Recently I was having a “discussion” with my wife (she’d say lecturing) regarding the need to maximize our recycling efforts, she turned to me and said “This from the man that has a basement full of plastic models!”
I was stumped for a second then I quickly responded “Well, see I’m taking plastic out of the landfills by buying these [mostly old] kits”. It worked for the moment, but it did start me thinking [:-^].
Conservatively, there are thousands of styrene plastic models for sale on ebay and other auction sites and thousands more are procuced every year. Styrene plastic being a petroleum derivative contributes to the use of an ever dwindling resource with global weather and waste consequences.
Is the industry as a whole doing anything to remove petroleum from the plastic equation? I know some inks and paints are being produced using “greener” oil sources such as soy and other plant derived oils, has anyone heard of any such efforts from the styrene industry and is there any mechanism available to make suggestions to the industry?
I wouldn’t worry too much about the modeling industry’s impact on either climatic disruption or petroleum depletion. This industry probably amounts to 1/10th of a drop in the ocean as far as petroleum used to produce all it’s products combined and, to be blunt, it’s not like this hobby is seeing an explosive growth of new participants flooding in.
If it is a major concern to you to “go green”, perhaps you could do what I did the other day:
Buy a balsa wood model.
I think I’m sensing some sarcasm here and not sure why [%-)].
It seems to me that it would behove the entire population of this planet to conserve oil and help the environment in any way, shape or form possible.
If there is an environmental benefit to change the formula of styrene why not do it? Besides then we couldn’t blame OPEC or anyone else for the price of kits going up. Soybeans are much more renewable than fossil fuels and who would be ticked off if we modellers cut into the supply a little…Tofu eaters?
If I were to follow the logic set by paintswithbrush, I wouldn’t recycle newspaper because the three newspapers a week that come to my house are nothing in comparison to the total output of even my local papers distribution.
I do also build in wood…full scale…I currently work in a boatyard “recycling” an eighty year old wooden ketch [:D].
To your first response comment: If you are “sensing” sarcasm, your senses are off.
To your recycling comment: You never said anything about that in your original comment. Is that the ultimate goal of your proposal?
How much petroleum do you think the entire model industry uses in one year compared to what Solo cups uses in one day?
Lighten up.
There is in my mind a huge difference between items produced for a purpose and those produced to satisfied a need to fill a whime or strickly because they can. We purchase more junk on impulse with a short lifespan that has contributed more to environmental, trade and economic issues than plastic scale models.
Sure there are those with sizeable stashes in their basements. If they leave this moral life chances are those kits will be “recycled” into the hands of someone else who appreciates them. Waste is minimalized or non existant.
You want to see a real source of plastic waste…look at the food packaging materials one throws away. If you ever saw the amount of plastic wrap and the plastic used to make reusable food storage materials that isn’t recouped you’d be awestruck. The tonnage from the company that produces packaging for Oscar Meyer here in our area is huge! Back when I worked for the trucking company that they used to supply just one plant, we hauled a semi trailer load each week night. 99.9% of which ends up in the landfill by the consumer. That is a lot of hot dog packages from one plant, one company.
We pay for convenience…especially in food handling materials/packaging. With it comes waste, more waste than you can really fathom unless you really investigate. Plastic modeling isn’t likely any more than .0000001% of the cause of “plastic” waste.
Likewise, how many of those plastic water bottles people buy end up in the landfills? We need to find ways to recycle the trash we throw away before worrying about what plastic models are made from.
Heres a question that I have, it may be far far away, may not. What happens to this hobby when oil isnt as avaliable as it is now, when there are MASS shortages and even the low grade crappy stuff is needed for other things?
Some people must just lie awake at night thinking of stuff to worry about…
The only thing we know for sure is that nobody knows…
Personally, I’m gonna use my last 60 seconds to laugh my azz off at all the tree-huggin’, carbon-offsetting, PETA-phile, health & fitness moonbats on 21 Dec 2012 if the Mayans end up getting it right…
Think I was born a generation too late… Shoulda been born in 1919 rather than ‘59… Wasn’t nuthin’ goin’ on then, ‘cept maybe a Spanish Flu pandemic, the aftermath of a World War, the Great Depression, black blizzards, another world war, … You know… Th’ Good Ol’ Days… When scratch-builders ruled the hobby…[:D]
“Always keep a litter-bag in your car… It doesn’t take up much room and when it gets full, you can just throw it out the window…” Steve Martin
So I guess we should just be as wasteful in modelling as we are in other aspects of our lives [sigh]?
Look folks - I’m not saying that the plastic model industry is the problem…it’s all the people that use the products…it’s all of us!
And though I don’t consider myself part of the:
I have tried to do modify how many plastic products I buy and use.
As I said when I started this discussion:
That’s what got me thinking of this in the first place. Which means I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to modelling. So since I don’t want to stop buying or building plastic models and I can’t magically convert the oil based plastics I currently have into a more environmentally friendly type of plastic…I posed this question to see if anyone in this forum had any constructive input.
By the way…PaintswithBrush - I don’t think my senses were off about the sarcasm with comments like:
and of course…
As someone else on this forum uses as his ending…I’ll just say…
I wouldnt say I waste that much… personally… except for the plastic bags the parts come in, I keep the manuals the boxes, and ALL of the sprues in said boxes. Just incase I ever find a use for it.
Well lets look at this realisticly- we cant make what has been created already disappear, the kits are already produced and out there. As others have pointed out, the model industry is a drop in the bucket compared to all other users of plastics and petroleum products, be they disposable or long term. Yes as a whole, modern society is very wasteful. Even at our best we dont and cant recycle that much of what we use. If a product is “enviromentally friendly”, it is usually not very durable. And were for some unknown reasons all petroleum based plastic products to be banned or suddenly unavailalbe tomorrow, I’m sure plenty of folks here would learn to use wood, paper, ceramics, or some other medium to continue in the hobby in one form or another. It has been that way with mankind for centuries. And will probably be until we die off as a species.