The other night I was busy cutting pieces off the sprues. As the pile of sprues grew ever larger, I wondered about waste material, recycling and the environment. All that plastic, where does it go? I have to imagine it’s not environment friendly. Hundreds of years from now, when shows on the History Channel are talking about archealogical digs for this period of time they’ll find all this plastic and wonder what it all was. They’ll probably wonder if it was of religious importance or pieces of relics or artifacts since it’s been preserved. [;)]
Now I’m not the world’s best recyclers. I’ll be honest, there are many a time I get lazy and stuff which could be recylced end up in the normal trash. But when I hear about how much trash the average household makes it’s amazing. I wonder where we’re going to end up in 20, 30, 50 years from now. But that’s another discussion…
When it comes to modeling (plastic sprues, left over bits, broken tools, paints, etc.), what makes into the recycling bin and what goes into the regular trash. Or do people in general not care?
My recycling only takes 1’s and 2’s. I don’t know what sprue is. I keep some for antennas and I have melted some in liquid glue to make seam filler. The rest goes in the trash.
Alot of mine goes into making terrain for Warhammer. It’s great stuff for rubble piles. As far as recycling, my area doesn’t accept them, since they don’t have their classification. Trash it is!
The plastics are nonbiodegradable which means they last essentially forever…
I read in a newspaper that they are finding more and more plastic “dusts” in the oceans…[:(]
If everyone are this ignorant about recycling, pretty soon the Earth will be dead. But to be honest, we should really look into recycling because the scale modeling hobby REALLY isn’t good for the environment. We use a lot of plastic, petroleum, paints, glues…[V]
I like to make sprue goo from a lot of my sprue and I keep some on hand for stretching and scratchbuilding, but after that it goes in the trash. On a similar note I work in a factory and there is a lot of styrene scrap that I recycle for my own scratch building. I watched a show on terraforming Mar once and one of the experts on the program said that to produce enough gasses to cause a greenhouse effect on that planet may be impossible. He went on to say it was the height of human arrogance to believe we have that much lasting effect on our own planet. I guess that is what I believe, the earth will heal itself. A piece of inert rock or a chunk of plastic, what’s the difference!
David I have a customer that mfg plastic injection molded parts for cell phones. They recycle all there rejects, sprue extras etc… They just pore it right back into the hoppers and it goes thru again. If we had some way of collecting all the scrap from Modelers. Maybe it would be benificial to the Mfg companies to recycle outside of there plant enviroment.
I’ve always wanted to start a sprue recycling program with kit manufacturers.
The deal would go something like this - you’d get a discount price for kits (by running the deal through retail outlets) for the intact sprues returned.
For example, return 15 or 20 Tamiya sprues (they all have the trade mark and kit type on them) and get a similar Tamiya kit for a discounted price. Then, the returned sprues could be pelletized and re-extruded for new kits by Tamiya.
David, have kit manufacturers ever been approached to have their own plastic returned to them?
LeeTree
I only keep a minimum amount of sprue, those bits good enough to be useful in strech-spruing exercices… The rest end up in the garbage. I recycle the boxes and the instructions sheets.
I also re-use the foil at the top of those good wine bottles… But that’s another story!
I don’t recycle sprues, they just go in the trash. I do have a seperate bin for bottle and stuff though.
Actually nothing that is man made is “non bio-degradable”. Some just takes longer to disentigrate.
Woody mentioned the real facts of the matter. The forest fires in California this year have already put more pollutants in the air than probably 20 years of industry. One volcanic eruption puts more pollutants in the atmosphere than all of mankind since the dawn of the industrial age.
I’m not saying it’s not good to recycle, but the environmentalists take everything to extremes. Take a look at the hole in the ozone layer. It closed up to 2 seperate holes that are smaller than the 1 big one was. Some much for that theory, huh? I believe in being smart about things like this but not paranoid. I won’t kill myself if I get a sprue in my household trash.
Do what makes you feel good, I’m not bashing anyone, I just take a realistic look at things.
my local community has a carbage disposal selection programme .Poor souls are paid to select our trash in metal,glass and plastic…I guess that makes me feel a bit better but not when i think about their pay rate.
I honestly have no idea. I thought the stuff could be metled back down and reused. Seems a shame to throw all that plastic away. But I know there is no simple solution.
I have to believe there is a difference between what is put out by a burning forest than what is put out by a factory’s smokestack or a pile of burning tires.
Well plastics are essencially Hydrocarbons,ie… from Oil,what happens to modelling when the oil eventually runs out??? I read in the Tamiya magazine that when building the new Malaysian Grand Prix circuit they bought every piece of plastic in the far east to use as a bedding for the track surface(the site being on soft ground) will this slow production or even put up prices for far east kits???[:O][:O][:O]
The plastic used in most model kits is polystyrene (6 in the triangle). I don’t know how many communities collect this particular plastic, but would guess that not many do.
As for starting a recycling program, I doubt any of the companys would start one due to the relatively high cost of collection, shipping, and reprocessing compared to purchasing new plastic pellets. They may have an in-house recycling programs, but it’s difficult to guarantee the quality of recycled plastics coming from an outside source… how many of your sprues have a little residual paint or glue from the construction process?
A local hobby shop could in theory collect and sell to a plastics reprocessor, though I’d be very surprised if it is as lucrative as collecting soda cans.
One of my professors (ironically enough for a plastics class) pointed out petroleum products (plastics and fuels) are simply combinations of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and as such, the world will probably never run out of these products, it’s just that the price will increase (A LOT).
If you’ve paid attention to the science headlines, you’ll know that we can produce ethanol and some plastics from corn. A group has developed technology for harvesting and reprocessing material from landfills.
I’m not saying that the whole environmental picture is rosy by any means, but what’s pumped into the air and dumped into the ground in liquid form concerns me much more than solid waste.
What little exists of our recycling program is a complete joke.
Sure, if you live in a designated recyling neighborhood, you get the small green bin that fits abot four cans of cat food and a botle of grape juice. The feller on the back of the truck (yes, they actually still THROW trash here by hand!!!) just tosses the recycle box in with the rest.
So much for your efforts to strip labels, sort color/clear glass, tie newspaper, sort out magazines/glossies and rinse cans! And you wonder why there is so little interest in recyling here in the South!
I’m luckier than most, I guess. My community accepts ALL plastic. I keep all the really straight bits of sprue and use them for stir sticks or whatever. Mostly stir sticks. The rest goes into the recycling box. We also return all glass for deposit and what doesn’t get returned gets recycled. All cardboard and paper goes in the recycling bin, and non meat food waste get composted.
I don’t do any of this out of love for the planet. I figure a volcanic planet that produces hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes and other disasters doesn’t need me looking after it. No, I recycle because it makes a better place to live for me.
I care and recycle.
I know this is covered in another thread but I collect and use post consumer material for building models and diorama bases etc.
although I don’t preach it, I just do it.
Good thread, thanks.