PLA - 3D Printing's Biggest Lie.
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ต.ค. 2021
- Consider supporting #teamseas to help remove trash from the ocean! teamseas.org/
I used to believe that PLA was an environmentally friendly bioplastic. I was wrong.
But, are there any viable alternatives we can use in 3D Printing?
Channels Mentioned:
Hobby Hoarder 2yr PLA test - • Is PLA for 3D printing...
Brothers Make - / brothersmake
Join the Maker's Muse Community - www.makersmuse.com/maker-s-mu...
Sources:
Degradation of Cellulose Acetate-Based Materials - link.springer.com/article/10....
Biodegradability of cellulose acetate - www.daicel.com/cell_ac/en/cel...
Degradable or not? Cellulose acetate as a model for complicated interplay between structure, environment and degradation -www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Dan's Smelly Plastic Kickstarter - www.kickstarter.com/projects/...
Support Maker's Muse on Patreon
www.patreon.com/makersmuse?ty=h
50 3D Printing Tips and Tricks - gumroad.com/l/QWAh
3D Printing Essentials - www.amazon.com/shop/makersmuse - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![[TH]FFWS SEA Spring 2024 Knockout Stage - Day 10](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4QaEryUGWQw/mqdefault.jpg)
Glycerol is the plasticizer you're looking for. Its biodegradable and can be used as a plasticizer for cellulose acetate. It has the added benefit of increasing the temperature at which the cellulose decomposes.
Great to know cheers!
sounds tasty
That noted. you do have to be careful with anything that has glycerol in it coming into contact with nitric acid (unless polymerization binds it up in some way. been a while since I took chemistry), so there is that.
@@DFX2KX I'm pretty sure you need fuming nitric acid for that, which isn't very common to have in a lab, let alone around the house.
@@gendragongfly speak for yourself, i personally keep fuming nitric acid in every room of my house for ̶t̶o̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶. emergencies. for emergencies, yep
6:45 "I have absolutely zero faith in the Australian government doing anything useful" - as we all have in many countries, my friend :)
Shame his take away is "so, why bother, let's all send cash overseas".
c'mon now. Australia's turned its self back into a prison colony practically over night. that doesn't come easy.
@@guillermoelnino tell me you have no knowledge of or understanding of Australia without telling me you have no knowledge of or understanding of Australia.
@@Girvo747 tell me you live under a rock without telling me you live under a rock.
@@guillermoelnino No, I live in the country you think you know anything about lol. Keep falling for online propaganda, keep living in fear of the big bad world, keep believing conspiritards mate. You only get one life, and if you want to waste yours with bullshit, go right ahead.
The real question is what application would 3d prints made from cellulose have though? Cellulose is a great material, but it doesn't have the same strength and durability profiles as PLA or ABS has, which makes the application for cellulose in many cases far less than ideal. It can definitely be used for decorative applications, or applications where it won't be exposed to chemical or environmental factors. It can be used for test prints, absolutely, but often with test prints you want to make it in a material analogous to the final material, so you choose PLA if your final print will be PLA for instance.
There is a great paper titled "Advantages and Disadvantages of Bioplastics Production from Starch and Lignocellulosic Components" which is a really good read with a lot of overlap in considering whether bioplastics such as starch based or cellulose based plastics are ideal for hobby 3d printing which I would very much recommend to read.
Also, one final misconception. The corn PLA is made from was grown to service industry, it's not corn taken out of human food chains, and in many cases it's not even corn that's fit for human consumption but rather a strain that is grown for it's high starch content to maximize output. Reducing PLA production would have minimal impact on food consumption, that is a much greater issue which deals with macroeconomics, local food shortages, supply chains and not the least the never ending appetite in the western world for imported produce. But that's a discussion for another time.
Great video though, and these are definitely important issues which needs to be raised! 🙂
biodegradable prints would be intended for non-permanent applications, such as calibration cubes for Z-Height/extruder tweaking, non-functional prototyping, gag gifts, temporary project housings etc.
DOOTNOOT -Menkalinan- calibration and tests you mainly want to do in the material you want to end up printing in though. Sure if PLA was entirely analogous with cellulose that wouldn’t be an issue, but it unfortunately is not.
The other points you point out I fully agree with, but how big of a part of the home 3D printing field do they represent?
