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.
…If nothing else, recycle old noodles for a team pool party
Actually that’s from what I’ve seen this seems to be the most common recycling mode of old team-owned game pieces… team recreation! I have mostly fond memories of playing dodgeball with 2006 balls… giant soccer with a 2008 trackaball, and soccer obviously with 2010 leftovers. In fact the only game piece from my 4 years as a student that didn’t get re purposed were orbit balls from 2009, which were too broken to really use for anything.
Same for use, We would play games with the old game pieces to cool off, and “relax” during the next seasons build… of course we work in a large warehouse, split in half with a fence running through it and most of our game pieces would end up on the other side!.. I would be surprised if this years game piece made it over the fence. (Not including Noodles)
Nobody in FIRST Robotics actually throws anything away do they? Our team has been around for more than 20 years…And they still have things more than 20 yrs. old (we recycle everything ourselves). I have been around now a few years, and until the day after kickoff 2015…I had no idea we owned so many of those Totes this game requires. (Only problem was, they were all filled with good old stuff).
The only problem I see for using them for bumpers is that they are not hollow. In years past bumpers have been required to use hollow noodles. Unless they changed that, these would not work well for that.
** 2014: R21** C. use a stacked pair of approximately 2 ½ in. round, petal, or hex “pool noodles” (solid or hollow) as the BUMPER
cushion material (see Figure 4-8).
They changed it a few years back. I don’t remember when but I think 2013.
(Not including Noodles)