Happy Feet ring controversy

(Source: www.bcdb.com)

Happy Feet's environmental message isn't just irritating the extreme right, it's also getting manufacturers' knickers in a twist.

Illinois Tool Works subsidiary ITW Hi-Cone, who invented the plastic 6-pack ring carrier, thinks the movie is misleading the public about its product.

In the movie, a penguin called Lovelace (voiced by Robin Williams) finds a plastic ring carrier and puts it around his neck, calling it a "sacred talisman" received from "mystic beings."

Later on, as the penguin's neck grows, the plastic constricts his windpipe, nearly strangling him in the process. Hi-Cone vice president and general manager Steve Henn says the movie producers "didn't do their homework," and calls the plot line misleading and irresponsible.

"Since the late 1980s, we've been trying to correct misperceptions about ring carriers by working with scientific and environmental organizations to communicate how advances in plastics technology have made them completely photodegradable," claims Henn. "It's a shame the producers of Happy Feet didn't do their homework on this subject. They could have visited the Children's Museum in Chicago or other exhibits around the country to learn that plastic rings disintegrate almost completely from exposure to the sun's ultraviolet rays."

In real life, the executive claims, the ring carrier wouldn't have lasted long around the penguin's neck as the plastic would have disintegrated through exposure to sun, wind and rain.

"Since 1989, under federal law, six-pack rings have been 100% photodegradable, disintegrating in sunlight, starting in just a few days," Henn said. "A penguin couldn't wear it that long' because it would crumble.

Environmental groups claim that 191,789 six-pack rings have been found in international coastal cleanups since 2000.

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