3D Printing to Sustainability: Is it Friend or Foe?

I used to worry that 3D Printing would accelerate the rate at which the movie “Wall-E” became less of a science fiction movie and more of an actual documentary. As someone who enjoys making things, I was undeniably curious about the process of 3D Printing. However, my curiosity was accompanied by feelings of apprehension as I imagined a world covered in a thick layer of plastic waste. But, overall, I believe that there are pros, cons, and an endless array of possibilities regarding the future impact of 3D printing. I love creating things, and 3D printing is an amazing tool for that, but I also care about the environment. Therefore, as it is a personal concern of mine, I would be very interested in conducting further research to find whether “3D printing” and “Sustainability” are mutually exclusive things.

Can 3D printing actually help increase sustainability? GreenBiz recently published an article by Asheen Phansey titled, “How 3D Printing can Revolutionize Sustainable Design”—in which Phansey explains the positive impact of 3D Printing. For example, because of 3D Printing, more things would be manufactured locally rather than overseas. But just how much of an impact could this have? A study was conducted and published in Energy Policy that states that 3D printing would have made a noticeable impact on life cycle costs, energy, and CO2 emissions on a global scale. In fact, the study states, “The model calculations show that 3DP contains the potential to reduce costs by 170–593 billion US $, the total primary energy supply by 2.54–9.30 EJ and CO₂ emissions by 130.5–525.5 Mt by 2025.”

But I know that 3D Printing is not magic. What possible risks accompany 3D Printing? Is it entirely safe? Mcortechnologies published an article that acknowledges that 3D Printing carries its own set of dangers—particularly in corporate sustainability. 3D Printers are guilty of generating waste that is copious, expensive, possibly toxic, and unable to be recycled. And, as stated in an article on tiplepundit, “Plastics are detrimental to the environment. Period.” Would 3D Printers really be more effective than the machines they would be replacing? The article “Environmental Impacts of 3D Printing” on Autodesk Sustainability Workshop attempts to dive into this subject by actually comparing 3D Printers with other machines.

3D Printing could be the catalyst towards major shifts in environmental, corporate, and global sustainability. However, whether this shift would be positive or negative one is yet to be concluded.

http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/05/29/3d-printing-revolutionize-sustainable-design
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514004868
http://mcortechnologies.com/3d-printing-and-sustainability-are-they-mutually-exclusive-blog/
http://sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com/blog/environmental-impacts-3d-printing
http://www.triplepundit.com/2015/06/sustainable-3d-printing/