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So the author recycled 10 pounds of plastic, but used 8.5 pounds of glue to do so (184 sticks at 0.74 oz which seems to be average for glue sticks). Cool proje

So the author recycled 10 pounds of plastic, but used 8.5 pounds of glue to do so (184 sticks at 0.74 oz which seems to be average for glue sticks). Cool project, but that ratio seems very ineffective. Especially since there is a realistic chance this ends up in landfill within some decades anyway.

chneu 2mo ago
Honestly wtf does the glue matter when people are going through plastic like it's nothing? Bringing up the glue is such a weird nitpick.
- ofrzeta 2mo ago
  When the ratio is almost 1:1 it is a bit more than a nit.
- isoprophlex 2mo ago
  Do nothing: 10 pounds of filament poop has go to the landfill. Do this thing: 10 pounds of filament poop still exists, + 8 pounds of glue sticks (which is basically a thermoplastic) used, to create something that's eventually going to end up in a landfill. Are you being deliberately obtuse? Recycling or reuse is not as useful as just not creating waste in the first place.
  - sudo_cowsay 2mo ago
    So... don't 3D print anything?
    - tonyedgecombe 2mo ago
      Reduce, reuse, recycle.
  - rz2k 2mo ago
    Maybe it looks more amazing in person than in pictures. If not, and the point is a message about waste, then the 80% increase could be cast as part of the message. Let’s say every month the artist repurposes the last pile of plastic with more glue. At the end of one year, the 10lbs would turn into 1100lbs. At the end of two years the original 10lbs would have turned into 1.3 million lbs of plastic waste. Surely that would frame a very powerful message about plastic waste and green washing misleading public policy.
  - s1artibartfast 2mo ago
    Or do something entirely different and 100lbs go to the landfill. Reuse is good if the activity replaces something that would generate more waste. This is the real benchmark, not the case where someone does nothing. The most efficient thing is always to do nothing and/or kill oneself. This isnt practical, so reusing used materials instead of new when you do something is still net good.
- staplor 2mo ago
  hot glue is a petrochemical just like plastic.
  - ofrzeta 2mo ago
    It is plastic, nothing else.
  - smith7018 2mo ago
    They do make biodegradable hot glue [1] but it's still not perfect. It's biodegradable and certified compostable under industrial conditions but it still has a polymer base. It's also not ideal for projects that are always in UV light. https://www.poweradhesives.com/adhesives/tecbond-214b/ https://www.poweradhesives.com/adhesives/tecbond-214b/
- sleepybrett 2mo ago
  Why use glue at all, he should have done this using a 'stained glass' method. Build some kind of a frame for each area of color and then melt the filimant into it.
fhub 2mo ago
Most of the environmental cost of plastic happens when it’s made. Once it exists, burying it in landfill isn’t nearly as bad as many people think. 95+% of the carbon footprint of plastics comes from production and manufacturing.
- repeekad 2mo ago
  Isn’t plastic nearly free as a raw material as a by product of fossil fuel production? I was always told it’s the opposite, plastic bags are better for the environment if disposed of properly because they’re so light weight to transport, didn’t need to be farmed, and companies basically give away the raw material because it would be more expensive to dispose of. A cotton bag needs to be reused upwards 1000x to be less impactful, or was I bamboozled?
  - ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
    > Isn’t plastic nearly free as a raw material as a by product of fossil fuel production? Yes and no. Oil is cracked down for lots of different things, but one of the things that people are really aiming for is ethane which can be used to make industrial ethanol, and a lot of plastics. What you end up with to get there is lots of propane and butane, which is used as a fuel gas, but most of that ends up going up the flare stack because there's so much of it. We won't stop doing this while we still use plastics and fertiliser. You need very clean propane or butane for things like cooking stoves, but you can run car engines on it just fine because they're so much less picky, and the exhaust gases are far cleaner than engines run on heavier fractions like oh maybe octane. This is why things like warehouse forklifts run on gas instead of diesel or petrol - you don't die if you breathe in the fumes, because there's no unburnt fuel or carbon monoxide, because it runs as lean as a vegan's dog.
    - cucumber3732842 2mo ago
      >What you end up with to get there is lots of propane and butane, which is used as a fuel gas, but most of that ends up going up the flare stack because there's so much of it. We won't stop doing this while we still use plastics and fertiliser. The amount of gas flared globally adds up to little over 1% of global energy production. I know that doesn't sound like much but we're talking like terawatts. It truly is a mind boggling amount of energy that gets wasted because we simply can't get it to users cheap enough.
lopis 2mo ago
Like those "wood" tables that are 50% made of epoxy. It grinds my gears
- Tade0 2mo ago
  I'm so glad that fad is over. My mother worked as a theatre artisan before retirement and it was, among other things, fumes from curing epoxy that caused numerous health issues down the line.
  - xattt 2mo ago
    I am curious about the down-the-line effects of fumes from printing PLA and PETG. Reddit posts suggest no ill effects, but it hasn’t been long enough in the hobbyist world.
    - sleepybrett 2mo ago
      My printer is near a window so I just added an exhaust duct to the window, in the past when it wasn't close to a window I ran that duct through some filters (charcoal, furnace filter stuff) and left the end near an additional air purifier i had in the space.
  - lopis 2mo ago
    There's lots of YouTube carpeters that still do it in custom built tables. And these are very expensive custom builds too...
s1artibartfast 2mo ago
What does that have to do with anything? The point is to do something cool with it. It far more effective than building a collage with bought or new printed parts

chneu 2mo ago

Honestly wtf does the glue matter when people are going through plastic like it's nothing? Bringing up the glue is such a weird nitpick.

