Plastic molding with grocery bags

I hated seeing all these perfectly good plastic bags go to waste, so I decided I would figure out a way to reuse them. In this instructable I'll show you how to use old bags to mold plastic parts.

Step 1: Gather materials

All you need is:

Pliers
Lighter
Plastic bags

A mold to cast


A large open space

Comments

[explosivemaker]

It's a terrible idea. Melting is one thing, but burning is bad, bad, bad.

[kirnex]

This is an awesome idea. My only issues would be:

1) Hazardous fumes? Plastic bags surely must emit toxic fumes that you don't want to be breathing in. Wear a mask while doing it.

2) If fuming IS an issue, from an ecological perspective, isn't this just kind of self-neutralizing? I mean to say that any fumes leeched from the practice of burning off plastic bags has got to nullify the benefits of repurposing the plastic.

That aside, this is such an easy, great way to use plastics in moulding. Thanks for sharing it.

[evindrews]

OK, so i'm making a mold out of paper clay, this is probably a dumb question, but will it set it on fire? What if I used some sort of spray paint to cover the clay? thanks.
^.^

[kirnex]

Paper clay will definitely light up. Spray paint? I'm assuming oil or alcohol based? Also flammable. Try some silicone.

[SirStokes]

Those pieces look awesome! I like whenever people find ways to recycle stuff at home. Not everyone has city-wide recycling (I am one of the lucky ones), so DIY recycling is actually very important.

[lukev2]

could i make a mold of a wooden hand with this method? i need to reproduce it.......

[Capt.Cassandra]

Did you use any mold release for your molds? Or was it pretty easy to slip the finished product out?

[JAYDAWG40]

ha thats funny when i saw the matirals list and saw plastic bags the first thing i thought was i can get all the bags i need from work. scrolled down and saw the ace hardware bag. just thought it was funny because i work at an ace hardware lol

[freerunnin1]

would it be possible to make a buckle piece from this that will be strong enough? i mean one of the pieces that look like [][]

[chingchong]

It would be green if u use an oven if your on an green powerplant grid. like solar power or nuclear power.

[servant74]

Wind, PV, and other solar are the only 'real green'. Nukes just change the problem and push working out a solution for it back a few years. Sofar the good folks on NV still don't want the nuke waste site in their state where the feds have built a nice 'disposal site' in a mountain. Anyone else want it?

[trevor3693]

i live in NV and even though we dont want the waste we still get it. our main concern is the route the trucks take. it is like they are trying to go next to every school.

[Nunavutnewsrules]

Just throwing it out there, but our local nuclear powerplant has stored all of its nuclear waste on site. So far i dont see anything wrong with the enviorment in this area.

[caleiton]

And what do you think will happen with all that nuclear waste in 50, 100 or 200 years, that is not going to return to nature ever, it is not part of any nature cycle

[mcshawnboy]

Not that I have the answer, but I recall reading science trying to warn folks in the future of dangers of sites like the proposed Yucca Mountain of the long time hazards w/o using materials that may have value. There was the logic of how cultures after the Egyptian pharaohs rule ended others striped the pyramids of exterior veneers of limestone. They considered scary images in sculpture of pot metals or stone, but no final answer met the challenger into the half-life of many centuries if our language & culture perish.

[EEGeek]

corrected for some of the fat-finger typos!:
A.)  I think it's a good instructable, which happens to have nothing to do with nuclear power

b.) So, you don't actually know anything about nuclear power, just shooting off stuff out of ignorance or fear right?   The nuclear plants of today, as an example:  the amount of nuclear "waste" generated while powering about 10,000-20,000 homes for 5-7 years generates about a softball sized expended fuel puck.  about 85% of which can be re-enriched and used again.  How much waste, exactly do you think is generated making enough solar panels to power 10-20,000 homes FULLY for 5-7 years?  Let along the ones that end up broken or fully in the landfill when the house come down?

Kind of like why your new Prius is SO less green than my gas guzzling dodge ram with 300K miles on it that is 20 years old.  The cost to make the Prius (and the next one that will replace it to get to 300k+ miles) to the environment, is so much more than the cost of actually using it.

[antioch]

"the amount of nuclear "waste" generated while powering about 10,000-20,000 homes for 5-7 years generates about a softball sized expended fuel puck. about 85% of which can be re-enriched and used again. "

leaving all the flaws in your other, wild comparisons aside, i just want to see you present us with the source of these 2 particular claims. just so we know whether you made it up or had someone take advantage of your gullability.

