[Hallry]

Posted on the FRC Blog, 1/8/15: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...at-the-Noodles

Don’t Eat the Noodles

Blog Date: Thursday, January 8, 2015 - 14:18

Today’s blog post is from Kate Pilotte, FRC's Kit of Parts Manager.

Liz, from AndyMark, was helpful enough to remind the community not to eat the churros that came in the AM14U drive base kits last year… even if you find them covered in honey and cinnamon. Still sage advice for this year, by the way.

This season, we want to echo a similar sentiment: please don’t eat the (pool) noodles, even if doused in a fresh pesto sauce or part of a savory chicken soup.

Not sure if you picked up on it, but we wanted to put the concept of Recycling front and center this year. After all, recycling is the name of the game, or almost. In fact, we strongly recommend, and sincerely hope, that instead of throwing the pool noodles in the closest trash bin when done with them, that you recycle them or set them aside for possible bumpers later.

According to the manufacturer, they’re made of Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE), or #4 plastic if you’re using the USA resin identification coding system. US teams can search for facilities that recycle LDPE here (the search likes “#4 rigid plastic” as the search term). If your municipality doesn’t recycle #4 plastic, consider bringing them to the event. We’re working on a way to recycle the noodles damaged during matches and your noodle(s) may be incorporated in that process (which is yet to be defined).

Let’s drive this home… the EPA hosts a report on their site (admittedly, the version we link here is an older version of the document, for some reason this nugget isn’t in the most recent version of this report) that compared emissions between processes using 100% recycled material and 100% brand new material (specifically, Exhibit 15) – the difference for LDPE is 1.97 MTCO2E/Short Ton (metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) – or a reduction of ~89.3%. HUGE.

The current version of the same report states that only 13.9% of LDPE/LLDPE produced is actually recovered. As a community we can and should bump that statistic up.

Thanks, in advance, for helping keep the plastics in circulation and out of landfills.

Good luck this season!