Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/26/gigantic-tub-of-22000-perler.html
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22,000 thousand?
So, 22 million?
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I’d be pretty tempted to rig up something like this - although the sorting time would be considerable:
Although not that bad - maybe 12 hours at roughly 2 second per bead?
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If you enjoy that, have you met…
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Manually sorting a tub of 11,002 (yes, that was the quantity on the label) - been there, done that, don’t need to do it again, much less with 20,000.
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How about finding an artistic medium that doesn’t require forging tiny bits of plastic micro-pollution, which come from dirty oil, persist for centuries, destroy biodiversity, and contribute to our ultimate demise?
You have such a huge audience here on BoingBoing. It disheartens me every time I see it being used mindlessly promoting trash. What a shameful waste.
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Sorting 22,000 beads by color would not be difficult if they were just two different colors. Problem SOLVED!
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Am I the only one who reads “perler beads” as “beads beads” in their head?
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Excellent point. Thank you for bringing it up.
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If you’re going go there, why stop at just two colors … when you could have just one color!
UPDATE: No, wait: you could really save time (and the biosphere) by having no Perler beads whatever!
Because, as @wryfi80 has observed, Perler beads === eco-bad.
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I suppose a safer artistic medium (one that small children would be less likely to choke on) would be crayons… although crayons are made from coal/petroleum/wood, and then there’s the paper to be drawn on… trees ya know.
All kidding aside, recommendations for artistic mediums that don’t harm the environment in one way or another would be appreciated.
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Paper mache. Watercolors, tempera paint. Weaving (straws, grass, anything).
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The perfect gift for when you really just want to annoy a sibling with kids.
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Just playing Mr. Super Anal, here: For 100% drive-your-family-crazy ‘green’, anything involving paper would be ruled out, and coloring in water colors may have ‘suspicious’ sources. Tempera would be interesting to use… BUT THE PAPER THING AGAIN. 
Perhaps tempera on linen (high thread count) rags?
We had one HS instructor who urged ‘total green-ness’ by resorting to objects that were already at hand in the house. Okay, but once stuff gets depleted, the only next step (to stay ‘green’) would be to make off with trash items… re-purposing I think it’s called? And if one could not sustain that level of green-ness, then that would invite “Mr. Gotcha”. You just can’t win sometimes.
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Yes, and now I’m in the mood for a panini sandwich. Or, a sandwiches sandwich.
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I hear you; indeed I thought about the colors in “watercolors” before I posted, and decided to let it go. Not sure where they get those colors, but if they are Legal Department Approved “Non-toxic”, then probably no cadmium – only coal tar derivatives, food coloring, I suppose.
Okay new plan:
Green is not just what you avoid using.
It’s what you actively do to remedy problems.
Litter. Garbage. These are your Active Measures green media.
I once went through a phase for a few weeks (this was in Minneapolis) where I obsessed about picking up pencils that I found on the street, and giving them new life, I thought about documenting them on a website, a kind of monument to lost pencils.
Well, that phase passed, but then I found a small brightly colored plastic monkey with a broken arm in the street, and I thought, I will obsessively collect found broken toys for a while, give them new life, maybe train the monkey to take over some of the pencil-documenting scutwork for me. But no other toys presented themselves (I’m pretty sure the monkey is recuperating in one of my memento creches), so that phase passed.
Have a look at “Wasteland”, an art gallery in the Twin Cities. The owner
makes art from found waste objects, some quite charming – long-stemmed roses constructed from broken red tail-light cowlings.
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There’s no way a crayon drawing on paper can make a more long lasting mess than perler beads once its been discarded. It really doesn’t take that much imagination to visualize whats going to happen to something when its discarded. PLA plastic for pens and printers us one of the few forward thinking products in this sense.
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Centuries you say? Now I kinda want to get it and work on a “Fuck Trump” mural. /s
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C’mon, man. The quantity of plastic you’re talking about with these beads versus many other facets of modern life is, while not zero obviously, fairly minimal.
Also beading is an accessible crafting activity for people with limited income to do with their kids, or for summer recreation programs like the one my kid attends which don’t charge tuition and have limited budget for supplies.
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Somehow it’s always positive things like crafts that are singled out. You don’t see same people criticizing every post about cars, public transport or any industry, even though they use way more resources.
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