Peco - Have they gone mad?

[Broadway Clive]

18 hours ago, trevor7598 said:

The fact is that you and I are doing our bit to over populate the world.

 

Speak for yourself, I've had a vasectomy! 

 

[Dungrange]

Of course the issue of an increasing global population is not just about how many children someone has.  The global population is also growing at the moment simply because people are tending to live longer: the next generation is more likely to be born before the oldest generation have passed away.  That means that children born today are more likely to know their grandparents than in the past, particularly in a global sense.  However, I agree that in the longer term, it is only the birth or fertility rate that matters and that is too high in many countries.  The problem is of course how to change that.  China used to have a one child policy.  Should that be more widespread?

 

 

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

China used to have a one child policy.  Should that be more widespread?

 

You wouldn't want to live under a regime that was able to implement such a policy.

[kevinlms]

On 06/12/2019 at 22:16, The Stationmaster said:

And as Oxford's bins aren't the same as adjacent South Oxfordshire's it would be quite a task to get it right nationally (green bin in Oxford is general waste bound for landfill; large green bin in South Oxfordshire is for mixed recycling and it's the same in Vale of the White Horse but West Berkshire next door to that has two green bins for different things).   n Move from one to teh other and it takes time to get used to the new system.

Yes, there is no uniformity as to what goes into which bin. The colour of the lid varies too. Effectively it means that in one pick up zone, it might mean a yellow lid is for paper, glass & metals. In another area the it's got a red lid or something.

So visitors might think that they are doing the right thing, but actually contaminating the lot

[Dungrange]

23 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

You wouldn't want to live under a regime that was able to implement such a policy.

 

Very true, but how else could the increase in global population be tackled if leaving it to an individual's free choice doesn't seem to have the desired outcome.  I'm not saying it's a policy that I'd like to see implemented, I don't, but the continuing growth in the world's human population is arguably as big a problem as single use plastics, which is what prompted this thread.  Of course I'm not expecting Peco to do anything about the growth in the global population: all they can do is look at how they package their products.

[Compound2632]

Encouraging a keen interest in model railways may be one way to distract folk from other activities more likely to contribute to population growth.

[Bucoops]

39 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Encouraging a keen interest in model railways may be one way to distract folk from other activities more likely to contribute to population growth.

 

Apparently there was a bit of a spike in babies born in London in April/May 2013. The London Olympics were in July 2012. Were people either bored, or inspired I wonder?

[royaloak]

2 hours ago, Broadway Clive said:

 

Speak for yourself, I've had a vasectomy! 

 

But did you have any children first?

 

Having a vasectomy after having 2 or 3 kids is tantamount to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, royaloak said:

after having 2 or 3 kids 

 

By that stage everyone's so knackered there's no need for medical intervention.

[Enterprisingwestern]

41 minutes ago, royaloak said:

But did you have any children first?

 

Having a vasectomy after having 2 or 3 kids is tantamount to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

 

Of course the problem is that the sensible people who realise they are going to have a vasectomy are not the ones who should have had one at birth!

 

Mike.

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Of course the problem is that the sensible people who realise they are going to have a vasectomy are not the ones who should have had one at birth!

 

 

Well, that's the problem with all attempts at planning the population - who decides?

[johnofwessex]

So over our lifetimes how much model railway stuff will we buy & how much of that will come in packaging we dispose of?

 

It seems to me that the issue isnt with Peco, or the products we buy only occasionally, its with the likes of the supermarkets & fast food chains where we (metaphorically not literally) go on a very regular basis.

[APOLLO]

As to vasectomies they are performed in Wigan at the aptly named Longshoot medical centre !!! (not on me though !!).

 

"Look at the ceiling" says the Doc as he picks up two house bricks !!!!!!

 

Wigan recycling - very good instructions on what goes where - but as ever some omissions are noticeable small plastic food trays (brown bin ?) etc

 

https://www.wigan.gov.uk/Resident/Bins-Recycling/Which-bin-do-I-use.aspx

 

Yes supermarket / food packaging needs a serious re think. Most of my garbage these days is food & drink packaging.

 

Brit15

[LBRJ]

Then there are the "little" things like

There are microplastics in most tea bags...

That an "environmentally friendly" cotton shopping bag needs to be used over a hundred times before its manufacture is more "green" than a plastic bag one only uses once.....

If the UK used paper packing for everything there would be no trees at all in the UK within a year.....

[The Stationmaster]

9 hours ago, LBRJ said:

Then there are the "little" things like

There are microplastics in most tea bags...

That an "environmentally friendly" cotton shopping bag needs to be used over a hundred times before its manufacture is more "green" than a plastic bag one only uses once.....

If the UK used paper packing for everything there would be no trees at all in the UK within a year.....

On average my cotton 'man bags' last between 2 and 3 years, multi-use plastic shopping bags used an average of 4-5 time per week last about 4 years and when no longer usable for shopping become rubbish bags to go in the bin.

[rue_d_etropal]

I'll wade into this sea of plastic.

