to older children outside of school, paid and unpaid work are two common legal options. Child labor helps produce consumer products and food used by citizens in their communities as local subsistence, or services, and helps supply global markets. Thus, in daily work of minors—a known susceptible, vulnerable population group—exposures occur to acute and chronic safety and health risks due to multiple agents indoors, outdoors, and in semi-enclosed areas. Working children may miss formal education, play, and other opportunities for healthy social and personal physical, mental, and emotional development. This article summarizes specific physical safety and health aspects of child labor based on peer-reviewed literature worldwide through January 2020. Sections of this article—after highlighting references providing a brief historical overview—purposely summarize research on adverse outcomes (injury and illness) of child labor by regions of the world and for specific countries where relatively more peer-reviewed research has been published to date. This article does not cover details of other important economic, social, and psychological aspects of child labor, topics for which other review articles and book chapters exist. This article can help public health researchers and practitioners understand more about child labor and associated injury and illness.

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Measuring the availability of “good jobs” in the United States for working-class men during the Great Recession and recovery

10.31235/osf.io/tn64k ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Janette Dill ◽

Robert Francis

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Great Recession ◽

Food Service ◽

The United States ◽

Job Quality ◽

Full Time ◽

The Great Recession ◽

Predicted Probability ◽

Time Work ◽

The Impact

In this study, we use the 2004, 2008, and 2014 panels of the Survey for Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to measure the impact of the Great Recession and recovery on the availability of “good jobs” for men without a college degree. We define “good jobs” using a cluster of job quality measures, including wage thresholds of at least $15, $20, or $25 per hour, employer-based health insurance, full-time work hours, and protection from layoff. We find that the Great Recession and aftermath (2008-2015) resulted in a 1-10% reduced probability of being in a “good job” across most industries, with especially large losses in manufacturing, retail, transportation, and food service (compared to 2004-2007). In the 2014 panel, there is only a slight post-recession recovery in the predicted probability of being in a “good job,” and the probability of being in a “good job” remains well below 2004 levels. Although the probability of being on layoff from a “good jobs” does decrease substantially in the 2014 cohort as compared to the rate of layoff during the Great Recession, our clustered measure of job quality shows that access to “good jobs” remains limited for most working-class men and that the recovery from the Recession has largely not reached the working-class.

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A Study of the Environmental Issues Associated with the Dominican RepublicCentral American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA)

International Business & Economics Research Journal (IBER) ◽

10.19030/iber.v8i1.3095 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Shyamalendu Sarkar

Keyword(s):

Free Trade ◽

Capital Investment ◽

Free Trade Agreement ◽

Trade Agreement ◽

The United States ◽

Economic Incentives ◽

Central American ◽

Environmental Objectives ◽

Environmental Requirements ◽

The U.S

The Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) with the United States was passed on July 28, 2005. The main goal of DR-CAFTA is to create a free trade zone for economic development. The Agreement is highly controversial with many contentious issues including concern about the environment, which is the focus of this study. The concern is that the environmental objectives are expected to be subservient to trade and other economic incentives which will lead to further deterioration of the environment in countries where the environmental standards are already low. The effects on the U.S. environment are expected to be minimal. However, it is feared that the U.S. manufacturing facilities may relocate to Central American countries to take advantage of low wages and low environmental requirements, which may result in loss of jobs and capital investment in the U.S. However, overall DR-CAFTA is expected to be beneficial in many ways, including an increase in trade and economic growth in all participating countries.

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Food Safety: Problems of the Past and Perspectives of the Future1

Journal of Food Protection ◽

10.4315/0362-028x-45.7.658 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 45 (7) ◽

pp. 658-660 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

E. M. FOSTER

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Food Poisoning ◽

Food Service ◽

The United States ◽

Red Tides ◽

Animal Products ◽

The Past ◽

Processing Plants ◽

Market Areas ◽

Bacterial Food

Historically, most bacterial food poisoning in the United States is associated with mishandling, either in the home or in the food service establishment. Outbreaks traceable to errors in processing plants are rare. When they do occur they are often associated with changes in processing or packaging technology whose effect is not determined before the product is on the market. Areas of future concern that need research include (1) a better understanding of the mycotoxins; (2) how to minimize Salmonella contamination in animal products; (3) how to prevent, or at least predict, red tides; (4) better bactericidal agents that can be applied to foods; (5) an understanding of the nature and significance of mutagenic agents that are produced in foods during cooking.

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