[fduerr]

I've done some calculating and the cost to make and deliver a Prius is much higher in terms of energy consumption than the energy cost of running the old gas guzzler during its entire life time.

[chickenlinux]

Amen!

Furthermore, has anyone seen the prototype thorium-fueled reactors? They're amazing! You can run an average US home for 10 hears off of all the thorium in one cubic meter of soil. O.O

They partially create their own fuel (and generate electricity from doing so...)

It creates only 10% of the harmful waste that current reactors do (which isn't much anyhow...) and 90% of that 10% becomes stable and harmless after 10 years. That leaves 1% of the harmful waste after 10 years of today's nuclear reactors. This mere 1% can be postprocessed into useful materials, eg, electronics, medical equipment, etc.

And all these environmentalists just hate nuclear power... -.-

[mvermunt]

Also, by design, they immediately shut-down if anything goes amiss. there is NO reason not to use thorium fueled reactors.

Glad someone brought it up

[GrumpyOldGoat]

I wuz in favor of burying the 'spent fuel' at algoes house.

[nave]

give give it to canada, they need some excitment in their lives...

[dabooge]

Nave, that is a typical naive American response. As with most Americans who really don't know jack about the rest of the world! Just add the "I" to your nick!

[stoobers]

<sarcasm>
At least we know how to spell "navy".  It doesn't have an I in it!
</sarcasm>

[nave]

dude, calm the hell down it was a joke, see americans still have a sense of humor

[grut125]

if you didnt arlready know they are one of the most polluted places in the world. but id dont care i sstill love the country.

[nave]

i didn't say that the country was under populated, i said they need something to do other than hockey

[mazeka.14]

Hey!

[thermoelectric]

Lol, Keep it out of Australia or else......

[john4tvs]

Green is the visible light spectrum from about 560 to 490 nm wavelenght or 540 to 610 THz. It's color.

[YummyPancakes]

Yes, but it's the color of plants, which represent the Environment, therefore "green" power sources would be Environment-friendly. Heck, if you actually memorized the visible spectrum in THz, you should be smart enough to figure that out.

[GrumpyOldGoat]

No, it is the color of MONEY!
And that is the only shade of green algore and friends are interested in.

[chad oliver]

He was being sarcastic while mocking the off-topic discussion, not saying that green couldn't also represent the environment. Have a nice day!

[shakra]

the fact that natural resources are mined out of the earth to produce the nuclear energy is the part that is not green. Killing national parks, chopping down trees and mining are not green.

[mazeka.14]

nuclear energy is green!!

[liliamar]

this is a typical 'devil may care' sense of using the word green and nuclear energy in one sentence. The plants and the wast needs 70.000 to 100.000 year of maintenance.
When ( and I'm using this word instead of 'if') the cooling-System fails, the fuel rods will get hot and it comes to core meltdown, the maximum credible accident. We are living 1.400 km away from Tschernobyl but we were not allowed to eat mushrooms we found in our area for 10 years because they buffer the fallout.
A guy above said that there is very little waste (which i don't even believe since the containers they deliver to Gorleben every other year are huge and many - and its getting sweating hot if you are tied down by the police 10 meters away... in a cold octobre night), but you surely never heard of Litwinjenko, killed with very small dose of polonium.
I guess the folk of USA is so greenwashed with the radioactive matters because they dropped the bombs over Hiroshima and now saying 'that stuff isn't that bad at all'

[thermoelectric]

No it ain't, You won't be thinking that when one of the reactors mysteriously go KA-BOOM and kill thousands of people

[Ceiling cat]

Here's a question. How many nuclear power plants are there in the world? About 400, and plans to build more. How many times has one had an accident? Seven or less in fifty years. How many times have you turned on the news to see a nuclear power plant disaster? Probably never. They can have accidents, but it happens very rarely.

[liliamar]

But when they do, thousands are dying. so, not immidiatly but even today a very high ratio of malformed babys are borne in tschernobyl and hiroshima.
And again: the plants have to be maintenanced for 70.000 years. How long will it take until the next warlord is seeking a good aim? How long until the next earthquake? Naive.

[kasengut]

Now, look at Japan.... Reactors exploding one after another due to nobody's fault.
And one person talking about an accident in a plant at Kent, which never got reported....