There’s the Oscars, the Emmys and the Grammys. Or if you want to go more highbrow, you’ve got your Nobel, Booker or Pulitzer prizes.Add to that the , a new virtual award ceremony dedicated to reusable packaging.It’s being sponsored by Upstream Solutions and the Closed Loop Partners, which raises money for recycling investments. Among other work with the plastics industry, CLP recently launched a new fund with resin makers Dow Inc., LyondellBasell Industries and Nova Chemicals Corp.The Reusies will take place Sept. 30, in a virtual format. The groups enlisted two actors from the sitcom Parks and Recreation in a clever promo .Reusables are more on the fringes now of packaging, but it’s a model getting more attention from groups like the U.S. Plastics Pact and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, as they search for ways to make packaging more circular.Upstream recently released a making the business case for reusable packaging. The executive summary makes what I think is a good point about waste, recycling and packaging: “Trying to solve the problem by targeting plastics alone misses the point. Solving this requires a paradigm shift from single-use to reuse.”Nominations are being accepted through July 11. Kids love dinosaurs for a lot of reasons: They’re powerful and fierce, or they look like giant lizards, or there’s hundreds of different kinds to study, obsess over and tell the adults around them all about.Now you can add to that some eco-friendliness. has come up with a way to make models of dinosaur fossils while cutting back on the amount of fossil fuel-based plastics they need to do that.This fall, Tokyo-based Bandai plans to introduce versions of its Tyrannosaurus and triceratops models for kids, made with a limestone-based Plastic, in North America and Asia.It’s part of a sustainability kick for the toymaker: The models are made with at least 50 percent limestone-based plastic developed in Japan. But Bandai says they have a performance advantage, too.The limestone, which is made from inorganic materials like calcium carbonate, has a more natural texture and feels heavier than the polystyrene normally used.”They have a dry, gypsum-like feel and matte surface with a gentle sheen,” the company said in a press release. “Furthermore, because they contain a lot of minerals, they feel heavier in the hand than conventional plastic.”It’s not likely to tip the scales on global warming, and probably nobody’s going to notice a drop in thermoplastic shipments in the toy market. But the company wants to see if a greener dinosaur toy becomes popular with kids.”We aim to achieve sustainable resource circulation, reducing our use of petroleum-based plastics by over 5 tons per year and contributing to a reduction in CO2 emissions,” Bandai said. Environmental stewardship or nanny state. The change in the White House has some groups pushing to reinstate the on the sale of disposable water bottles in national parks.The Obama administration gave individual parks the authority to make the decision. But the director of the National Park Service for President Donald Trump reversed that, seeing it more as an individual choice and saying that “it should be up to our visitors to decide how best to keep themselves and their families hydrated during a visit to a national park.”Now, environmental groups led by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility are asking for a renewed ban on disposable plastic bottles in parks and the President Joe Biden to work toward larger reductions in plastic waste in parks.”If the federal government hopes to go ‘green,’ a realistic first step and one of the most important places to start is with our national parks,” said Mark Magaña, founding president and CEO of GreenLatinos, one of the groups pushing the Biden administration.Do you have an opinion about this story? Do you have some thoughts you’d like to share with our readers? Plastics News would love to hear from you. Email your letter to Editor at Staying current is easy with Plastics News delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge. Subscribe to Plastics News Plastics News covers the business of the global plastics industry. We report news, gather data and deliver timely information that provides our readers with a competitive advantage.Customer Service: