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These days when everyone is urged to avoid single use plastics and to recycle as much as possible, has anyone given any thought to plastic kits? I've just used two Wills Varigirder kits and the amount of waste sprue is similar to that of the kit parts. I've no idea if it can be recycled. I'm not singling out Wills, all plastic kits have the same issue. What do other RMWebbers think?

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Sprues on my layout are given the opportunity of exciting new careers in the pipes, posts, factory exhaust, or wagon load industries, or as paint stirrers, but most still end up in landfill, sadly.  The alternative is to make them so that they break down over time, and you don't want the functioning parts of your kits to do that!

 

They ought to be capable of recycling into more plastic by melting down, but I have no idea of the chemistry or physical processes involved in this.  TTBOMK the raw material is by product from oil refining, and is plentiful and cheaply available, which probably effectively negates any production advantage from recycling.  They'll happily destroy the planet to make a profit.

 

I wonder if you could make coal or aggregate out of them by freezing them until they were really brittle and crushing them?

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17 minutes ago, eastglosmog said:

My plastic sprues and offcuts that aren't used for other purposes like packing pieces, stiffeners or cat toys all go into the recycling bin with other plastic rubbish.  Never been any complaints from West Oxon DC.

I'm certainly tempted to do the same. At least there's a chance it might get recycled.

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Two other uses for plastic kit sprue from 'old-school' aircraft and AFV modelling:

  • softening it over a candle flame and then pulling it to make 'stretched  sprue'  in various thicknesses to use as fine plastic wire and rod. 
  • chopping it up and dissolving it in one of the milder solvents to make DIY filler (use a small 'Tiptree' jam pot with a screw lid).

Both of these techniques can be a bit risky so you need to take some sensible precautions (stretching the sprue outside and avoiding breathing in the solvent or DIY filler). 

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3 hours ago, Les Bird said:

I'm certainly tempted to do the same. At least there's a chance it might get recycled.

I think that's the very remotest of chances.

 

Some plastics can be recycled, some can't.  I don't think they've devised a way of telling one sort of plastic from another, and householders certainly can't be expected to know. The plastics that the refuse disposal operative takes away are going to get mixed together in the dustcart with cardboard, tin cans, glass bottles and of course a load on non-recyclables chucked in the wrong bin.  Some materials can be removed by machinery or human processing, but I don't see them extracting small plastic sprues  from the rest of the waste, and I would be very surprised if it doesn't end up in landfill.

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A quick (sub 60s) search online suggests that polystyrene is rarely if ever recycled/difficult if not impossible to recycle.  Ditto expanded polystyrene multiple times over, especially since it's also less straightforward to reuse than solid PS.  It's not helped when guidance from local authorities (such as mine) is based in the type of item rather than the type of plastic (which generally can be determined by a lay person if you know, or can look up, the material codes which are commonly embossed on the items).  My LA refers to "trays" being recyclable - but a lot of these are EPS which isn't.

 

Another packing material that can be problematic to recycle is bubblewrap, although it can be reused if you have the need for protective packaging material.  As soft plastic/film it generally can't be recycled via the kerbside bin; it might be acceptable in plastic bag recycling bins such as are often found in supermarkets, but they often have signs on them asking people not to use them for general rubbish and you might find a jobsworth telling you not to put your bubble wrap in there.

 

A minor positive with "landfill" i.e. unrecyclable waste these days is that it can put to good use rather than being tipped in to one of the increasingly scarce holes in the ground.  My LA gets a tick in this regard with its energy-from-waste plant on part of the old marshalling yard site at Millerhill: https://www.fccenvironment.co.uk/green-energy/millerhill-rerc/.

Edited by ejstubbs
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1 hour ago, ejstubbs said:

A quick (sub 60s) search online suggests that polystyrene is rarely if ever recycled/difficult if not impossible to recycle.  Ditto expanded polystyrene multiple times over, especially since it's also less straightforward to reuse than solid PS.  It's not helped when guidance from local authorities (such as mine) is based in the type of item rather than the type of plastic (which generally can be determined by a lay person if you know, or can look up, the material codes which are commonly embossed on the items).  My LA refers to "trays" being recyclable - but a lot of these are EPS which isn't.

