I started paying attention to my waste a few years ago, slowly reducing the amount of plastic in my trash. Right now, the main source of plastic waste for me is... the hobby. Infinity boxes contain a big piece of black plastic foam, blister are plastic and also contain some foam. The idea here is not to throw mud at CB (as every company in the miniature market is producing a lot of plastic waste too) but to ask CB (@Bostria ?) if a more environmental friendly packaging is possible (reducing the amount of plastic if removing it is not possible) If I'm not the only one feeling like this about wasting plastic please tell it
Plastic from CB boxes is i think PET, so it's 100% recyclable. Also, it can be consumed by various fungi and now also a bacteria. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis
The outer card sleaves are good to cut into strips or angles to use on bases for industrial floor/Sci-fi City pavement etc. The blisters are good for making windows in scenery or even just as a pallet. The foam can be really handy to keep around for cutting pieces out of to secure od shaped minis in your case, or you can cut it into strips spray it brown, and flock it to make hedges. If you make a little box out of the outer sleave card, paint it grey(or any colour you like, I'm not the home owners association) you can glue a hedge on top for a park/garden wall.
Sry, but when I compare my plastic trash from my hobby and my daily life. there's a factor 30 minimum for my normal plastic rubble. If I have to chose between a safe (don't lose parts, see the minitarue befor buying) packaging and this little reduction of my annualised daily waste, I'll take the first.
I generally keep the clam packs from infinity blisters, some get used as storage for tokens etc, a fair few are holding screws and other bits (I moved house just under a year ago and the boxes and blisters were amazingly useful. Mostly however i save them as i can make tokens out of them, few blobs of Tamiya clear red on a thumbnail sized bit makes for a considerably more photogenic wound marker and my support ware tokens are all made from clamp pack Spoiler: like on this overdron
Personally I reuse all the foam from the infinity boxes as padding in the assortment of boxes I use to store in progress/failed/stalled projects. clamshells are recyclable, and its good to keep one or two hanging around as a handy disposable pallet for all-purpose filler/pva when working on bases or other activities you don't want to get on your 'good' painting pallet(s)
I use blisters to make window material and as mixing pallets for filler/glue (and these go into recyc eventually - after I pull the layer of paint off them.) and the sponge for painting detailing on terrain (like rust and dirt and scorching). The leftover metal bits go into a container and melted down when I have enough for my crucible. the cardboard goes into recyc. But I'm also not one to buy all of the things every month, so my amount of detritus is quite manageable.
the larger leftover metal bits (e.g. the tab on the bottom of the mini) also make good paint agitators when chopped to a suitable size for your paint pot of choice.
I'd say they might oxidize and make the problem even worse? I save my shavings to add some weight to certain bases, to try and improve stability... even so I think I have enough leftovers to smelt into one of the new Maghariba... XD
I'm not sure if the pewter that miniatures are made from has oxidation problems, I know very old lead-based pewters suffer from 'lead rot'. I do know that paints from Reaper Miniatures have small pewter skulls in the dropper bottles as agitators though
Yep, I'd say more than a decade ago. But the metal models we use nowadays are made out of an alloy, and without checking the composition who knows... Personally I spent five bucks on a package of stainless small bearings, mostly because they are a) spherical (so best options for mixing), b) magnetical (you can use a magnet to move the bearing inside the bottle and mix things better!!!) and c) heavy enough to do a good job by themselves most of the time. b and c are the solid selling points for me, at least ;)
Certain companies removed lead. Mostly back in the 90s in the lead up to a proposed NY (USA) STATE bill to ban on "lead in children's toys". GW, Ral Partha were the biggies affected by this. The ban never happened (the bill did not pass) but it wasn't cost-effective for those two to switch back after making the change to lead free. Other smaller makers just added the "This is not a toy" to their labelling. CB still uses lead in its WMA (white metal alloy, it's a family of alloys sharing similar properties. "Pewter" is just one wma out of the family, for example.) - it notes this in multiple languages on the blister pack tags (the cardboard part that allows it to be placed onto a hook for display). Pretty much ALL metals oxidise. This is basic chemistry. Alloys can oxidise, too - it may take longer with certain blends, but it can still happen. "Lead rot" is an extreme pure lead oxidation issue - mostly caused by excessive moisture and tends to affect older metal miniatures made with a much higher lead content. It can be stopped but not reversed. This is, incidentally, why the majority of "olden days" lead figures were painted. The paint 'skin' prevents this issue. So, "PAINT YOUR GORRAM FIGURES" as that paint coat prevents the oxidation by making it harder for the water and and air to get to the surface of the metal. Heat and electrical differentials (the chemical reaction causes a potential change) also accelerate the process. CB miniatures aren't pure lead - and though they CAN be subjected to oxidation, it won't be anywhere near as bad and still relies on those conditions for it to happen. I have small glass beads in my bottles. They won't oxidise or change the paint properties. Stainless steel has different grades, and cheaper ones aren't worth the risk (his is why there is "marine grade stainless" which is designed to be around water without corroding and where cheaper grades will rust out).
The packaging still quotes 3-4% lead content, always has. Unless something has changed since the Gencon exclusive pre-release pack as that's the most recent box I have to hand.
I tend to use a couple of plastic beads I bought off ebay for a pittance now, but at the time I just used them because they were to hand and my paints needed a bit more agitating than my rsi-riddled arms can provide alone
For the shaking of paints i've seen some options apart from shaking your arm off: * There's shakers used for nail polish for beauty salons, those are relatively cheap and not hard to get, and considering how thick nail polish is should do the job for our acrylics * I've heard that putting the paint pot inside one of those ultrasonic cleaners will do a fantastic job of mixing it, and those are not too expensive either (plus have uses for minis so they're worth it), this i have pending to test * On the high end, somebody mentioned getting a secondhand shaker machine used for laboratories. This is by far the most expensive, but is pretty much overkill, the mixing should be perfect * There's all sort of homemade rigs to connect to power tools to do the shaking, from ones to put the dropper bottle on a drill to rotate it a lot, to others that shake them back and forth Also i've heard that metal ball bearings have a distinctive advantage over plastic and glass beads because of their weight, just a couple of days ago Luke from LukesAPS was discussing this when in relation with Army Painter paints, which have notorious issues with mixing, with his own take on this (which honestly i don't like a single bit).
Personally I've got an idea to get one of those electric milk frothers (like a little battery driven whisk thing) and cut the whisk bit off so I can stick it in dropper bottles to mix the paint. Edit: also I stopped trusting that guy's tips when he started painting ork sluggas with a silver sharpie
