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Hey dakka,

I just recently had an idea, that I do not know whether its even possible, or if it is, how feasible it would be....

Do you think it possible to "melt" down plastic sprues from our GW kits, for reuse in the molds towards another batch of minis? If it is possible, AND games workshop brought some form of program where players could send in empty, or otherwise used sprues for "discounts" or another sort of "reward program".. would it work?

For instance, player X spends 6 dollars on shipping to GW, sending them sprues from his former Space Marine Battalion Box, and receives a gift card for X dollars, based either on value of "how much could be produced" or "gross weight of returned sprue"

Or, another idea, players could "return" sprue to their LGW, or FLGS' "collection point" and on a designated date in the month, the store sends it all in bulk back to GW, whereupon, the store could be authorized to give a "sale", reducing price by certain percentage, again based on the returns.


What say you Dakka???

Someone at one point had a "sprue recycling" project going on at one point, though I'm not sure who it was or if it's still active.

As far as melting sprue down, from what I understand, the plastic is chemically formed, so all you do is turn it into a sticky mess with a lungful of horrible chemicals. Never actually tried first hand however.

My advice is to find creative ways to use the material. Build fences out of long pieces of sprue or grind it into small pieces to use as rocks and whatnot.

I don't think it's quite as easy as melting it down, however there are lots of plastic recycling programmes in the UK so it can be dealt with using the right methods.

daedalus wrote:Someone at one point had a "sprue recycling" project going on at one point, though I'm not sure who it was or if it's still active.

As far as melting sprue down, from what I understand, the plastic is chemically formed, so all you do is turn it into a sticky mess with a lungful of horrible chemicals. Never actually tried first hand however.

My advice is to find creative ways to use the material. Build fences out of long pieces of sprue or grind it into small pieces to use as rocks and whatnot.

That was Wargames Factory, and since being taken over by Chinese, they don't do that anymore.

I feel like this thread was posted 3 years ago... we've already had plenty of discussion about this very topic, no?

Yes, Wargames Factory used to do this, not sure if they do it any longer. GW DOES do this (well, something similar) but its really not open to the public. They only recycle internally(like the bits of industrial sprue that come off the mold that aren't packaged into a box), claiming that there would be major quality control issues if they accepted sprues from outside customers (since they wouldn't be able to guarantee all the sprues being sent in were GW sprues, and different manufacturers use different chemical compositions for their plastic).

Brother SRM wrote:

daedalus wrote:Someone at one point had a "sprue recycling" project going on at one point, though I'm not sure who it was or if it's still active.

As far as melting sprue down, from what I understand, the plastic is chemically formed, so all you do is turn it into a sticky mess with a lungful of horrible chemicals. Never actually tried first hand however.

My advice is to find creative ways to use the material. Build fences out of long pieces of sprue or grind it into small pieces to use as rocks and whatnot.

That was Wargames Factory, and since being taken over by Chinese, they don't do that anymore.

Ah. Shame, that.

I asked this question last year actually. I got told:
a) the plastic is recyclable so you could melt it down again.
b) they wouldn't be doing the scheme you propse due to the transport costs outweighing the benefits (apparently).

I work in plastic injection molding, so let me add some things. First, yes you can remelt plastic and reuse it. We do it at work all the time. Scrap parts from production and runners/sprues are ground up and reused. Its called regrind.

However, there are some conditions. Every time plastic is reused after its first molding it loses some of its qualities. It doesnt mold as well, its not as strong, etc. These flaws increase each time the plastic is reused. For this reason regrind is rarely used straight, instead it is mixed with virgin plastic, usually in a ratio of around 10-20% regrind.

So, as you can see returning sprues to the original manufacturer just isnt worth it. However, bringing them to a local recycling center wouldnt hurt, especially if you are already recycling other items.