 

Another packing material that can be problematic to recycle is bubblewrap, although it can be reused if you have the need for protective packaging material.  As soft plastic/film it generally can't be recycled via the kerbside bin; it might be acceptable in plastic bag recycling bins such as are often found in supermarkets, but they often have signs on them asking people not to use them for general rubbish and you might find a jobsworth telling you not to put your bubble wrap in there.

 

A minor positive with "landfill" i.e. unrecyclable waste these days is that it can put to good use rather than being tipped in to one of the increasingly scarce holes in the ground.  My LA gets a tick in this regard with its energy-from-waste plant on part of the old marshalling yard site at Millerhill: https://www.fccenvironment.co.uk/green-energy/millerhill-rerc/.

 

We have an expanded polystyrene manufacturer in the town and for a short time they accepted old material for recycling. Didn't last long as they found it so difficult.

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1 hour ago, laurenceb said:

It's the use of recycled ps that makes Dapols ex Airfix kits so awful

 

I thought it was the age and consequent wear to the moulds.  The material itself seems much the same as any other PS I've worked with, including the way its reacts to liquid polystyrene cement.

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3 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

A quick (sub 60s) search online suggests that polystyrene is rarely if ever recycled/difficult if not impossible to recycle. 

 

Good job I didn't know that when I was running shifts at an injection moulding company where as was normal throughout the industry the styrene sprues were reground and fed back into the feed hoppers ...

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Quote

 

A minor positive with "landfill" i.e. unrecyclable waste these days is that it can put to good use rather than being tipped in to one of the increasingly scarce holes in the ground.  My LA gets a tick in this regard with its energy-from-waste plant on part of the old marshalling yard site at Millerhill: https://www.fccenvironment.co.uk/green-energy/millerhill-rerc/.

 

Depends on how you see it as a positive...  Apologies, slightly off-topic rant coming on.  Here in Keighley, Bradford Local Authority are trying to build a waste-to-energy plant, and it was somewhat steamrollered through planning (it wasn't even the full committee who waved it through according to the opposing group, just enough to get a majority, and one of whom it subsequently turned out was accused of possibly having links to the firm building it).  The incinerator got local support in the town by not being greatly advertised locally, and sold to the town on the promise of "500 jobs" without making clear almost all of those would be temporary contractor jobs, and even then the majority of the building work was at the time promised to a firm from the East Coast so it wouldn't even be locals mostly employed.  Then when that came out, it was re-sold as "the town will get free electricity, those Middle Class Nimby Hippies opposing it want YOU to pay extra electricity bills!".  Places like the National Trust who objected were given a grant to plant some trees to hide the thing from their nearby grounds.  

 

The problem is it's right in the bottom of an inversion valley which will trap the smoke and smells from it right in the town and the adjacent populated valleys (including playing fields, a playgroup, and a school right near the site).  The opposing action group trying to get more answers out of the firm building it haven't been able to get a lot of satisfactory answers about how clean the smoke will be, how filtered it would be, the smells from it, the plan to dump waste water straight into the River Aire etc.  Attempts to block the planning on the grounds of the valley shape are apparently rendered null by the company saying they'll make the chimney a little bit higher.  Basically the impression seems to be that building these waste-to-energy plants is a matter of national Government policy, Bradford has to have one, and so the Authority have put it as far towards the edge of the boundary as they can, so as to not muck up the forthcoming city clean-air zone.

 

Better than nearby Leeds, who's clean-air zone has a conspicuous 'wedge' area which doesn't count in the figures, and just happens to incorporate their incinerator... 

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3 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

I thought it was the age and consequent wear to the moulds.  The material itself seems much the same as any other PS I've worked with, including the way its reacts to liquid polystyrene cement.

 

It's the material. It's also the reason why they are difficult to paint, and why most people in the know try and find the original Airfix versions instead.

