Adam Sandler's character may be The Waterboy most people picture for college and professional football, but a water company brand wants to shine a light on those men and women on the sidelines who run out onto the field during timeouts with plastic bottles of electrolytes and water.
A video about "hydration assistants" comes from the brand Liquid Death, which uses a very impractical — in my opinion — aluminum can for its packaging. (Observations from encountering this brand at a recent event ranged from "Oh that's water? I thought it was beer," to "I wish I could reseal this and sip on it for a while.")
But let's ignore the marketing and instead salute the actual water boy — or water girl — you see on the sidelines with bottles. They're typically someone who's already an athletic trainer or is studying to become one.
The Professional Football Athletic Trainers Society offers internships with teams during the regular season and at training camps. The trainers not only prepare and carry bottles seen during games and practices, but also they have increased importance at summer training camps where they sometimes are working with young players who don't yet know their limits.
"Monitoring and counseling players on their hydration … during training camp is a priority of every NFL athletic training staff," PFATS says.
We seem to be at a very odd place when it comes to recycling, with brand owners saying they need more plastic packaging to be recycled, but at the same time prices have fallen for recycled PET on the market now. Meanwhile, the Association of Plastic Recyclers maintains that U.S. recyclers have capacity to take on even more packaging for a circular economy but they lack feedstock.
PN's Jim Johnson wrote last week about how bales of PET are stacked up with nowhere to go due to low prices. Then on Aug. 10, as Jim also wrote, APR issued a report saying that recycling rates for the items that consumers use are not as bad as official numbers put out by U.S. agencies.
The organization also maintains that there is enough recycling capacity within the U.S. now to reach a 40 percent recycling rate for PET and high density polyethylene, but recyclers lack a steady stream of containers to recycle.
I'm not about to try and analyze what this combination of news stories means. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who can — and should — address it more fully than I could. But I do think it's worth noting that it's obvious the issues facing recycling are far more complex than others would have you believe.
If you have $1 and are near Jenison, Mich., this weekend (a suburb southwest of Grand Rapids, Mich.) might I suggest an old-fashioned, low-tech plastic water slide?
The Saturday Slip N' Slide features four 40-by-100-foot plastic sheets on the side of a hill. The $1 donation covers as many trips down the water slide as you can fit in between noon and 5 p.m. on Aug. 13.
The event began 10 years ago but was put on hold in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19.
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