@@SwitchAndLever only some tests. but say, making sure your bed is level with a sample spiral doesnt need the be the same material you print with.
@@572089 It wouldn't make such a big difference though. These tests don't consume too much plastic anyways.
You can use it to print the garbage shit people print all the time like, benchy or whatever
I feel like "biodegradable, but under circumstances" is actually the ideal for these things, as it means you can have long lasting prints or ones that break down, maybe in the future there can be dedicated facilities? If 3D printing becomes more common I can definitely see there being dedicated recycle banks for it, only these ones actually being useful.
There is. They even give credits for use in purchasing recycled PLA.
Then it should be marketed very carefully as that instead of just biodegradable. It's pretty clear that these companies used that term to drum up supporters for pla and it's still a pretty common misconception that pla is just biodegradable. We were lied to by omission
Thats what he's recommendong, dedicated facilities (government run) that recycle it.
Although this will never happen unless it's profitable
This is an important topic, but it's also important to remember that most plastic waste is from single-use packaging, especially for food. I just came back from my local Japanese supermarket with some sushi, seaweed salad, some frozen natto, and a Japanese curry bowl, and all of it was in plastic trays. That goes in to the recycling bin, but very little of this stuff (if any of these low-value plastics) actually get recycled.
We need to reduce packaging plastic urgently.
Exactly - 3D printing would barely be a wart on the backside of the packaging waste elephant....
like disposable water bottles :/ they are so cheap. The need to charge those companies to make them and so yes it will raise the price but then less people will buy them? I just see at the grocery store so many people buying a ton of those bottles all the time :(
Unfortunately food has another big issue: food waste. More sustainable packaging is often not as effective, leading to more food waste. Since food is quite resource intensive to produce (energy, water, land) it is often better to use more effective packaging, even if the packaging itself is less sustainable.
It isn't just the obvious stuff. Paper fool containers almost always have a plastic coating to let them hold wet food without disintegrating. Glass jars have a plastic lining in the lid to make an air-tight seal. Aluminum cans, both for food and drinks, have a (usually) plastic lining to isolate the food from the metal.
I just took a look in my fridge, and the only thing I see in there that doesn't have any plastic (at least that I know of), is a papier-mâché egg carton.
@@jcon6734 Nearly all aluminum cans as a standard, have a plastic lining; all told *over 15,000* different coatings(depending on what purpose they serve)... most with BPA's. That's the bad news. The good news is that with the VERY high recycling rates for aluminum and the coating being microns thick, it just burns up during smelting. The worse news: the hundred billion beverage cans we Americans gobble up every year takes about twenty million gallons of epoxy coatings. Source: WIRED, The secret life of aluminum. Annnd this was in 2015, ff to today it's likely a great deal more epoxy formulas and quantity, but with less BPA's!
You should team up with NileRed on this project. also did see a video many years ago where the biodegraded PLA by basically dumping it in a box with zoophoba worms ( also known as superworms or giant mealworms, commonly used as live feed for reptiles [ my bearded dragon loves them ]). the worms was able to eat the plastic and biodegrade and turn it into compost, may be worth taking a closer look at.
Unfortunately with the worms when they eat plastic they produce a chemical similar to antifreeze. It's way worse than the plastic itself 😕
@@torenmcknight antifreeze for my car ?? Yes please
@@torenmcknight What chemical do they make? Ethylene glycol and Propylene glycol is what almost all antifreeze is made of, Ethylene glycol isnt that bad for the environment breaking down in a few days and Propylene glycol is no bad at all, it's even in foods.
@@niaimack "Chemicals bad." Ethylene glycol is the 'bad' chemical, but only in relatively high concentration and it breaks down in air in about 10 days and in water or soil in a few weeks.
@@rich1051414 Sounds like it's a case of 'don't breathe it', and you'll be right.
When I bought my 3D printer, there were already strong indications that the biodegradability of PLA is only really theoretical. I also did stick one of my first failed PLA prints in a pot next to a plant that sits in the rain and weather all year round. It has been in there for +4 years now and still looks the same as day 1. For this reason, I never throw my failed prints or support material waste into the trash, I have kept all of it in jars nicely separated by filament, in the hopes of some day recycling it into new filament myself or handing it to someone else who can do something useful with it.
