I have been to two different high schools and been in two different robotics teams. In my first team we reused our cable ties to the extent that we would use a pocket knife to push down the “lock” in the cable tie then undo it. Now as part of 2919A, my habits urge me to reuse all the cable ties from our intake - but to a lesser extent, where I snip the cable ties then reuse them.
The cable ties that are easier to reuse are the longer ones such as the ones on intakes and the ones on the connections between cables. These can then be used for shorter lengths such as fixing stray cables to your vex metal.
Mind you, reusing them and reducing waste is (albeit tiny, but still is) environmentally friendlier. And we don’t have to buy cable ties as often or as many.
And I’ve been known for handing a roboteer that has made a art project or a necklace out of cable ties my micra tool to take it apart. One tie at a time.
It was a very sad time in our club. We had run clear out of every single ziptie. That day we unlocked and got about 25 zip ties to use. It was a very hard process haha.
As much as a love supporting the environment, saving a couple hundred zip ties is in no way making a significant contribution. At all. You would have to do that for like thousands of years before making up for a single rocket launch.
That’s the kind of thinking that just makes stuff get worse. “It’s so small it won’t do anything”. Thing is, if everyone thinks like that, it is significant.
Not worth the effort to us. At 10 minutes to remove a dozen ties, and with probably 200 on our robot (all with their ends cut down, by the way), we just don’t have the time.
I’m not from the US. Cable ties aren’t that expensive, but throwing out every single one when some are able to be reused is a waste, and detrimental, however small, to the environment.
The coolest cable ties I reused were the inspection ones from Worlds last year. These two fluoro pink and yellow cable ties are now sitting on the back of our team’s robot.
4,500 VEX teams at 150 ties per robot and assuming all the ties come off twice a year (during build and at the final tear down) for a total of 300 used ties per year and at 1 gram each I get: 1,350,000 ties or 1,350 Kg or 2979 lbs of plastic. A mound of plastic the size of a small truck.
13,500 bags of ties that cost $67,365 (plus $1,775 in shipping, think of all the fuel used to get them to you!)
Remember, think globally! At least make an attempt to put the ties into plastic recycling!
According to http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/plastic-thrown-away-year-us, the United States uses 30 million tons of plastic every year. 2979lbs to tons is, rounded up, about 1.5tons. (1.5)/30’000’000 = 0.00000005 = 0.000005% of the total US plastic consumption yearly.
I think we can throw away zip ties and not be concerned about making a significant impact.
