Anyone who has built a plastic model knows that after finishing, you’re left with a pile of sprues (also known as runners or parts trees). More often than not, these sprues end up in the trash where they are delivered to landfills. Most recycling operations can’t recycle the type of styrene plastic used in sprues and are particular on the sorting end. Even if you were to throw sprues from a model kit into your recycling bin, they’ll be rejected at the collection facility and sent to the landfill anyway.
This waste may not be top-of-mind for many hobbyists, but a growing awareness of plastic pollution in oceans, waterways, and landfills has some people thinking. In April 2021, Japan-based Bandai Namco Group (Bandai) started the Gunpla Recycling Project to collect sprues from its model kits and reuse the recovered material in new products called ECOPLA.
Bandai runs nearly 200 collection locations throughout Japan and hosts an event to promote its recycling initiative. In fact, Bandai has started using alternatives to plastics in some of its models, including upcycled tea leaves, eggshells, and a limestone derivative called LIMEX. Even Bandai’s technology to produce multicolored parts on the same sprue was designed to minimize negative environmental effects.
The U.S. has yet to see such a concerted effort by model manufacturers to address the waste plastics that come in kits. However, Atlas Games in Duluth, Minnesota, has launched the Replay Workshop to take the first steps toward recycling plastics from hobby products and giving them a second life outside of a landfill. Owned by Michelle and John Nephew, Atlas Games has been implementing more ecologically friendly processes and materials for the past decade.
“I’ve always had a wide environmental streak,” Michelle Nephew says. “I was a founder of our eco club in high school and haven’t let John eat beef in years!”
Atlas Games has eliminated all one-time-use plastic from its latest games, replacing shrink wrap with sticker tabs and using paper bands to wrap card decks. The company pays extra in materials for paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). It reuses boxes for shipping, and when those boxes are no longer viable, Atlas Games turns them into packing material with a cardboard perforator, making packing peanuts a thing of the past for the company.
“So, Replay Workshop didn’t come out of nowhere,” Michelle says. “It was building for decades, actually.”
John Nephew was inspired by Precious Plastic, a recycling nonprofit in the Netherlands helping with micro-recycling and making new products from old plastic.
“In terms of business strategy, it makes sense to focus on the tabletop game field where we’re already established,” John says.
Initially funded as a division of Atlas Games, Replay Workshop headquarters is located in Proctor, Minnesota, in a building once used as a boxing gym. While hopeful there would be some funding help, that was far from assured at the beginning. Builders + Backers awarded Atlas Games a $5,000 Idea Accelerator grant, which helped buy some of the hobby-grade equipment to build Replay Workshop, it wasn’t until 2024 that a $100,000 grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency allowed it to scale up its operations to “manufacturing-level” with a new extruder delivered in March 2025.
“We’ve worked the most with HDPE and polypropylene (the No. 2 and No. 5 recycling symbols), which are used in a lot of consumer goods and packaging,” John says. Those plastics work well for many things, but not for glue and paint, a requirement for wargaming accessories. That's why their sprues recycling program focuses on high-impact polystyrene (HIPS), the same styrene used in plastic model kits.
The recycling process is simple: the plastic is power-washed and ground up in a plastic shredder. Having started with hobby-grade machines, Replay Workshop now has commercial machines, but Michelle says taking the next step to industrial size is beyond their scope.
“Right now, if someone is interested in micro-recycling, you sort of have to be vertically integrated — capable of going all the way from raw plastic waste to a finished product,” John says. “That means … collection, identifying, sorting, shredding, just to get a raw material.”
While Replay Workshop focuses on its own products, it also supports other businesses with recycled plastic.
“We sell that shred to hobbyists online, on sites like etsy.com,” Michelle says.
Currently, Replay Workshop offers general-interest items made from its recycled plastic, like earrings, coasters, and key chains. For hobbyists, it makes dice, bases for miniature figures, and condition markers for roleplaying games.
“Terrain tiles are in the works for release very soon,” Michelle says. “We’re hoping to have one or two releases each month for [Replay Workshop] this year.”
The obvious goal is to build a market for the recycled products and convince retailers to carry them.
“That’s the best way we can sell the recycled sprues back into the market and give them a second life.”
At the time of writing, Replay Workshop’s InFUNity Tiles freeform puzzle, made entirely from recycled plastic, was a finalist for the Origins Special Recognition Award for Sustainable Production presented by the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) in partnership with the Green Games Guide.
How to recycle sprues with Replay Workshop
There are a couple of ways hobbyists can participate in Replay Workshop’s Sprue Recycling Program. Individuals can ship sprues to the facility or, if local to Proctor, drop them off.
“We’re not able to pay for shipping, for obvious reasons,” Michelle Nephew says. But Atlas Games will offer a 10% discount for online orders that include a Replay Workshop item to those who do ship sprues to them.
Another option is to find a participating store in the Duluth, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Madison, WI, areas. Those stores will collect sprues and arrange pickups with Replay Workshop. For stores outside of those areas, Atlas Games has a program for retailers who ship sprues to Replay Workshop to get free shipping on store orders. Atlas Games details the entire program on
its website.