I have been fixated on creating products that are at least semi eco-friendly and I would really like to dabble with acrylic. I have reached out to Greencast with no luck. Any other companies?
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You could get people to pay you to recycle sheets.
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Does buying someone else’s scraps count as recycling? If so, there are some acrylic scrap sellers on ebay.
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If there is an acrylic/sign shop local to you check with them. I get cut offs from TAP for usually ~$1 per sheet or so, and often just free. The make a lot of waste since they start with full sheets and cut to whatever size the customer requests.
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I made several attempts to contact Greencast a couple years ago via their U.S. office with no response. I never got around to trying to contact their home office in Italy. It seems like they would want to at least respond to inquiries. I’m not sure why they even have contact info on their website.
Other than the Precious Plastics people, I haven’t found anyone else. Please let us know if you do!
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I am glad I am not the only one with issues contacting them. Thanks for sharing Precious Plastics! If I ever come across some money I might just reach out to them to start something up since it is so scarce here.
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Thank you for sharing this! I never considered the possibility of making it myself.
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I believe there is a TAP nearby me. I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the tip!
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I’ve been able to get scraps from local plastics places (like TAP), but also from frame/sign shops and small manufacturers (like one guy who makes acrylic furniture). Unless you need huge sheets or very specific colors, that’s a really great way to reduce waste and use earth-friendly options.
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recycled, scrap, and eco-friendly are very different terms.
buying new sheet from a local sheet manufacturer might be better for the environment that using scraps from chinese sheet imported by a distributor.
personally I think that promoting an item as eco-friendly because it’s from an off-cut of a regular sheet might be a bit misleading.
even greencast is not exactly green at all: they found a clever way to reuse their own industrial scrap and off-spec product: but how is it better than a cast sheet that was well made in the first place?
you will have better luck with styrene (HIPS) and hdpe, although they are not great under the laser.
also, if using scrap pieces works for you, contact local sign manufacturers, plastic distributors as well as POP display manufacturers.
good luck!
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To be clear, I have no interest in promoting items as eco-friendly because that doesn’t really exist hence my use of -semi- but I do have an interest in doing my best to contribute the least to pollution and being transparent. Such a bummer about Greencast. They are very misleading by leading you to believe they collect acrylic - thanks for that insight. Using scraps has its positive environmental impacts but I’m not fond of the idea of it being another source of revenue rather than saving it from trash. I’ll probably just stick with wood until I can access an end-of-life acrylic recycler.
Had a thought: Once the pandemic is over, we can repurpose all of the plexiglass companies have been using.
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It certainly has limited our access to acrylic, as there has a number of complaints here that there was extended delivery times. However, for most cases, I really hope they will leave most in place. Even if there was not another pandemic headed down the pike, many cases were good ideas before they were forced into it.
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Totally agree. I am loving the 6ft space rule too.
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Me too.
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