Word: plastics
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...Born In-flight comfort with an internet connection in every seat Take a Hike Destinations to restore your sense of wonder Toile De Jouy, that pretty print strewn with idyllic scenes of the French countryside, may seem best suited for upholstering a sofa that's covered (permanently) in plastic. But designers are dusting off traditional patterns like toile and splashing them on wallpaper and trench coats. For his spring 2005 collection for Burberry, designer Christopher Bailey drew inspiration from an English classic: blue-and-white Wedgwood ceramics. The French fabric company Pierre Frey recently introduced Hong Kong , a toile depicting...
Santa's workshop is anything but shipshape: sacks of bell-shaped ornaments cascade from tabletops, plastic buckets leak cartoon-colored chemicals onto the cement floor, and scattered tinsel is everywhere. Ding Hangjuan, a 43-year-old former peasant, kicks through the Yuletide wreckage. Ding set up her ornament factory in an abandoned schoolhouse six years ago to manufacture decorations for Christmas trees in the U.S. This year, Ding's 400 workers labored overtime to supply a brand-new market. "My buyers were once foreigners, but now 10% of what I make stays here in China," she says...
...Ding's prosperity is shared with just about everyone living in Yiwu, China's very own North Pole. Thousands of vendors offer whirling Christmas trees with glowing fiber-optic needles, chicken-feather angel wings and that traditional favorite without which no holiday living room is complete: the plastic statuette of Santa playing electric guitar on the moon. All this might have confused Chinese consumers a few years ago, but Yiwu is feeding a ravenous demand by mainland consumers who think that the height of contemporary urbanity is to festoon the living room in December. "I'd always heard of Christmas...
...This trend once alarmed China's Communist leadership. In 1993, the government banned public Christmas celebrations (as well as those for Easter and April Fools' Day). These days, the government has backed off and sees benefit in consumer-led economic growth. That translates into blinking lights and plastic wreaths for anyone who can afford them, and lots of waitresses dressed in Santa's red-and-whites that show a bit of leg. (Nativity scenes and other overtly religious displays are still forbidden by government decree.) Some restaurants in Beijing offer $300-a-plate Christmas dinners that newspapers deride as "money...
...amazing inventions. There was not a word in your report about reuse, recycling, sustainability or even compatibility with existing or future products. Each of the inventions seems to be a stand-alone technology, and some are even designed to be disposable. As wonderful as it may be to have plastic tattoos on my iPod and rubbery tubes to keep my shoes tied, how will I explain to my grandchildren that it was this kind of thinking that filled the world's landfills and depleted our limited resources...