Bioplastic Pearl Jam 2015 Luggage Tags from Sea-Lect Plastics Corp
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20150716/BLOG08/150719936/marching-against-resistance-sounds-pretty-rock-n-roll-even-if-bioplastic-luggage-tag-doesnt
'Marching against resistance' sounds pretty rock 'n' roll, even if 'bioplastic luggage tag' doesn't
Rhoda Miel .. Pop Goes the Plastics
"The luggage tags made in Everett, Wash., by molder Sea-Lect Plastics Corp. using bio-based compostable plastic from Green Dot. "
..
Pearl Jam may have been a pioneer of “grunge rock,” but that doesn’t mean they want to leave behind a messy planet.
So the Seattle-based band has teamed with a Kansas resin maker and a Washington state molder to sell luggage tags for members of its Ten Club fan club made from bio-based, compostable plastics.
Yeah. I know. Luggage tags don’t exactly scream “rock ‘n’ roll,” but as Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard put it in a news release, they do represent an iconoclastic take on your standard tour souvenir.
“The need for better, compostable plastic goods is just so evident, and it’s amazing that the materials already exist. We’re just marching against resistance to implementation at this point.”
Pearl Jam is working with Green Dot Holdings LLC of Cottonwood Falls, Kan., the makers of the Terratek line of bio-based and compostable plastics, which already are used for iPhone cases and other products.
Green Dot, in turn, connected Pearl Jam with Sea-Lect Plastics Corp. of Everett, Wash., which worked with the band to design, tool and mold the luggage tags in the musicians’ own Seattle region.
“We’re here to help designers and manufacturers lighten the environmental impact of their product,” Green Dot CEO Mark Remmert said. “This project epitomizes everything that’s important to us. Making it locally is the icing on the cake.”
Green Dot points out that while the tags can “withstand the rigors of a worldwide tour,” they won’t begin to degrade until placed in a composting environment.
'Marching against resistance' sounds pretty rock 'n' roll, even if 'bioplastic luggage tag' doesn't
Rhoda Miel .. Pop Goes the Plastics
"The luggage tags made in Everett, Wash., by molder Sea-Lect Plastics Corp. using bio-based compostable plastic from Green Dot. "
..
Pearl Jam may have been a pioneer of “grunge rock,” but that doesn’t mean they want to leave behind a messy planet.
So the Seattle-based band has teamed with a Kansas resin maker and a Washington state molder to sell luggage tags for members of its Ten Club fan club made from bio-based, compostable plastics.
Yeah. I know. Luggage tags don’t exactly scream “rock ‘n’ roll,” but as Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard put it in a news release, they do represent an iconoclastic take on your standard tour souvenir.
“The need for better, compostable plastic goods is just so evident, and it’s amazing that the materials already exist. We’re just marching against resistance to implementation at this point.”
Pearl Jam is working with Green Dot Holdings LLC of Cottonwood Falls, Kan., the makers of the Terratek line of bio-based and compostable plastics, which already are used for iPhone cases and other products.
Green Dot, in turn, connected Pearl Jam with Sea-Lect Plastics Corp. of Everett, Wash., which worked with the band to design, tool and mold the luggage tags in the musicians’ own Seattle region.
“We’re here to help designers and manufacturers lighten the environmental impact of their product,” Green Dot CEO Mark Remmert said. “This project epitomizes everything that’s important to us. Making it locally is the icing on the cake.”
Green Dot points out that while the tags can “withstand the rigors of a worldwide tour,” they won’t begin to degrade until placed in a composting environment.
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Pearl Jam Teamed Up With Green Dot to Create a Biodegradable Luggage Tag
July 18 2015
Pearl Jam’s Ten Club recently teamed up with Green Dot, a Kansas-based bioplastics manufacturer, to make an entirely biodegradable luggage tag as a special gift to Ten Club Analog members. The tags were created by Sea-lect Plastics out of Seattle, and were designed to be tough enough to withstand a world tour, but gentle enough to return to nature.
The tags will biodegrade in any backyard compost, and are in line with the band’s ongoing efforts to identify and promote greener more sustainable products.
You can learn more about Green Dot’s biodegradable plastics here if you’re interested.
