I still have mixed emotions about 3D printing. I do love the idea of being able to print a part when I need it for something. But I do hate myself at the same time for creating more plastic junk. PLA is not really getting recycled, when it fails someone throws it in the trash and it goes to a landfill. Maybe some really diehard enthusiasts are ensuring all their failed prints and broken parts get properly chemically recycled, but I bet most don’t bother and just bin it.
The way I see it is that a 50g piece of 3D printed PLA could be used to fix a 5kg item that would have otherwise gone to the landfill. I for example have a broken hook for the door tray in my fridge, it's a tiny piece but it being broken rendered the entire 1kg tray useless, it's sitting on top of the fridge waiting for me to buy a 3D printer and fix it.
I find this concern a little odd because most people tend to do very little in their life to make a difference in ways that count way more than a couple kilograms
of PLA filament.
Let’s take 1kg of filament, which is enough for multiple print projects depending on the size of the items.
That is approximately the same weight of petrochemical material as 1/3 of a gallon of gas (making a bit of an assumption that the amount of processing per weight of both materials is roughly the same).
Every time you drive 10 miles in a car that gets 30mpg it’s like you are burning an entire roll of filament.
So the average American is using probably 1-4 rolls of filament just to get to work and back. The last time I bought a roll of filament was multiple months ago.
I’m not singling you out, I am really just pointing out that humans are terrible at understanding the quantities of things and what things actually use a lot of material and create a lot of carbon emissions.
This is especially true since cost is so detached from material use, waste, and carbon emissions.
A gallon of gas is an order of magnitude cheaper than the equivalent weight of filament.
Burning a bunch of BTUs of natural gas to make my house 4 degrees warmer and gain a trivial amount of additional comfort wastes a whole bunch of energy but costs me so little that I don’t even know what my gas bill is.
It’s cheaper for me to replace most of my home appliances with brand new ones than hire a repair service.
I can fly to Florida for $50 and burn 15 gallons of jet fuel.
If I put more garbage out in my bin I’m not charged more. I can even put furniture and appliances out there and I am not charged more.
These are all examples of waste and environmental impact where I don’t really see or feel the magnitude of them because our systems don’t show them.
Anyway I know this is kind of a huge tangent of a discussion. But really, 3D printing is the least of your worries.
And that's the best case scenario, I think most people print useless junk to begin with, just look at the top downloads on printables.com, less than 30% are functional prints, most of them are short lived junk, and a lot are AI generated.
While they certainly correlate, downloads don't match print rates. Unless you got a ton of printers you are mostly doing one print at a time and each requires setup and cleanup, or possibly multiple attempts if there are difficult to print features.
It can be multiple hours between prints because good prints take time. But you can spend 30 minutes browsing random peoples designs online and say "cool" and press download on 20 different designs that you only print 1 or 2 of ultimately.
Also some designs look cool but the second you load your model up in a slicer you can see it is too finnicky or too long or expensive to print to be worth the effort.
I've kept almost every bit of scrap PLA I've had from printing. You can melt it into silicon molds, grind it up and feed it into a pellet extruder, pass it on to those who recycle it into filament (like https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/), or for the hard-core DIYers, create your own filament recycling operation. (Though more approachable commercial options are starting to come to market (https://crowdfunding.creality.com/)
Seems there is a market for a truly biodegradable print material, if even for doing a prototype before committing to a full plastic print. Or a real recyclable method to take old prints and reuse the material again.
I feel the same and that has kept me from buying a printer. That is not to say that I never will but for the time being if I really need a particular part I can always use a printing service.
Comments
I still have mixed emotions about 3D printing. I do love the idea of being able to print a part when I need it for something. But I do hate myself at the same time for creating more plastic junk. PLA is not really getting recycled, when it fails someone throws it in the trash and it goes to a landfill. Maybe some really diehard enthusiasts are ensuring all their failed prints and broken parts get properly chemically recycled, but I bet most don’t bother and just bin it.
The way I see it is that a 50g piece of 3D printed PLA could be used to fix a 5kg item that would have otherwise gone to the landfill. I for example have a broken hook for the door tray in my fridge, it's a tiny piece but it being broken rendered the entire 1kg tray useless, it's sitting on top of the fridge waiting for me to buy a 3D printer and fix it.
In the US almost all PLA comes from corn, outside the US I think it mostly comes from sugarcane.
It can be composted in industrial composters, but even if you dont do that it's still pretty green
I find this concern a little odd because most people tend to do very little in their life to make a difference in ways that count way more than a couple kilograms of PLA filament.
Let’s take 1kg of filament, which is enough for multiple print projects depending on the size of the items.
That is approximately the same weight of petrochemical material as 1/3 of a gallon of gas (making a bit of an assumption that the amount of processing per weight of both materials is roughly the same).
Every time you drive 10 miles in a car that gets 30mpg it’s like you are burning an entire roll of filament.
So the average American is using probably 1-4 rolls of filament just to get to work and back. The last time I bought a roll of filament was multiple months ago.
I’m not singling you out, I am really just pointing out that humans are terrible at understanding the quantities of things and what things actually use a lot of material and create a lot of carbon emissions.
This is especially true since cost is so detached from material use, waste, and carbon emissions.
A gallon of gas is an order of magnitude cheaper than the equivalent weight of filament.
Burning a bunch of BTUs of natural gas to make my house 4 degrees warmer and gain a trivial amount of additional comfort wastes a whole bunch of energy but costs me so little that I don’t even know what my gas bill is.
It’s cheaper for me to replace most of my home appliances with brand new ones than hire a repair service.
I can fly to Florida for $50 and burn 15 gallons of jet fuel.
If I put more garbage out in my bin I’m not charged more. I can even put furniture and appliances out there and I am not charged more.
These are all examples of waste and environmental impact where I don’t really see or feel the magnitude of them because our systems don’t show them.
Anyway I know this is kind of a huge tangent of a discussion. But really, 3D printing is the least of your worries.
And that's the best case scenario, I think most people print useless junk to begin with, just look at the top downloads on printables.com, less than 30% are functional prints, most of them are short lived junk, and a lot are AI generated.
While they certainly correlate, downloads don't match print rates. Unless you got a ton of printers you are mostly doing one print at a time and each requires setup and cleanup, or possibly multiple attempts if there are difficult to print features.
It can be multiple hours between prints because good prints take time. But you can spend 30 minutes browsing random peoples designs online and say "cool" and press download on 20 different designs that you only print 1 or 2 of ultimately.
Also some designs look cool but the second you load your model up in a slicer you can see it is too finnicky or too long or expensive to print to be worth the effort.
which is why I tell the shop techs to not print the benchy boat and print something useful instead.
if you printed what you NEED, how is that junk?
Let's see how much you really care: https://all3dp.com/2/best-diy-filament-extruder-kit-maker/
I've kept almost every bit of scrap PLA I've had from printing. You can melt it into silicon molds, grind it up and feed it into a pellet extruder, pass it on to those who recycle it into filament (like https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/), or for the hard-core DIYers, create your own filament recycling operation. (Though more approachable commercial options are starting to come to market (https://crowdfunding.creality.com/)
Seems there is a market for a truly biodegradable print material, if even for doing a prototype before committing to a full plastic print. Or a real recyclable method to take old prints and reuse the material again.
The issue with biodegradable is that it is in direct contrast to something that is durable and long lasting.
I feel the same and that has kept me from buying a printer. That is not to say that I never will but for the time being if I really need a particular part I can always use a printing service.