Is there an environmentally friendlier alternative to yellow polyurethane foam? I go through so much foam its aweful. That stuff is wasteful and bad to inhale. Does anybody know about any foam that’s made of recycled materials or bio-degradable materials? That would be great! Let’s invent it if it doesn’t exist.
balsa wood, expensive though… I love “lets invent it” ahhh as if invention was easy.
I try to use the minimal amount of foam. And I really mean very minimal. In place I use paper and card.
One of the most concerned issues of being an IDer is the toxins that we are exposed to. But you could modify your work process where you could cut down the need of using sprays and foam. Cut down on the wood too. Save trees, dust and all the stuffy nose…
Well, you could use a different re-usable medium like clay.
Cornstartch is an already used alternative to foam packing peanuts.
These guys figured out how to make it in sheet format (scroll halfway down):
http://www.spra.org.uk/news18.html
Cheery, paper and card are processed fiber, fiber from trees and that processing can be damn nasty (google pulp plant) so your not “saving trees” using them. Wood is a bio resource, grows all over the place, sucks up carbon puts out o2 so using it is pretty green. The starch based foam is damn cool looking stuff and if your hungry late at night on a job, just pop a few scraps in to your mouth for a quick snack, cant be much different than doritios. ID’s exposure to toxins is damn small compared to most other gigs, from the guy who builds boats, funiutre, electronics, heck any production enviorment even chip plants has tons of nasty toxins. The toxin load you get from work is just a fraction of what you get when you walk to and fro amonst the truck/busses/cars of any city.
Balsa wood, clay, and paper don’t have the qualties of foam that I like. Foam is quick to shape and smooth and holds its form. I used to work with balsa wood back in high school woodshop and it takes much longer to wittle and sand. Maybe yellow foam can be recycled by the manufacturers?
Not readily available (yet) - but Soy Foam is an option. Search Ford and Soy Foam. FWIW, I used this as the primary foam for padding in my Yeago sustainable hiking backpack project, via my coroflot portfolio link below.
soy stuff sounds cool.
has anyone heard of hemp based foam or related products?