3D printing
Up-Cycling / creative reuse
 
3D Printing offers much to the future of civilization. On it's face it would seem that the most limiting factor is that it does not scale / allow for the manufacturing of hordes of products most inexpensively. Well I contend that the current model of cranking out thousands of products in limited varieties does not serve civilization that well and that our land fills and recycling streams  are full of short lived products made obsolete by version whatever point zero, one, two, three et cetera. These devoured products are constituted of much energy and human effort and the infrastructure that  supports them is all quite daunting when considered in it's entirity.

Picture Ocean Freighter air craft extraction.

Until most recently the recycling of products largely depended on shipping the spent goods back to the region of manufacture in order to recover just some of the value of the materials of manufacture. Obviously a rethink has been in order for some time.

It is noted of course that much of this cycle is responsible for hiring of millions of people who's job's would be disrupted by an alternative model which localized production.





3D printing provides for recovering value in products more near the point of consumption post use . With some creative thinking some of these items can be combined with other discarded items and or new materials to form products of superior  value to the original product.

  • Creating biodegradable packaging for products like bananas: this reduces the efforts of unnecessary plastic packaging.
  • Creating environment-friendly policies: companies are going to use new licensing rules to handle packaging, using materials that are environment-friendly. If a company does not adhere to the rules, they are going to incur large fees.
  • Creation of more recycling plants: by 2020, the government is going to increase the plastic recycling plants from 36% to 63%.
  • Separating of plastics from organic waste: the citizens of Germany have embraced the culture of separating trash. More efforts are going to improve the quality of the countries compost.
  • International efforts to clean plastic from the sea: more aid will be used to clean 10 rivers that are said to account for 90% of plastic waste around the world.

  • Wales

    The Welsh government in 2018 came up with a strategy of targeting recycling 80% of its municipal waste by 2035. The major efforts to reach this goal include analyzing the potential target for councils that will spearhead the recycling process, as well as finding alternative solutions to specific wastes like carbon. Wales has the best household waste recycling program in the UK; it comes in third in the world. The Welsh government also announced a 4-week residual waste program to clean up borough households.

    Singapore

    The government has implemented the 3Rs (reduce, recycle, reuse) strategy to conduct an integrated solid waste management system. There are also waste-to-energy incineration plants that offer a great solution to the reduction of landfill waste. The 3Rs prevents the generation of waste and helps the nation champion its Zero Waste policy. Sources:

Other Examples

 Up-Cycling 3D printing provides for recovering value in products more near the point of consumption.