Racked with sleep-robbing back spasms, kathleen Bader marches across a wintry parking lot toward a plastics factory in Blair, Nebr., hard hat perched atop her red hair, protective eyewear on, her panty-hosed feet slipping and sliding in blue flats caked with snow. "Wait till you see this factory, it's so cool," Bader shouts behind her as she tramps up a metal staircase sheathed in ice. Bader, 54 years old, cuts quite a figure in the male-dominated plastics industry, much as she did in her 32 years at Dow Chemical, becoming the only woman on Dow's executive management team. By delivering $2.5 billion in operating efficiencies over the course of four years and by turning around Dow's hemorrhaging polystyrene business, Bader built a reputation as a cost-cutter and marketer nonpareil. But a year ago Bader left a prestigious, cushy Dow posting in Zurich to take on what she calls the biggest fight of her life: getting the world to kick its habit of consuming plastics made from oil and start using corn-based plastic instead.
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