I hope your quest to find a truly biodegradable filament leads somewhere, because I would feel a lot better printing silly gadgets and other disposable things in a material that won't keep making round trips in the food chain…
I am planning on making a machine to recycle old prints or plastics and turn them into filament. I just wish you could make filament from plastic number 5 bc they can’t be recycled in my area and I have a pile just building up in my room
@@WaffleSalad I came here today and want to share, biodegradable usually means compostable in industrial composting on high temperatures.Not "just plant it in soil.".
The whole issue with plastics and any other such difficult to get rid of material is that there is an inherent contradiction. The reason we make them is their good strength and resistance to acids in your beverages and bases in detergents and basic handling and weather events, but these traits are exactly the ones that make them non-biodegradable. The good thing about aluminium cans for instance is that the recycling process is not degrading the material but the acid resistance is provided by a thin plastic film inside it. The issue is that there will never be a biodegradable plastic or any other material that just dissolves in the environment because that will actually make it unfit for purpose.
The only type of plastic that works is one where we actually have an artificial solvent that does not exist in the environment to make the idea fly.
And then there is glass... its main issue at this point is its weight to strength ratio. It is too brittle but there are additives to improve that but silicon dioxide is just fine even if you throw your beerbottle in the sea(please do not do that) but it will ultimately become blass pebbles and sand over some years.
Yes and that plastic layer, that is sprayed on the inner walls of aluminium cans, is exactly why i avoid them since this stuff can come lose and you involuntary consume it. Thiee swiss SIG aluminium drinking bottles for example are so bad, this plastic film starts to flake off after a few years and contaminates your drinks. Personally i'd rather see metal and glass 3D printing (or mineralglass printing) rather than plastics. Even cellulose could be used but then again,,, paper mache can be done easily even without a 3D printer.
But honestly I don't need plastic cup for 500 years but for 4 hours
A very similar misconception that brands often exploit is the "eco-friendly" plant-based resin that is said to be "biodegradable," "safe for the environment," and worse, "non-toxic." Plant-based 3D printing resin with is good for the environment like PLA because part of the resin composition (~30%) is from a more environmentally friendly renewable material source (soybeans). However, a material made partially from a plant source is not automatically non-toxic and easy to recycle. In this case, uncured "eco-friendly" 3D printing resin is as dangerous to marine lifeforms as regular 3D resin because the most toxic part of resin is usually the initiator that makes UV curing possible. And the cured prints are much harder to break down than PLA prints. We still like to see more resins made with renewable material source, and we are developing one ourselves. Let's not pretend it is non-toxic/recyclable and be clear about that with the users.
A lot of respect hearing this from a major player in 3D printing resin manufacturing game like you guys. I agree, let's not greenwash what the hazards of the items are but instead be realistic, honest, and find and encourage proper ways of disposal.
Really great to hear from a trusted source!
In the end, it's chemically identical to the stuff that comes from fossil fuels.
UV is the main source of degradation in resins ( I worked in the carbon fibre lamination industry), obviously this is a trait that plastics manufacturers have worked hard to overcome and now it is working to find ways to undo this trait in certain circumstances.
Exactly. Plants have countless chemicals in them and the only reason they're biodegradable is because life evolved around them.
Making parts of your chemicals out of plants doesn't make them non-toxic/biodegradable.
this was maybe 8 years ago now, but the University of California, Merced waste management could not get "biodegradable" utensils to degrade in their systems and actually switched to metal washable flatware and recycleable plastics. It seemed that at least then, even in the industrial composting systems they could not get some of these compounds to break down.
There's also just that washable is the most eco-friendly thing around.
If you don't have to make a new thing for every use, you save a TON of resources and energy.
The problem is the time frame, there are some biodegradable materials that take hundreds or even thousands of years to break down, like bone.
Something i personally do to avoid waste in my hobbies. Is to try and learn from other people's mistakes and successes before taking a whack at something.
Hence why i really like channels such as Maker's Muse, CNC kitchen and Sanladerer. You may go through a LOT of plastic, but by showing what works well, what to avoid, tips on printer settings and all that. You are helping many of us avoid excess waste on amateur mistakes, bad printers, wet filaments and so on, though you also give so many fun ideas to print...