Learn how Pearl Jam partnered with Green Dot to create a gift that’s true to their fans and to the environment.
How Green Dot Helped Pearl Jam Create Better Products with Bioplastic A case study on the design, material selection and manufacturing of the Ten Club luggage tag Pearl Jam, the Ten Club and a commitment to sustainability
What comes to mind when you think of Pearl Jam? Eddie Vedder's gravely, ranging voice? The thirteen-time platinum album Ten, arguably one of the most recognizable albums of the `90s? The legions of dedicated followers that make up the band's fan club, the Ten Club?
If you're familiar with any of these things, you're more than likely already familiar with Pearl Jam's commitment to environmental sustainability. It's long been an integral part of the band's identity. The band's carbon mitigation efforts, led by guitarist Stone Gossard, and charitable giving to non-profits such as the Surfrider and Kelly Slater foundations are just a few manifestations of the band's environmental consciousness.
Making smarter merchandising happen
The Ten Club was founded in 1990 "as a way for the band to give back to their fans and to create a community around Pearl Jam's music." The club started out as little more than a PO Box through which the band could communicate with fans. But as the Ten Club began to grow into a worldwide network of dedicated enthusiasts, Pearl Jam began looking for ways to keep the club growing along with the band.
That search led them to Tim Bierman. At the time working in the music industry in San Francisco, Tim was a friend of bassist Jeff Ament from their days growing up together in Montana. Along with the band's manager, Kelly Curtis, Ament charged Bierman with the task of running the Ten Club, while adapting it to a nebulous new platform everyone seemed to be talking about: The World Wide Web
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Tim Bierman would also end up heading all the band's merchandising efforts, including Pearl Jam's annual membership gift to its fans. His challenge was twofold: Design a gift that represents the band's unique relationship with its fans, while remaining true to the band's commitment to lessening its impact on the environment.
"We've always been an organization that has provided unique merchandise items to our fans that we spend a lot of time on and that we really care about," Bierman said. With that in mind, he and his team began brainstorming gift ideas that would reflect the band's ideals.
Designing a greener gift
Ten Club staff had previously been given a directive to be on the lookout for applications for exciting new materials made by a company that members of Pearl Jam had recently added to their investment portfolio. The company, Green Dot, manufactures a full line of biobased and biodegradable bioplastics used in a wide range of industries including, furniture, pets, toys and lawn and garden. The biodegradable materials were of particular interest to the band members, as they address what they thought was a major issue with consumer plastics.
"The need for better, compostable plastic goods to exist is just so evident," said Gossard. "And it's just amazing that it already does exist and we're just marching against resistance to implementation at this point."
It was with this material in mind that Pearl Jam settled on the idea of creating a compostable plastic luggage tag for their dedicated followers. Knowing that their most hardcore fans, top-level members of the Ten Club, often traveled to multiple shows on a single tour, creating an item for making travel a little more organized seemed like a smart choice. Tim Bierman began working closely with Green Dot to coordinate execution.
How Green Dot Helped Pearl Jam Create Better Products with Bioplastic
What they now needed was a plastics molder capable of undertaking the job. The ideal company would have experience with plastic injection molding, but be flexible enough to work with a material they had never before encountered. It was also necessary that the company be local, so that the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process didn't negate the gains from manufacturing from a compostable bioplastic.
Green Dot introduced Bierman to Matt Poischbeg, Vice President and General Manager of Sea-Lect Plastics, a Seattle-area custom injection molding company. Working with Bierman and Green Dot, Sea-Lect proceeded to take the concept from the drawing table to the manufacturing floor.
Bierman sent a sample of a luggage tag design. The sample part was made with a silicone molding process commonly used in Asia. Sea-Lect's challenge was to re-engineer the part so that it could be injection molded. To keep down the cost of the mold, the first designs used a simple snap together feature.
Bierman liked the concept, but commented that the snap feature was too simple. In order to eliminate this concern, the pass cores were replaced with lift cores. This increased the mold cost slightly, but the resulting part was much cleaner.