 

Same applies to some of the wagons that are made in the UK, especially the underframes and is the reason why the underframes don't have printing on them for things like numbers and plates. It doesn't "take".

 

Doesn't apply to models made in the East that use far better quality material.

 

 

Jason

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1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

It's the material.

 

And the moulds, judging by some I've seen.  And a worn mould problem instantly gets trickier to work round (by adjusting machine conditions) as soon as you start using anything but good quality virgin plastic.

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5 hours ago, Ben B said:

 

Depends on how you see it as a positive...  Apologies, slightly off-topic rant coming on.  Here in Keighley, Bradford Local Authority are trying to build a waste-to-energy plant, and it was somewhat steamrollered through planning (it wasn't even the full committee who waved it through according to the opposing group, just enough to get a majority, and one of whom it subsequently turned out was accused of possibly having links to the firm building it).  The incinerator got local support in the town by not being greatly advertised locally, and sold to the town on the promise of "500 jobs" without making clear almost all of those would be temporary contractor jobs, and even then the majority of the building work was at the time promised to a firm from the East Coast so it wouldn't even be locals mostly employed.  Then when that came out, it was re-sold as "the town will get free electricity, those Middle Class Nimby Hippies opposing it want YOU to pay extra electricity bills!".  Places like the National Trust who objected were given a grant to plant some trees to hide the thing from their nearby grounds.  

 

The problem is it's right in the bottom of an inversion valley which will trap the smoke and smells from it right in the town and the adjacent populated valleys (including playing fields, a playgroup, and a school right near the site).  The opposing action group trying to get more answers out of the firm building it haven't been able to get a lot of satisfactory answers about how clean the smoke will be, how filtered it would be, the smells from it, the plan to dump waste water straight into the River Aire etc.  Attempts to block the planning on the grounds of the valley shape are apparently rendered null by the company saying they'll make the chimney a little bit higher.  Basically the impression seems to be that building these waste-to-energy plants is a matter of national Government policy, Bradford has to have one, and so the Authority have put it as far towards the edge of the boundary as they can, so as to not muck up the forthcoming city clean-air zone.

 

Better than nearby Leeds, who's clean-air zone has a conspicuous 'wedge' area which doesn't count in the figures, and just happens to incorporate their incinerator... 

 

Only one?

Seems about right for today's sleaze and incompetence ridden politics. For example, our local power station was converted to burn biomass at great expense and then closed down and demolished. It will be replaced by: a new power station and an expansion of Tilbury Docks - the latter is just what we need with all the post Brexit trade deals.... I'll say no more as politics is taboo.

 

My sprue gets dissolved in thinners and used as filler or used 'as is' for reinforcing walls and things that tend to warp. It's also useful across van bodies to hold them together using a twist of wire when future access (for weighting for example) is necessary.

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11 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

 

I thought it was the age and consequent wear to the moulds.  The material itself seems much the same as any other PS I've worked with, including the way its reacts to liquid polystyrene cement.

If you compare dapols product with Airfix from a similar aged tool the Airfix has much less warping. And the Dapol tool has had a lot less use, some like the Drewry shunter had only one run before Dave Boyle bought them

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46 minutes ago, laurenceb said:

If you compare dapols product with Airfix from a similar aged tool the Airfix has much less warping. And the Dapol tool has had a lot less use, some like the Drewry shunter had only one run before Dave Boyle bought them

 

I've been buying the Airfix reissues.

 

Fantastic. No flash. Clean, good quality hard plastic and all for a good price. Here's an unboxing video showing the standard of the sprues.

 

 

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Unboxing  ? I remember unbagging the Panther kit after buying it for 1/6 in Woolworths  when I  was about 8 years old  and being quite disturbed by the artwork with the burning ambulance, which contributed to a life-long loathing of Nazi Germany (perhaps that was Roy Cross' intention ?!).

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22 hours ago, spikey said:

Good job I didn't know that when I was running shifts at an injection moulding company where as was normal throughout the industry the styrene sprues were reground and fed back into the feed hoppers ...