"People could eat that" I think you have a misunderstanding. Generally speaking, the idea is that stuff you can't eat, I.E. corn cobs that are incredibly hard, or did not grow fully during the season are also used. Not to mention corn has practically no nutritional value, essentially just being concentrated sugar water. Yes, people can "eat" corn, but I don't think that it's necessary to solving world hunger or anything. And trees are purposely planted for harvesting for stuff like paper/etc. I get the feeling people take Fern Gully as some sort of thing that actually happens, but most of our modern cellulose material gathering is from tree farms.
yep, greenwashing. Same as the biodegradable bin liners, but arent unless in an industrial biodigester same as pla. Which isn't happening for general waste and why would you use bin liners for anything going into a digester. So much greenwashing going on and it so annoying, as the public just generally aren't aware. So great video. Be nice if protopasta or one of the other manufacturers got onboard and did some public devlopment.
Even PLA being "biodegradable" extends far past 3d printing. It seems about once a month a "new biodegradable plastic" makes the front page of reddit. Every time it's just someone making PLA out of a different base material.
I’ve been keeping up with this too. Just seeing “compostable” cutlery hanging on the shelf in grocery stores or getting it with my poké bowl makes me sick now. Even my university has it now to be all r/fellowkids. I keep literally all my PLA until I find either a use for it by recycling, if there is investment in ACTUALLY composting it or I die of old age.
I don’t use it because it’s compostable, but I’m damn well going to make sure it doesn’t end up in the water if I can help it.
@@brandonsaffell4100 the very same crosslinking that makes it useful makes it not so degradable. Even bones take thousands of years do degrade
"Greenwashing" I've not heard that term before but I like it. Our local council have stopped collecting our food bins due to the "HGV driver shortage". We've been told to put our food in with our non-recyclable household waste. I asked a council employee about restarting food bin collections and he said: It doesn't matter. It all goes in the same incinerator anyway. So much for recycling!
One problem with biodegradable plastic is it can contaminate plastics being recycled. A very small amount of biodegradable plastic can ruin a large batch of recycled plastic.
I don't think there are easy solutions but I sure hope governments can get past the stage of greenwashing. They needed to stop doing things just for the sound bite and come up with real solutions.
By the way, there is still plenty of landfill area in most of the world. Having plastic end up in a landfill isn't necessarily bad. Having plastic end up in the ocean is bad.
I know there is a lignin filament out there, I've seen parts printed with it and they were absolutely fantastic! Unfortunately it's sold under some weird name that doesn't give away that it is lignin, which really is a shame. it apparently prints as easy as PLA with comparable material properties, but is completely biodegradable.
whats it called?
@@MrRevolverkiller A tree!
It's so sad Steve Jobs died of lignin
@@rmdcade1717 who's Steve Jobs?
@@pew6534 lignin microbeads *thoooooom*
Quite the interesting video! One of my biggest pet peeves with 3d printing is how expensive the recyclers are. I'd love to recycle some failed prints or support materials and use them for next prints but at the price point, it makes it nearly impossible and impractical for hobbyists to afford. You can find a decent 3d printer for $200 but they cheapest diy shredder for filament will let you back at least $700 (excluding ghetto food blender here) let alone the $2,000-$6,000 special extruder that you need to create filament from the shredded scraps. If fancy 3d printers can be bought for under $500, why is there still no viable small hobbyist filament recycling machine? It doesn't have to be a 3devo machine, but something affordable that gets the job done.
You might remember ages ago (2017?) during a stream I mentioned the experiment with PLA and mushrooms, and how the mushrooms broke down fragments in a grow chamber. I wonder if there's been any more advances in that. And how it would work on the cellulose.
Oyster Mushrooms have been used to break down sawdust used to soak up oil spills, so if those approaches could be scaled up, yay! You'd probably want to avoid eating the mushrooms due to heavy metal accumulation though.
Well, I'm a material engineer, I believe that the main issue with plastics is that it's almost impossible to differentiate between different types of plastics. If you add the numerous addetives to the mix it only gets worse. Hence recycled plastics are mainly from pure sources e.g. production waste material which has known composition.
No only that, the plastic molecular structure is a headache to break or "fix"
Meaning that some plastic can't be recycled with current technology.
Because we don't fix it on a molecular level.
we just clean as much is practically possible then melt it and hope the molecular structure is good and contamination levels are low.
agreed. Even when I was at an art college, recycling paper was a huge thing, especially in the areas where you printed your art pieces for critiques. Though you couldn't officially recycle the paper that you printed because the inks were not soy based, and could not degrade.