Material Selection
After the design was approved, Green Dot and Sea-Lect began to evaluate which material thickness and hardness was necessary to provide enough stiffness to make the snap feature work, but still keep the part light and durable. To get a better understanding of the performance of the product,
Sea-Lect made a 3-D printed prototype out of a soft PolyJet resin at a 90 shore How Green Dot Helped Pearl Jam Create Better Products with Bioplastic
A hardness. Based on the prototype, Green Dot formulated a biodegradablebioplastic to meet the physical attributes required. The material was approved and sent to make masterbatch resins to color the parts.
Manufacturing
After the first molded samples were received from the toolmaker, some small adjustments were quickly made to the snap feature before the molds were delivered to Sea-Lect. Because the material was new, not a lot of process information was available. In the beginning the tag parts were cracking and warping badly. To eliminate this problem Sea-Lect experimented with the material and mold temperature and dialed in the process at a longer cycle time. "Overall I think the whole process went very well," said Matt Poischbeg. "Getting the right material and color concentrate took most of the time. Since the material is relatively new and some of the ingredients are of organic nature, predicting the outcome was difficult and needed to be validated by testing." In spite of these difficulties Poischbeg says, "we still believe that the material has a great value and hope that we can find more customers who, like Pearl Jam, want to use it."
How Green Dot Helped Pearl Jam Create Better Products with Bioplastic
The Final Product
Working with Green Dot and Sea-Lect Plastics, Pearl Jam was able to create great gift for their fans that was:
· A completely compostable item that could be disposed in a backyard compost where it would gently biodegrade
· A locally-made product with an extremely low all-around environmental footprint
· A unique, inspired way of keeping track of their bags while on the road
· A chance to join Pearl Jam in the promotion of smarter consumer goods, made from smarter materials, for the benefit of a cleaner planet
Stone Gossard hopes that Pearl Jam's process can lead to more widespread efforts on behalf of companies for taking into account their environmental impact. "If every company was motivated, and was rewarded by their consumers for acknowledging and mitigating their carbon output--using a variety of strategies, whether they be new technologies, investment in green energy, restoration of marginal lands, whatever strategy it is--I think it could be a powerful way of acknowledging what we're doing to the planet."
To learn more about how bioplastics and biocomposites can make more sustainable plastic products please visit the Learning Center at www.GreenDotPure.com
http://www.plasticstoday.com/articles/pearl-jam-partners-with-green-dot-to-create-bioplastic-luggage-tag-150721?utm_content=18120028
By Kari Embree
Published: July 21st, 2015
Many of you may know them as the ‘90s alternative rock band from Seattle with an impressive string of #1 hits in their repertoire—nearly 32 million records sold in the U.S. and an estimated 60 million worldwide—however, what you might not know about is Pearl Jam’s long history of dedication to the environment. In 2011, Pearl Jam was named 2011 Planet Defenders by Rock the Earth for their environmental activism and their large-scale efforts to decrease their own carbon emissions. Now as a special gift to dedicated fan members of the band’s hugely popular club, the Ten Club, Pearl Jam and Green Dot (Cottonwood Falls, KS) have partnered up with Sea-Lect Plastics (Everett, WA ), a custom injection molding company, to create a biodegradable luggage tag manufactured in the Seattle scene.
“It is exciting to work with artists and craftsmen who appreciate all aspects of a product’s design. Those outside the plastics industry especially value new materials that make their designs more meaningful. Plastics can be hip,” said Green Dot CEO Mark Remmert to PlasticsToday.
Green Dot is a full service bioplastics company dedicated to meeting the growing demand for biobased and compostable materials. They offer a full line of biobased and biodegradable plastics made from renewable, reclaimed and recycled materials. From furniture made from reclaimed wood-fibers and recycled plastic, to soft plastic iPhone cases that will biodegrade in a backyard compost, Green Dot helps make products that allow consumers to contribute to a more sustainable world.
Green Dot designed the bioplastic luggage tag exclusively for Ten Club members to be able to withstand the rigors of a worldwide tour, and when their useful life has ended, the materials can be returned to nature.
From design to manufacturing
It all started out with the luggage tag design. Once that was decided upon, the sample part was made with a silicone molding process commonly used in Asia. Sea-Lect’s challenge was to re-engineer the part so that it could be injection molded. To minimize cost, the first design used a simple snap together feature. Bierman liked the concept, but commented that the snap feature was too simple. To remedy this, the pass cores were swapped out with lift cores. This increased the mold cost a tad, but the resulting part was much cleaner.