 

That's fine when you're recycling waste raw material within a discrete manufacturing process.  The main thrust of this thread is kerbside/mixed waste recycling, which is a different matter.  Identifying and extracting a specific material to be put through a particular recycling process is probably one of the toughest issues, before you even get to the question of how you actually turn that waste material material back in to a form that manufacturers can (or, perhaps as important, will) use.

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50 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

I still find it extraordinary that Peco have chosen to replace nearly all their cardboard packaging with single use plastic boxes!!!

 

Strange as this seems in recycling terms its not a bad move. The plastic packets are in fact 100% easily recyclable plastic and can be placed in household recycling bins to be processed along with yought pots etc at household waste centres.

 

Cardboard on the other hand not only is more susceptible to damage but is pretty hard to recycle if it gets damp or contaminated. Yes if the waste ends up in a hole in the ground paper based packaging will readily decompose as opposed to plastic - but we are trying to move away from that approach for waste.

 

In an ideal world of course the plastic sleeves would be able to be returned to Peco for reuse - something you couldn't do with cardboard ones.

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57 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

I still find it extraordinary that Peco have chosen to replace nearly all their cardboard packaging with single use plastic boxes!!!

 

I don't.  It's just one of several things about Peco that I've found extraordinary over the years.

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In the waste recycling centres the different plastics are identified by firing a laser at them. Different plastics return different combinations of frequencies. Do you remember up until quite recently raw meat came on black trays ? These had to be discontinued when the lasers came in because they reflected none of the the light and all went to landfill, despite the plastic being recyclable. Not sure that the machines can deal with the small pieces we are dealing with here though.

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3 hours ago, spikey said:

 

I don't.  It's just one of several things about Peco that I've found extraordinary over the years.

 

I queried this some time back and this was the reply below. Still prefer cardboard to the plastic, Some manufacturing are getting worse it seems with big plastic bubbles with small product rattling around inside . At the time my Peco Packing had no recycling marks on the plastic.

 

Dear George,

 

Thank you for your recent email to the Railway Modeller. My colleagues there thought that I might be better placed to respond, as they are not involved in the production and distribution of PECO products.

 

We appreciate that at first glance you might wonder why we would choose to use plastic packaging but what is important to be aware of is that this packaging is produced from recycled material, and is fully recyclable from the kerbside. It is the same PET material that is used for plastic bottles and is produced here in the UK from UK-sourced recycled plastic bottles.

 

As we all know, it is the responsibility of the end user to ensure that as much waste material as possible is recycled, so as long as these PECO packs are placed in your kerbside recycling, or taking to your local recycling centre, them it will continue to be reused. It would be irresponsible to place these items in your landfill waste collection bins. Our previous packaging, the mixture of card and plastic, was not so easily recycled. Unless you physically removed the plastic windows from the boxes they would be put into landfill. Now that there is a separate card insert in the new plastic pouches and boxes these can be more easily separated and disposed of correctly.

 

Until a suitable alternative, durable packaging material can be sourced for a realistic cost we will continue to use these recycled plastic boxes and pouches as we feel that they are best available. They protect our products very well, and allow effective and attractive displays in our retailers’ shops, and can be responsibly disposed of for recycling after use. We go to great pains to reduce our carbon footprint wherever possible, and switching to paper envelopes for sending copies of the Railway Modeller is just one example.

 

Many thanks for raising your concerns and I hope that my reply will go some way to explaining what we are doing.

 

Kind regards,

 

Steve Haynes
Sales Manager
Pritchard Patent Product Co. Ltd

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Never mind the packaging, maybe they should stop making plastic kits and models full stop?

 

Once Greta and her disciples cotton on to the hobby model industry, there'll be no end of protestors gluing themselves to the front doors of Peco, Hornby et al.

 

 

Seriously though, what will happen about the world's reliance on plastics, when oil production is significantly reduced, as we transition to more sustainable sources of power?

Model railway bits made from recycled Lard, or whatever?

 

.

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