Games Workshop & Plastic Waste, Part 5 - Not Only But Also

 A couple of nights ago I did some research to uncover other figure manufacturers making plastic kits.

This yielded: Mantic Games, Warlord Games, Wargames Foundry, Malifaux. And of course Kingdom Death, of which I own copious numbers of plastic figures.

It was interesting to see that Malifaux (aka Wyrd) have sprues exactly the same as KD. I also noticed some common features between GW and Mantic sprues. It seems that some parts of their plastic production is outsourced or shared, which could make initiating a  change in 'design culture' a little harder. 

An exceedingly useful mantra when trying to get a point across: show, don't tell...

Would have been nice to add a wood texture, but that is beyond my capacity to make. Rivets do nicely however. The plain sprue profile is an approximation from eyeballing and a millimeter ruler, good enough in the absence of having a micrometer to hand. The colour profiles are all derived from the basic GW footprint, and all of them lend themselves to scratch building structures that facilitate panels. 

~J~

Games Workshop and Plastic Waste, Part 4 - Hard Numbers

So this is now pretty much a crusade. Still shouting into the void, still the One-eyed Man in the Kingdom of the Blind.

Facts matter, and the facts I now have are quite depressing.

Being a scientific sort, I have kept my estimates of waste plastic conservative. "Up to 50%", I have written here or elsewhere. 

Then last Saturday I purchased the Adepta Sororitas Combat Patrol box from my local gaming shop, helpfully allowing me to bypass the 'sold out outline' denial at GW's online store. Useful set for my Sisters project, and saved fifteen quid. 

First thing I did after I opened the box, was to weigh the sprues. 

Canoness (small sprue)        complete - 8g;    empty - 5g;   remaining waste as percentage - 62% 
Sisters A (large)                      79g    46g            58%
Sisters B (medium)                39g    25g            64%
Rhino B (large)                       71g    32g            45%
Rhino T (large)                        81g    37g          45%
Rhino Extras (medium)           44g    24g           54%
ADDITIONS:
Aestred Thurga (smallish)      19g    12g        63%

(Percentiles have been rounded down)
(List will be updated as and when more kits are measured.)

Even from a small sample size, this is much worse than my conservative guesstimate, but I suspected it would be the case. Fair to say, that with the exception of larger model kits - the Knights, Daemons, etc - all kits have a waste footprint of well over 50%. Multiply that by MILLIONS of sprues sold every year, and the scale of waste is even more appalling. 

A REQUEST: to anyone who happens across this blog and is willing to help by providing some more data, please do what I did. Weigh sprues as new and when empty & post them in comments. Units are moot, as long as a percentage can be calculated. Thanks in advance.

~J~