After the design was signed off on, Green Dot and Sea-Lect began to evaluate which material thickness and hardness was needed to allow for enough stiffness to make the snap feature functional, but still keep the part light and durable. To get a better understanding of the performance of the product, Sea-Lect made a 3D-printed prototype out of a soft PolyJet resin at a 90 shore A hardness. Going off the prototype, Green Dot formulated a biodegradable bioplastic to meet the physical attributes required. The material was approved and sent to make masterbatch resins to color the parts.
After the first molded samples were received from the toolmaker, some minor changes were quickly made to the snap feature before the molds were delivered to Sea-Lect. Because the material was new, not a lot of process information was available. In the early stages, the tag parts were cracking and warping badly. To remedy this problem Sea-Lect experimented with the material and mold temperature and dialed in the process at a longer cycle time.
“Overall I think the whole process went very well,” said Matt Poischbeg, Vice President and General Manager of Sea-Lect Plastics. “Getting the right material and color concentrate took most of the time. Since the material is relatively new and some of the ingredients are of organic nature, predicting the outcome was difficult and needed to be validated bytesting.”
A smarter future
Stone Gossard, guitarist for Pearl Jam spoke to the importance of not filling landfills with goods that could be made using smarter materials. “The need for better, compostable plastic goods is just so evident,” he said. “And it’s amazing that the materials already exist. We’re just marching against resistance to implementation at this point.”
Tim Bierman, head of Pearl Jam’s Ten Club, is also in charge of merchandising for the band. “We’ve always been an organization that has provided unique merchandise items to our fans,” he said. Bierman added that, for the band’s hardcore followers who often travel to multiple shows on a given tour, luggage tags were both a functional gift and an acknowledgement of the band’s ideals.”
“Green Dot is science-based, style driven, and socially conscious,” adds Remmert. “We’re here to help designers and manufacturers lighten the environmental impact of their products. This project epitomizes everything that’s important to us. Making it locally is the icing on the cake.”
Gossard hopes that Pearl Jam’s process can lead to more widespread efforts on behalf of companies for taking into account their environmental impact.
“If every company was motivated, and was rewarded by their consumers for acknowledging and mitigating their carbon output—using a variety of strategies, whether they be new technologies, investment in green energy, restoration of marginal lands, whatever strategy it is—I think it could be a powerful way of acknowledging what we’re doing to the planet.”
Grunge Meets Green
7/24/15 | Earth Day Network |
Pearl Jam may be known as an alternative rock and grunge band from Washington, but they also have an environmental edge too. In the past, the band has been recognized for “rocking the environmental mission,” as Pearl Jam was named 2011 Planet Defenders by Rock the Earth for their environmental activism and their large-scale efforts to decrease their own carbon footprint.
Four years later, Pearl Jam continues to be environmental activists, and even the fans are joining in the movement. Now, as a special gift to dedicated fan members of the band’s hugely popular club, the Ten Club, Pearl Jam and Green Dot (a bioscience social enterprise) have partnered up with Sea-Lect Plastics (a custom injection molding company) to create a biodegradable luggage tag manufactured in their hometown Seattle. Embracing their local roots, Pearl Jam stands at the forefront of this innovative product. Stone Gossard, guitarist for Pearl Jam stresses that the “need for better, compostable plastic goods is just so evident. It’s amazing that the materials already exist. We’re just marching against resistance to implementation at this point.”
It’s inevitable that popular bands will be in the spotlight; what they choose to share or how they choose to act is left up to the members themselves. In this case, Pearl Jam has decided sustainability is a must, and they have used their fame to help make consumers think about the products they buy. (Now that is what I call a good PR move!)
“We’ve always been an organization that has provided unique merchandise items to our fans,” said Tim Bierman, head of Pearl Jam’s Ten Club. “The band’s hardcore followers who often travel to multiple shows on a given tour, luggage tags were both a functional gift and an acknowledgement of the band’s ideals.” Sustainable and practical—a win- win for the fans and the environment.
Elli Sloan, Intern