Subject:
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Re: Question about recycling Lego
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego
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Date:
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Mon, 14 Oct 2002 21:08:17 GMT
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Viewed:
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1049 times
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In lugnet.lego, John Gerlach writes:
> In lugnet.lego, Wayne Sardullo writes:
> > I'm not exactly sure if this is something that has ever been asked but, has
> > LEGO ever considered a recycling program for older used bricks... While the
> > business side of something like this isn't totally profitable it could at
> > least reuse resources that already exist.
>
> I asked that question when I was touring their factory several years ago.
> (One of the coolest benefit of the years I spent as a LEGO employee -- being
> able to tour the factory! I was holding bricks in my hands while they were
> still warm out of the moulding machine! <sigh> )
>
> Anyway, the response was that they couldn't get the quality of bricks that
> people expect, if they used recycled plastic. Their current moulding
> process reuses the 'tree' pieces, there is a readout of what percent is
> 'new' plastic, and what percent is the recycled 'trees'. If the numbers get
> outside a certain range, the quality drops.
>
> And we all know how much we expect our new bricks to work perfectly, every
> time...
>
> JohnG, GMLTC
I have to concur with John. I've worked in the injection molded plastic
business, molding lexan parts for computer chip manufacturing. (Lexan is a
high strength GE plastic). Any time you reuse plastic, the quality does
drop a little, as the plastic has already been heated, dried, and melted and
had it's physical and chemical states altered a little as a result of it.
(industry term is "regrind"--the trees and old parts have to be ground up,
hence the term). Most plastic manufacturing uses a percentage of bad parts
and molding trees (also called "Sprue"), new material is generally referred
to as "virgin". I know that Saturn does the same thing with their
automotive body panels. The company I worked for used our lexan regrind in
window latches (due to a very high quality demand from computer chip
manufacturing, we could not use regrind). As John said, there is a certain
level at which the quality fails.
Also, I've noticed that old bricks generally acquire some extra dirt and
other assorted debris as time goes on--and that debris can only hurt the
quality of the material in the manufacturing process.
still, a noble idea, but not very easy to execute, given the manufacturing
process.
Scott Lyttle
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Question about recycling Lego
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| (...) I asked that question when I was touring their factory several years ago. (One of the coolest benefit of the years I spent as a LEGO employee -- being able to tour the factory! I was holding bricks in my hands while they were still warm out of (...) (22 years ago, 14-Oct-02, to lugnet.lego)
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