Reply To: 3D printing and the enviroment #teamseas

[limburger 21705xp 1]

anything decomposes … all it needs is time …
And a reminder : oil is ‘plant based’, but you wouldn’t want to dump it in the river …
As such I wouldn’t be too sure if those “plant based” resins are actually safer or more environmentally friendly than the ‘regular’ stuff.

And the standard they claim (EN 71-3:2013 ) … is basically telling they’re not using lead :

“NEN-EN 71-3+A2 specifies requirements and test methods for the migration of aluminium, antimony, arsenic, barium, boron, cadmium, chromium (III), chromium (VI), cobalt, copper, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, selenium, strontium, tin, organic tin and zinc from toy materials and from parts of toys. Packaging materials are not considered to be part of the toy unless they have intended play value. “

It sounds nice and legal, but it literally is the same standard that any substance used for toys has to comply with.
It is *NOT* environmental safety as such. You probably could put a 71-3 standard sticker on 99% of the GW minis and paints.
The fact that they don’t even link to test results or any other formal documentation telling you what they’ve done and how they are complying with said standard should be enough to tell you it is pure marketing.

Adding taxes to make stuff more expensive isn’t going to help one bit.
It’s not like the governments across the world won’t use that as free money to spend on silly stuff like moving from Brussels to Strassbourg and back again every month ….

It’s an expensive hobby as is and it’s not like people will stop buying crap just because you make them pay more.
It hasn’t stopped people smoking, despite taxes being about 90% of the cost these days.
It hasn’t stopped people driving, despite fuel being 50+% taxes.

There are techniques that could be used to add invisible identifiers to plastic.
Except they also require the waste disposal facilities to adopt them, which creates a chicken&egg paradox.

The basic plastic collection they do in these parts is so confusing that I just dump it in the regular garbage.
Never mind that the collected plastic gets burned anyway if they can’t identify it.

The core problem is that there are too many plastic variants out there that we as consumers can’t identify.
Even within our own hobby we don’t get an ingredients list of the stuff used so how the heck are we going to safely dispose that stuff anyway ?

It’s taken decades to get rid of lead in metal minis … and that didn’t happen because our industry gave a damn.
It happened because lead in general was banned and they had to adopt.

You’d think that with that kind of experience the 3D printing industry would be lightyears ahead of the game by ensuring their products would be safe for humans/environment.
And yet all the attention is focused on how easy it is to make new shiny crap with the hardware.

If safety is given a tought it’s because the materials used make the thing stink.
People wouldn’t even be using air filters if the resin hadn’t smelled …
Heck, most are still convinced that it is ‘safe’ because they can’t smell the toxins.