furnishings market because of the many and varied industries involved. He defines home furnishings as anything and everything that goes into the conversion of a bare house into a home. This includes furniture and accessories, appliances, carpets and floor coverings, bedding, wall and ceiling treatments, lighting fixtures, and the like. Focusing on plastics in furniture, Mr. Rhyce credits the expected rapid growth of plastics in furniture to several developments, including consolidation and merging of firms to create larger companies where efficient production methods become critical, the steadily increasing availability and improved properties of plastics, the increased technology for molding, fabricating, and mold-making for plastics, and the fact that present fashions, particularly Spanish, Italian, and Mediterranean styles which are almost symbolic of fine craftsmanship, cannot be achieved with wood on an economic basis to satisfy the mass market. Mr. Rhyce predicts that the idealized furniture company of the future will have one or two large basic raw material processing centers making component parts which will then be shipped to strategically located assembly plants. "Not too long ago, the biggest disadvantage of plastics use in home furnishings was consumer acceptability," Mr. Rhyce says. The concept that "if it's plastic, it's cheap and breakable" prevailed. This idea has been almost eliminated from the consumer's mind. Today the biggest disadvantage of plastics still lies in the realm of education—not that of the consumer but that of the manufacturer, he explains. Autos. Mr. Kopka says that the automobile industry will sell 10 million cars and 2 million trucks this year. Although plastics have moved from decorative to integral and useful func-
Ingle: six-point program
tions that help maintain good appearance, Mr. Kopka says that the full flowering of the age of plastics in major automotive components may still be years ahead. Nevertheless, "those of us who design for the future are confident that new materials and processes evolving from normal technological progress will help us shape the future," he says. To shape that future, he outlines a number of uses for plastics in auto design that cry out for innovation by plastics fabricators. The development of air conditioned-heated seats could be facilitated by techniques to integrate cloth and knit vinyl into advance designs. Another innovation Ford is studying is an integral restraint seat containing its own safety belt and belt retractor mechanism. The seat would have a rigid shell surrounding an inner structure. The use of self-skinning urethane in a combination of soft and medium densities would provide proper ride dynamics. The drive for safer, cleaner, less easily damaged cars offers plastics producers one of their greatest opportunities, according to Mr. Kopka. Air bags seem to demand the use of plastics, Mr. Kopka says. Cars able to protect occupants from 30 mile-perhour impacts against solid barriers seem to dictate the use of some kind of convoluted fuel tank, perhaps foam filled to prevent spillage and lower evaporation losses. Mr. Kopka predicts that the future will bring the auto industry a host of new uses of plastics, including a degradable plastic film that could be used as a base material for the vacuum-forming of cloth. A clear, distortion-free, nonscratchable, heat resistant plastic that is soft on one side and hard on the other could have use in windshields and rearview mirrors. A flexible, durable, heat-resistant plastic could find wide use in damageprone areas of the car, such as fenders, hoods, and deck lids. Detroit would also be quick to adopt low-cost plastic systems for heated windshields and plastic skid rails for pickup truck beds. The greatest contribution the plastics industry can make for the auto industry, and presumably other industries, is to develop materials so new and so exciting that they stimulate design, Mr. Kopka says. There is a continuing need for cloth combining the look and feel of fine materials with the durability of vinyls, for example. Mr. Kopka even predicts the return of the hood ornament, if plastics suppliers can develop a supple yet firm ornament for the cars and trucks of tomorrow.
i Plastic container tax ruled out in New York New York City's proposed tax on plastic containers has been ruled "unconstitutional, invalid, and void" in a landmark decision that should give pause to other cities contemplating a similar approach to the problems of air and solid waste pollution. Judge Saul S. Streit of the New York County Supreme Court rejected all the city's arguments in defense of the tax, and found that the tax would neither encourage the recycling of plastic containers nor lower the cost of solid waste disposal. The suit was initiated this summer after the New York City Council—citing a state law that authorizes the city to impose taxes "on all containers made of rigid or semirigid paperboard, fiber, glass, metal, plastic, or any combination of such materials"— imposed a 2-cent tax on rigid and semirigid plastic containers for beverage and other nonfood uses. The Society of the Plastics Industry and 51 plastics and container manufacturers and distributors immediately challenged the legality and constitutionality of the law (C&EN, July 26, page 11), contending that it would destroy the city's fledgling plastics industry. Judge Streit agreed. "The state legislature [obviously] intended to impose a tax on all the enumerated container materials," he wrote in his decision, whereas the purpose and effect of the city's law was "to curtail the amount of plastics, and to eliminate as many plastics as possible." Nothing in the state act, he writes, authorizes "the destruction of the plastic container industry for the ultimate benefit of the paper, glass, and metal industries in New York City." Furthermore, a key paragraph of Judge Streit's ruling says that "not one shred of evidence [was] presented which demonstrated that any form of container, glass, metal, or paperboard, is any more recyclable than plastic containers." Moreover, the city's arguments that plastic containers are significant sources of air pollution were, according to Judge Streit, "weak and inconclusive." Although the city is expected to appeal the ruling, SPI and the plastics companies were obviously pleased. Their big, long-range gain, says an SPI spokesman, is that many other cities have been watching the proceedings carefully, and they will now hesitate and think about it" before instituting such a tax themselves. NOV. 22, 1971 C&EN 13
