Toy building bricks made of recycled abs material

A method for manufacturing a toy building element, comprising:

• (a) providing an ABS waste material;
• (b) screening the ABS waste material for at least one property indicative of regulatory compliance and/or polymer morphology;
• (c) subjecting the screened ABS waste material to a solvent dissolution recycling process to dissolve ABS polymers;
• (d) selectively recovering one or more polymer phases from the dissolved ABS polymers;
• (e) obtaining a resin by mixing the recovered one or more polymer phases optionally with one or more additives and optionally with one or more additional polymers selected from the group consisting of additional ABS polymers, SAN polymer, and butadiene-containing polymer;
• and
• (f) manufacturing the toy building element by processing the resin.

A method for manufacturing a toy building element by injection molding with recirculation of recycled ABS material, comprising:

• (a) feeding ABS material into an injection mold having a mold cavity and a runner system;
• (b) injection molding the ABS material to form a toy building element and residual ABS material comprising runner material and optionally discarded molded toy building elements;
• (c) grinding the residual ABS material to form mechanically recycled ABS material;
• (d) reintroducing the mechanically recycled ABS material into the injection molding process together with additional ABS material during continued production such that the proportion of recycled ABS material increases over successive molding cycles and a steady-state condition is eventually reached;
• and
• (e) continuing manufacture of toy building elements before and after the steady-state condition is reached.