Games Workshop and Plastic Waste, Part 3 - Solution+

Before going on, some backstory  Prior to my last post I sent a letter to Games Workshop (a speculative job application, actually, CV and all). In that letter I told them there are two principle solutions to plastic waste. Before, there had only been one - recycling, as everyone, except GW it seems, knows about. Last time I described the second. 

I also want to say something about why I am keep mentioning Games Workshop in particular. Simple. They are pretty much a ubiquitous presence across the UK - a bit like Costa - whether it's their own stores or official independent stockists - and that makes them by far the biggest player in the hobby sector. And the biggest source of hobby plastic waste. 

OK. Now the Bonus Solution: re-design the cross-sectional profile of the sprue frame network. That's it. For the designers and engineers at GW, this will not be hard to do, but the outcomes can be far-reaching and will provide ideal complement to surface textures. 

Now a diagram, or rather my original sketches from a project book, since a picture tells a thousand words...

Lines of paired rivets would be really useful for scratch building industrial stuff, but they would be better combined with a thinner cross section - the current trapezoid is a bit chunky. A profile something like a 'T', or an 'L-bow' (like at the top the image), would be a lot handier for scratch building. Obviously,  every design profile has to accommodate release from the mold. I could go on but this is quite sufficient for today. Part 4 will round up, with some additional material.

To the management at Games Workshop, the guys whose main goal is to drive profit, it seems almost certain that their psychology is aligned with 'Time is Money'. In other words, if there is any extra time involved in producing something, it will result in a loss of money. 

How much profit would be lost if it took an extra, say, 20 minutes, to go once around a mold drilling little divots that will translate into rivets?  (Spoiler - none whatsoever)

Now, production pipelines are complicated for a large operation. GW is obviously large. But lets do a thought experiment about what would happen for a limited run product if it takes longer to mill the injection molds. 

After the designs are finished and signed off, the molds are milled, everything else is prepped for printing. With my suggested modifications in mind, lets say it takes an extra hour to mill an A5 sized sprue. Lots of sprues in an Indomitus box, big ones A4 sized, and I forget how many were in it. Lets say 6 x A4, so 12 x A5. And what does the extra time come to? 12 hours. Half a-fucking-day. Where, exactly, will the 'Time is Money' tenet manifest from that extra time? 

There is quite literally NO EXCUSE for not implementing waste reducing adaptations - nay, INNOVATIONS! - into mold making. 

~Jay

P.S. Seriously, I will be posting painting content soon. 

Games Workshop and Plastic Waste, Part 2 - Solutions

 *[Miniature painting content will resume soon]*

The tabletop wargaming hobby has a problem, an elephant in the metaphorical room. 

That elephant is the unspoken, unacknowledged problem of plastic waste by the biggest name in the wargaming hobby - Games Workshop. To be sure, this is a problem that every other plastic kit manufacturer is guilty of, and my solution below is just as applicable to them. I don't know where GW sits in the scheme of things w.r.t. other kit makers, but they may well be near the top by quantity of output. Lego have addressed their long legacy of pumping out millions of kilos of unrecyclable plastic, and now use non-fossil sources for their bricks. Everyone else needs to catch up, ethically speaking.

Empty sprues are synonymous with single use plastic. Have been so from the very beginning. No thought given to making it do more once its usefulness is over. Now, the resourceful model maker CAN do stuff with them, but most hobbyists don't. So, what to do. The talk on the internet is always about recycling, but the infrastructure in the UK is woeful, and sorry tales emerge periodically about UK waste being shipped overseas. UK business has a history of shirking responsibility for sorting out its own mess and unintended consequences. 

There are two solutions the likes of GW can implement to prevent waste. The first, as already stated, is recycling. But left to generic, local authority waste management, sprues are as likely to end up in landfill, or incinerated, than get properly recycled. Recycling will work, if, and probably only if, proper incentives and channels exist to get empty sprues back to Nottingham. OK for the UK, not an option for the the rest of the world. I don't hold any hope for really worthwhile incentives, but a lot of people will do it just the same, because they care.

As for the second, I'll illustrate by recounting my story. Really looking at a sprue was what gave me the inspiration, mixed with some older observations of Kingdom Death plastic kits. 

First, look at a GW sprue, if you have one around. It would help if all the kit parts are already snipped off, then you can focus on what's left. So what is left? Glib answer: a piece of plastic with no useful features (except to the rare few who extract some measure of use from offcuts). But keep looking... notice it yet? 

There in the corner - a string of numbers. So what? 

Now we get to a 'hang on a minute...' thing.

The 'so what' is a solution that pertains to plastic waste as far as Games Workshop is concerned (other companies as well in relevant form). 

Why can't those numbers be in a fancier type face? Ornate. Gothic. Or elegant. So it follows - why can't MORE numbers, or text, or strings of both, cover the ENTIRE sprue?

My point is: if a manufacturer can etch a serial number onto the blank part of a sprue, why can't it also etch other detail on the remainder of a sprue? Why not have rows of rivets, a simple wood texture, names, phrases, icons? It doesn't have to be overelaborate - imagine something like an embossing effect, which can, hypothetically, be done with a single pass at the mold milling stage. 

And there you have it. A solution to plastic waste in the Warhammer hobby is to have sprues that hobbyists can kitbash for decorative bits and pieces. Can't use it? Give it to someone who will. Trade them. Congratulations, you've made sprues that are REALLY USEFUL to the end user.

With further adaptations, this can go much further still, but I'll relate those another day.   

Recycling is an awkward business. We don't have a proper circular economy, that in hindsight should have been implemented decades ago. Companies make stuff, ship it out, and that's that. It doesn't help that we are collectively lazy, deciding that it's too much effort and too expensive to recycle plastics properly. Send it abroad and make it Someone Elsa's Problem.

The only obstacle to innovation is Games Workshop, and their willingness to do something about an environmental problem in which they are culpable partners with other plastic manufacturers.

~Jay