The Eco-Friendly Gunpla

Gunpla, as we all should know, is short for Gundam Plastic Model. Meaning, it's made out of plastic - like most toys - and not very safe for our environment since they're non-biodegradable. It's thoughts like these that make me feel bad for being a toy collector >_<

Bandai, being the awesome toy company that they are, decided to make kits made out of 100% recycled plastic - like the unused plastic from runners, or excess plastic from production - to appease our conscience. The result is what they call Ecopla.

During the Gundam Fiesta last year here in Singapore, there were 3 Ecoplas sold: the SD RX78-2 Gundam, SD Zaku IIs, and a model of the Plastic Injection Machine that builds gunpla. I'm sure there are more Ecopla manufactured, but only these 3 made it to Singapore. And the SD RX78-2 was the only one I was able to get. The rest were already sold out.

The Ecopla SD RX78-2 Gundam is the same mold as the regular RX78-2 - only that it's made out of black recycled plastic. I'm not sure if the black was intentional, or if it's a result of the recycling process (although I suspect the latter).
As with the regular SD kit, it came with the standard Gundam arsenal: its rifle, a beam saber, its shield, and the bazooka. It also came with a core fighter, which you can also build into a core booster if you like.

Since the black color is what made the Ecopla special, I decided to leave it alone and just connected the pieces together. I then used the foil stickers and futilely panel-lined it using a grey marker. You can't see it, but it's there.
The result is actually cool. I didn't expect it to be cool, since I'm not really fond of all-black MS's, but I rather liked how it looks.

I was playing with the idea of having Ecopla watch over the city from the top of our apartment building - and accidentally came up with this shot. A lot of people liked it, so I thought of bringing along Ecopla in one of my trips, which you'll see in a later post.