More than 100 years of trying hasn't produced a reliable paper bottle. Why is it so challenging?

Inventing a reliable paper bottle has proved 'curiously
complicated.' (Adobe Stock photo)

The search for a non-leaking, carbonation-protecting paper bottle continues. "For more than a century, businesses have struggled to solve a curiously complicated challenge: How to make a paper bottle that doesn't get soggy and keeps drinks fresh. . . . Now they say they are the closest they have ever been," reports Saabira Chaudhuri of The Wall Street Journal. Diageo, Pernod Ricard and Procter & Gamble are "testing paper-bottle designs. . . (to) help their brands stand out on shelves, woo consumers concerned about plastic and cut carbon emissions associated with glass."

Creating a paper bottle has presented companies with a series of obstacles. For instance, they've had to use plastic liners to keep bottles from leaking. Also, paper-only bottles can fail to keep flavors "intact and stop fizzy drinks from going flat," Chaudhuri explains. Even though the public may prefer paper over plastic, "There isn't an all-paper bottle on the market. . . . Consumer-products companies are plowing ahead. . . . [seeking] a paper bottle that is easy to recycle, avoids fossil fuel-based plastic, and ultimately boosts sales."

Companies want to use paper bottles for everything from skin cream to drinks to fabric softeners, but the elusive all-paper container has yet to be invented. Currently, versions of almost-all-paper containers are being made for testing. Chaudhuri reports: "Test batches allow companies to determine the answers to the many unknowns. Will consumers mind if paper shampoo bottles are water-stained? How will paper impact supply chains when the bottles don't keep products fresh for as long as glass and plastic? Will drinkers miss the click of glass bottles when they cheer with them?"

For now, testing batches of almost-all-paper bottles contain a plastic liner, with some companies focusing on reducing the size of the liner. Chaudhuri writes, "Spirits maker Diageo sees paper bottles as a way to use less glass without diminishing the luxury aspect of its brands." Dave Lütkenhaus, Diageo's breakthrough innovation director, told Chaudhuri: "It has proved much more challenging than we anticipated to keep a complex liquid like whisky in paper. It's not just cracking one problem; we are trying to crack all these problems as they come along."

Bottle tops aren't made of paper, but companies are working on the challenge, too. "Paboco promised to use paper caps by 2023 but missed its deadline," Chaudhuri explains. "The obstacle: Paper fibers swell in moist conditions, meaning the caps weren't a reliable fit."

Cloud seeding can make it rain in about 20 minutes; drought-stricken areas are investing in the old technology

Cloud seeding has been around in some form since the 1950s, but due to extreme drought across much of the U.S., the technology is experiencing "a renaissance," reports Erice Niiler of The Wall Street Journal. "Across the Western U.S. and Mexico, demand for cloud seeding has skyrocketed as increasing periods of extreme drought and a warming climate make it a cheaper alternative to big-ticket technological solutions such as the desalination of water piped inland from the Pacific Ocean or Gulf of Mexico. Cloud-seeding programs to boost both rain and snowfall are now underway in Texas, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico and California."

A single-engine aircraft flies over Texas, injecting cloud-seeding particles of
silver iodide. (Photo by Jonathan Jennings and Ilana Panich-Linsman, WSJ)

Cloud seeding can work in the sky or "on the ground, where chimney-like generators send chemicals into air masses as they move up the side of mountains," the Journal reports. "Most cloud-seeding efforts use particles of silver iodide, which have a crystal structure similar to ice. Once the chemicals are injected, the air temperature must reach 20 degrees Fahrenheit—then water vapor begins to freeze around the silver iodide, getting big enough to fall to the ground as either rain or snow," Niiler writes. "In the summer, cloud-seeding firms use the water-attracting properties of salt crystals such as calcium chloride to do the same thing, except in warmer, humid clouds.. . . Cloud-seeding produces rain about 20 minutes after it reaches the cloud."

Not everyone thinks this is an answer to drought. "Some weather experts question its effectiveness and whether it just pulls rainwater from one area to fall in another. They say conservation on the ground is a surer way to preserve scarce water supplies," Niiler reports. "The World Meteorological Organization reviewed cloud-seeding programs across the globe in 2018 and concluded that cloud seeding is a promising technology but that the natural variability in each cloud system makes it difficult to quantify the difference seeding makes."

