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Hi everyone, as a school personal project, I have decided to choose 3d printing as my topic, specifically how 3d printing may benefit the environment. I would really consider how a home 3d printed product can be more environmentally friendly compared to a product bought in a local retail store. For starters, some ways that it may benefit are near zero material waste, no product transportation, no excess packaging/instructions etc. Can anyone help suggest more? Thankss

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HI @Bruce_17!

3D printing is really more beneficial, environmentally at least, when you’re talking large scale components made on high end machine (like the parts made for the aerospace and automotive sector) or really complex structures, not so much for your everyday object you could go buy at the store. There are several reasons for this, but the main three are energy, waste and transport.

A 3d printer uses significantly more energy to produce objects than traditional methods of manufacturing; a printer that uses a laser to cure resin or a hot end to melt filament uses upwards of 100x more electrical energy than traditional methods to make an object of the same weight. Printers are extremely energy hungry (mine pulls around 350-500 watts) and aren’t very fast so each object you make has a very high energy input (unless you’re running solar or some other renewable energy system in you home/business). Injection molds can make 1,000’s of parts an hour, and with a printer, you’re lucky to get 100 parts in a day if you have a very large professional machine.

In terms of materials, 3D printing definitely does not have near zero waste material; it has reduced waste as compared to traditional methods, but it is not at zero itself. The cheapest and most common material to print with is ABS, which is fossil fuel based, and although it can be recycled, plastic in itself is really not a very green product. Prints fail and they use support material, which, for most consumers, will just be thrown away. You can recycle it or use it to make new filament if you have the money to spend on the equipment needed to do that, but most consumers will not go through that additional work for a couple of scraps of plastic. The quality of the material also deteriorates the more times it is recycled. In contrast, waste produced by mass manufacturing in terms of materials, is generally melted down and used again to keep functional material (and money) from being thrown away.

Transport is more often that not found to be negligible when looking at a whole product life cycle, something like <0.01% of CO2 emitted over the entire process in the ATKINS study.

In most of the studies conducted in recent years on this topic, the evidence points towards using efficient centralised factories for production, with optimal machine arrangement and high-end efficient machines that run off of low carbon/green energy. You average consumer won’t be able to spend thousands to install green energy in his/or her homes, or spend $100k+ to purchase a high efficiency machine. So 3D printing really is not all that environmentally friendly for most users, but it is more a tool of convenience and cost reduction, or for when you can’t simply buy what you need. This is a very important distinction to make.

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I would add that 3D printers at home have many of us printing many non functional trinkets and toys that we never would have bought from a shop. It is fun, sometimes educational, but not very green.

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I agree with the points about manufacturing at home generally being much less efficient and environmentally friendly than the mast produced stuff. Don’t forget that filament still needs to be manufactured and transported around for example. In some cases thought remote outposts are employing 3d printers to make parts where transportation costs would be very high, so in that case there is some environmental benefit.

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I would argue that has more of an economic flavored benefit rather than environmental benefit. Theyre using a 3d printer because its cheaper to operate as opposed to shipping, not because its more environmently friendly