It all sound simple, use plastic packaging that can be recycled. For a start virtually all plastic can be recycled,The difficult part is identifying what type of plastic it is. Every council has a different recycling policy, and it used to be the case that they only had to recycle a selection of types, not necessarily the same types, and even now using technology9;asers) some plastic packaging can not be easily identified, so gets taken out and disposed of(landfill or furnaces?). Just because you put the plastic in correct bin and it gets collected, does't not mean it will get recycled.

I was on a recycling course a few years ago, and it was mentioned that all plastics used for packing have an identifying number, which the manufacturer can supply. Peco say they use recycled plastic, and therefore they could easly use all the plastic packagng they are sending out. it just needs a system to do it. In effect that might not be practical, better to either use other material which can have a smaller envionmental impact or material which we as modellers could use.

Given that a large amont of the products sold, are sold online, does it actually matter what it looks like.

 

Also I remember seeing something a while back that one big toy manufacturer was getting rid of all plastic packaging.

 

Wills kits always used to say, use the plastic packaging for glazing.  I don't think it was because of any recycling philosophy, but just meant they did not have to manufacture specic glazing. I always try to use any see through plastic for glazing, even very thin bags as I use it wih Glue n Glaze for bigger windows. TrubleI have more packaging than I can use.

[rogerzilla]

Swindon Council collects plastic for "recycling" but actually burns the whole lot in a waste-to-electricity incinerator system.  It's not the most efficient way to re-use plastic but it does mean you can chuck black plastics and the other non-recyclables in the mix.

[sharris]

On 05/12/2019 at 12:53, russ p said:

The thing is ,should we be campaigning for our models not to be plastic? 

 

I would assume we don't consider our models disposable (particularly those that come with multi-hundred pound price tags).

 

I don't know how much waste plastic is generated in the manufacture of a r-t-r item, but more attention could be paid to the design of kits and accessories. The sprue to model ratio on some seems very high (plastic chairs seem a particularly severe example) - there are only so many paint stirrers you can use.

[hayfield]

I guess the cost of replacing broken items must outweigh the cost of sufficient packaging and in itself saves additional waste.

 

The cost of shooting sprues is quite low when measured against its retail value (cost of tooling is very high) why C&L use a thick but thin sprue, where as Exactoscale a thin but wide sprue may be down more to the tooling,  As for things similar to Airfix kits I assume its more about getting plastic to fill the mould evenly 

[phil-b259]

On 05/12/2019 at 23:19, John M Upton said:

I know of one business where the management quickly embraced green issues and recycling, providing separate bins for paper, card, cans, etc.  What nobody saw was when the cleaner came around every evening, slung the contents of all the bins into one sack and then slung that into the general refuse bin!!!

 

That was some years ago but look carefully and you will see a lot of waste put faithfully and with good intentions out for recycling in fact still goes straight to landfill.

 

Had same ad the same problem with our bins in the mess room - and when the topic came up while the contract cleaner was present we got a" no, no - only 1 bin"type of response. The fact it wasn't hard and she apparently spent most of the time playing Candy Crush has escaped the managers attention (though I guess with all these outsourced functions its a case of you get what you pay for)

[spikey]

Just opened another pack of Wills building sheets in this new (and awfully naff) packaging, a day after I fitted a new bar-end mirror to my bicycle.  That came in a simple unsealed printed cardboard box, containing all the parts (4 mount parts plus mirror, three stainless Allen screws, several stainless washers and an Allen key) neatly wrapped up in the sheet of instructions.  Not even any sticky tape required. Brilliant, sensible, environment-hugging packaging ... all the way from California 

[Nick C]

On 08/12/2019 at 00:33, LBRJ said:

Then there are the "little" things like

There are microplastics in most tea bags...

That an "environmentally friendly" cotton shopping bag needs to be used over a hundred times before its manufacture is more "green" than a plastic bag one only uses once.....

If the UK used paper packing for everything there would be no trees at all in the UK within a year.....

The key thing with the reusable bags is less about the cost of production, and more about disposal - You used to see far too many of the thin bags carelessly discarded rather than being re-used or properly disposed of, which you don't generally get with the more expensive cotton ones.

 

We re-use plastic ones as bin-liners, and had such a stash of them that we're only now running out...

[Chris M]

Going back on topic, I bought a number of Peco N gauge points with their plastic packaging last October. I laid the points and, after following this thread, I kept the packaging with my modelling materials. I have now used the packaging to glaze a large scale project for free. So thanks for raising it and thanks to those who have good advice.

[hayfield]

Certainly the new packs for the building sheets are easier to store surplus parts and as boxes for other spares. 

[doktorstamp]

When I was based in Germany in the early '70's, we noted that in one of the hypermarkets, in its screws, nails, small nuts and bolts section, together with loads of items we men buy impulsively, on the grounds they may come in useful one day, sold these pre-packaged in little plastic boxes, of several sizes. The idea being that these slotted together, ultimately forming a useful, if expensively acquired, multi drawer storage cabinet. I still have a few left doing sterling service. Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, they now strike me as being aptly Teutonic. It's an idea I can't say I have ever seen in this country.

 

mfG

 

Nigel