ofrzeta 2mo ago
When the ratio is almost 1:1 it is a bit more than a nit.
isoprophlex 2mo ago
Do nothing: 10 pounds of filament poop has go to the landfill. Do this thing: 10 pounds of filament poop still exists, + 8 pounds of glue sticks (which is basically a thermoplastic) used, to create something that's eventually going to end up in a landfill. Are you being deliberately obtuse? Recycling or reuse is not as useful as just not creating waste in the first place.
- sudo_cowsay 2mo ago
  So... don't 3D print anything?
  - tonyedgecombe 2mo ago
    Reduce, reuse, recycle.
- rz2k 2mo ago
  Maybe it looks more amazing in person than in pictures. If not, and the point is a message about waste, then the 80% increase could be cast as part of the message. Let’s say every month the artist repurposes the last pile of plastic with more glue. At the end of one year, the 10lbs would turn into 1100lbs. At the end of two years the original 10lbs would have turned into 1.3 million lbs of plastic waste. Surely that would frame a very powerful message about plastic waste and green washing misleading public policy.
- s1artibartfast 2mo ago
  Or do something entirely different and 100lbs go to the landfill. Reuse is good if the activity replaces something that would generate more waste. This is the real benchmark, not the case where someone does nothing. The most efficient thing is always to do nothing and/or kill oneself. This isnt practical, so reusing used materials instead of new when you do something is still net good.
staplor 2mo ago
hot glue is a petrochemical just like plastic.
- ofrzeta 2mo ago
  It is plastic, nothing else.
- smith7018 2mo ago
  They do make biodegradable hot glue [1] but it's still not perfect. It's biodegradable and certified compostable under industrial conditions but it still has a polymer base. It's also not ideal for projects that are always in UV light. https://www.poweradhesives.com/adhesives/tecbond-214b/ https://www.poweradhesives.com/adhesives/tecbond-214b/
sleepybrett 2mo ago
Why use glue at all, he should have done this using a 'stained glass' method. Build some kind of a frame for each area of color and then melt the filimant into it.

fhub 2mo ago

Most of the environmental cost of plastic happens when it’s made. Once it exists, burying it in landfill isn’t nearly as bad as many people think. 95+% of the carbon footprint of plastics comes from production and manufacturing.

repeekad 2mo ago
Isn’t plastic nearly free as a raw material as a by product of fossil fuel production? I was always told it’s the opposite, plastic bags are better for the environment if disposed of properly because they’re so light weight to transport, didn’t need to be farmed, and companies basically give away the raw material because it would be more expensive to dispose of. A cotton bag needs to be reused upwards 1000x to be less impactful, or was I bamboozled?
- ErroneousBosh 2mo ago
  > Isn’t plastic nearly free as a raw material as a by product of fossil fuel production? Yes and no. Oil is cracked down for lots of different things, but one of the things that people are really aiming for is ethane which can be used to make industrial ethanol, and a lot of plastics. What you end up with to get there is lots of propane and butane, which is used as a fuel gas, but most of that ends up going up the flare stack because there's so much of it. We won't stop doing this while we still use plastics and fertiliser. You need very clean propane or butane for things like cooking stoves, but you can run car engines on it just fine because they're so much less picky, and the exhaust gases are far cleaner than engines run on heavier fractions like oh maybe octane. This is why things like warehouse forklifts run on gas instead of diesel or petrol - you don't die if you breathe in the fumes, because there's no unburnt fuel or carbon monoxide, because it runs as lean as a vegan's dog.
  - cucumber3732842 2mo ago
    >What you end up with to get there is lots of propane and butane, which is used as a fuel gas, but most of that ends up going up the flare stack because there's so much of it. We won't stop doing this while we still use plastics and fertiliser. The amount of gas flared globally adds up to little over 1% of global energy production. I know that doesn't sound like much but we're talking like terawatts. It truly is a mind boggling amount of energy that gets wasted because we simply can't get it to users cheap enough.

lopis 2mo ago

Like those "wood" tables that are 50% made of epoxy. It grinds my gears

Tade0 2mo ago
I'm so glad that fad is over. My mother worked as a theatre artisan before retirement and it was, among other things, fumes from curing epoxy that caused numerous health issues down the line.
- xattt 2mo ago
  I am curious about the down-the-line effects of fumes from printing PLA and PETG. Reddit posts suggest no ill effects, but it hasn’t been long enough in the hobbyist world.
  - sleepybrett 2mo ago
    My printer is near a window so I just added an exhaust duct to the window, in the past when it wasn't close to a window I ran that duct through some filters (charcoal, furnace filter stuff) and left the end near an additional air purifier i had in the space.
- lopis 2mo ago
  There's lots of YouTube carpeters that still do it in custom built tables. And these are very expensive custom builds too...

s1artibartfast 2mo ago

What does that have to do with anything? The point is to do something cool with it. It far more effective than building a collage with bought or new printed parts