The Little World

So there too, hah!

Actually all us model builders have an opportunity to stick it to the Facebook/Shopping Centre/News bite saints who scold us daily about everything we think or do – particularly the ones who would deny us everything from plastic straws to bear traps. We are ahead of their game:

a. Plastic straws. I use them in a daily cocktail, then wash them out and put them in the Little Workshop. When I need to pipette paint out of a bottle I use the straw, keeping it for the stirring stick when the thinner goes in. Then I cut it in half to reuse a second time.

b. Coffee stirring sticks. These are my paint stirrers and also function as structural members for building construction. I’ll happily empty the used container at any dance show or conference I attend. I rinse ’em off and dry ’em and use them at least four times before they are finally discarded.

c. Chinese food containers. These are the little organisers of my Little Workshop. They never get thrown away. Neither do the plastic trays and bowls that cheese and cracker snacks come in. I don’t eat that stuff, but I collect the containers and mix paint in them.

d. Did you know that you could reuse toilet paper? Well, no, you actually can’t but you had a little moment there, didn’t you…?

e. Balloons. They are apparently worse than Russian nerve gas, if you go by Facebook memes. I find them an ideal way of storing and mixing odd semi-solids. If it is any help to the Meme Sisters, by the time I finish with a balloon it is so stuck together that it will never imperil the environment.

f. AIrbrushes do not use hydrocarbons as propellants – as some cans of spray paint might. No ozone layer destruction. Okay, they use electricity, but this can be safely generated by a small nuclear power station in the workshop.

g. Plastic sprue can be burned as a useful fuel in steam-powered meditation machines. These allow Buddhists to acheive Nirvana 34% faster than the old wind-powered ones. And the black greasy smoke drifting onto the neighbour’s wash is a bonus.

h. No-one likes soggy pizza. No-one likes Harvey Weinstein, either. This should be a lesson to all convenience food makers. I reuse the plastic boxtop lifters that we get from Dominos for miniature tables.

i. I have over 80 tiny Tamiya and Mr Hobby glass bottles with plastic screw lids saved – carefully washed and dried. No-one seems to have a use for them yet but I am not discouraged – at some stage of he game someone will need them badly and I will have been vindicated.