3D printing: a blueprint for sustainability?

Blog by Will Schreiber, Senior Consultant, 25 January 2012

Over the past few years the growth in publicity and technology enabling home 3D printing has been impressive. The promise of being able to download, or create, a blueprint for a product and to simply press ‘print’ to create a tangible product is something that opens up endless possibilities for extending the life of products (e.g. printing spare parts), eliminating a large amount of product packaging and transportation waste (e.g. just buying raw materials instead of finished goods) and enhancing the ‘fit for purpose’ nature of the products we buy/make. But like everything in our world, whether or not these changes will result in a sustainability win still sits in the ‘it depends’ category.

Printing is a sensitive thing for many environmentalists. If you were to ask many office sustainability managers what one of their biggest resource and waste issues is, they will undoubtedly say that paper use is near the top. We print things we don’t need simply because the mediocre benefit, and low cost, make it something many people spend little time thinking about. However, consider all of the meeting agendas, preparatory documents, presentation slide decks, reports and so on that are printed and never read. Now, with that in mind, what happens when you now say that you can print tangible household things? What type of wasteful production will generate from this? Making a new toy for a child every day – as if only one toy will be made with this technology – rather than buying one item every once in a while. Will this manufacturing process actually result in a material savings?

There is little doubt that the overall efficiency of single product creation will benefit immensely from this technology, but what about our total demand for materials? Will this increase or decrease? Will we make custom cutlery sets for a special occasion as quickly as we order event invites today and then throw them out when we’re done? Will the decentralised energy and material markets consume more or less energy? 

2012 may well be called the ‘year of 3D printing’, but the environmental claims for its benefits are anything but clear at this point simply because the way we use the technology will dictate whether it moves us closer to a sustainable future. Technologies themselves are never ‘green’ in and of themselves; it’s how we use them that makes something a better environmental choice over something else.

New technologies constantly challenge and change the way we interact with the environment. As we look at the state of 3D printing technology we can’t help but think about these wider environmental impacts. Materials do not come out of the air and we still live on a planet with finite resources.

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