"Sarah Tessendorf, an author of the study and project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said the environmental risks of cloud seeding are relatively benign since the amount of silver detected in the snow is below harmful levels," Niiler reports. Tessendorf told him: "The key question we're trying to figure out is under what conditions is cloud seeding most effective." Niiler adds, "In March, the Bureau of Reclamation announced a $2.4 million grant for states in the Upper Colorado River Basin to conduct aerial and ground-based cloud seeding."

"For 73-year-old West Texas farmer Steve Williams, the benefit of occasional extra rainfall is worth the minimal amount he pays in taxes to his local water district that are earmarked for cloud seeding, about $20 a year," Niiler writes. "Williams and his son, Ty Williams, farm 1,774 acres of cotton and wheat in Schleicher County, Texas, one of six counties covered by the aerial seeding flights from the West Texas Weather Modification Association in San Angelo. . . . Williams said he usually only gets one or two cloud-seeded rainfalls directly over his property each planting season. However, the seeding drops rain on farms around him, recharging the underground aquifer that he and his neighbors depend on for irrigation and drinking water." Williams told Niiler: "It is a community effort. Everybody benefits. If you happen to get under one of Jonathan's clouds, you did pretty good."

Journalists who chronicled rural America by prop plane will tell the stories of towns transformed through local innovation

Deborah and Jim Fallows

Journalists Jim and Deborah Fallows spent five years writing about small towns and their newspapers for The Atlantic, parlaying their their travels via a small plane into a best-selling 2018 book and an HBO documentary. Last year the husband and wife founded the Our Towns Civic Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to sharing the stories of community innovators who are driving positive change at the local level.

Our Towns is partnering with nonprofit Community Heart & Soul to share stories of renewal in small cities and towns across the nation, and your town could be one of them. CH&S facilitates community growth through training and supporting a network of coaches who help residents identify what they love most about their town, what future they want for it, and how to achieve it.

More than 100 small cities and towns nationwide are using this model, and CH&S is currently offering $10,000 seed grants to qualifying communities (pop. 2,500 to 30,000) that want to start the process too. The grants require a $10,000 cash match from the participating community or a partnering organization. Learn more about the seed grants here.

The Fallowses lauded CH&S in a press release announcing the partnership: "The Community Heart & Soul process is both distinctive and replicable. It guides the way for residents to listen to the stories they tell each other about their towns, to reach common community goals, and to transform those goals into actions for change that can be measured and sustained."

CH&S Executive Director Mark Sherman, in turn, said the organization is "thrilled" with the partnership: "Storytelling is an integral part of the Community Heart & Soul process, and the Fallowses and their Our Towns team are masterful storytellers. I can think of no two people I would rather have help us spread the word about CH&S than Jim and Deb Fallows."

MIT-inspired nonprofit in Kentucky is holding its first conference for entrepreneurs and innovators Friday

Rural areas need more entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurs who are already in rural America often need help to make the most of their assets and find more of them, including innovators with ideas. In Kentucky, there's a nonprofit that aims to connect them to each other and the resources they need; informing them about opportunities, risks, and research; and, perhaps most important, inspire them and other Kentuckians "with visions for the state’s future."

Sam Ford

So says the website of AccelerateKY, which is holding a conference tomorrow in Bowling Green that is named for its mission: "Connect. Inform. Inspire." The keynoter will be Phil Budden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, which chose the region as its first U.S. site. That study led to creation of the nonprofit.

AccelerateKY is the brainchild of Sam Ford, a former rural journalist who teaches at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. In 2016, when he was a media researcher at MIT, world-renowned robotocist Daniela Rus said "I feel like there's a lot of pessimism about the future of work" and asked him if his native state was marked by "the bitter pessimism evident in other parts of Middle America" in the presidential election, as Jeff Howe of The Boston Globe put it. Ford replied, "It's hard to be excited about the future of work if you don't think you're in it."

To view details of Friday's conference and register for it, click here.