@@youkofoxy Yes that's also a good point. Quality will degrade when recycle plastics.
Won't it help to mark any plastics with some in melted QR code or something to get a general idea of what, which plastics are and what it contains? So everyone who produce it, have to leaf an information about it on the packaging.
@@MrGTAmodsgerman Great idea, I would add to this by replacing the QR code with some publicly available universal standard codes for plastic types + additives that people were encouraged to look up and learn
Hey! So I’m a plastics engineer and currently for one of my projects I’m working on synthesizing bio polymers. PLA is the biggest bio polymer on the market today, however, like you’ve mentioned it struggles because of its degradation variability. As a result, pla parts can break down in a few months or a couple years. That makes it difficult because how many parts are you okay with it degrading at some random point? Not many. So the big thing that’s being tried to solve is to create a bio polymer with a consistent degradation rate.
If you want to learn more let me know! I’d be happy to talk more!
can't the factors of degradation be controlled? like something which tolerates oxygen, but doesnt like the moisture and pH of soil
@@khlorghaal that is one of the things that’s being done. However, in a landfill, the parts are more likely to be touching other plastic parts and only the outside comes into contact with the dirt. And on top of that, it would mean that plastic can never be exposed to the outdoors both before and after production.
What that means is once the pellets are produced, you have to ensure the pellets don’t come into contact with dirt when being shipped to the manufacture. That’s something that’s a lot harder to do in practice than in theory as where the pellets are made is almost always very far away from where parts are made. That’s true for even just in the US where a large percentage of the plastic parts being produced domestically is in Erie PA while a large percentage of the polymers are being produced in the gulf coast. That means you have to ship that polymers from the gulf coast to wherever the plastic is being produced in trains, trucks, and boats that are not the cleanest.
As a result, if a little bit of dirt gets into the train car, say the railroad is inspecting the inside of the railcar and there’s a little bit of dirt on inspectors shoes. Well that could mean the plastic starts to degrade in the rail car, the part manufacturer then makes a milk jug, the milk jug looks fine, you buy it, and at some point after you bought it the jug leaks and now your frigid is covered in milk.
That’s a bit of a fun example of what could happen there’s much more serious consequences that could be life threatening if plastic breaks down when the parts aren’t intended to. Would you be happy if your turn single stalk in your car just degrades and breaks after a few years of ownership?
There’s a lot more that could be said about this topic as there’s no easy answer. Which is why people have been trying to come up with solutions for decades.
One thing I'd like to see is a plastic that dissolves in a common household chemical (like acetic acid), but is otherwise reasonably durable. I have a problem with using noxious solvents like acetone or sodium hypochlorite, but I could stand using my distilled white vinegar to clean up a plastic spill. Part of the problem is, things that dissolve in common solvents tend to *get* dissolved by whatever produces that...
I’ve been wanting to do something useful with the cellulose mats that grow in my my kombucha jars, but I’m not a chemist. Maybe someday there will be a kombucha filament with a light vinegary essence.
@@PhillipBell you are correct, but using a polymer without any additives as almost always not possible. You do have to be careful about what additives you use, but there are environmentally friendly additives that can be used. However, there’s some standard additives that are used in almost every polymer such as UV stabilizers. Even if the polymer is supposed to be used in the darkest cave and is never supposed to see the light of day, manufacturers will typically add in little bits of UV stabilizers to make sure the polymer doesn’t degrade in shipping.
For commercial industry, manufacturers will be very careful about what additives go in as they add cost and can affect the final product. However, the 3d printing industry skipped over the research and manufacturing side of things and went straight to hobbyists. As a result we’ve lost a lot of standardization that would typically be seen in the plastics industry which has lead to us not knowing what additives are in the filaments we use. This is dangerous as there could be cancerous additives used in a polymer that we’re not aware of. For instance, I refuse to use an SLA printer outside of a fume hood as the vapors you can smell are extremely carcinogenic. I’m truly dumbfounded as to how they’re not regulated more because if you have them in a chemical lab those chemicals aren’t allowed to leave a fume hood. If you tried to sell the chemicals to research, they’d be listed as dangerous chemicals and I’d need to prove my lab is certified as being capable of storing and manipulating them before fedex would drop them off. Slap a 3d printing label on them and no one bats an eye.
So yes, additives are incredibly important and unfortunately iIwould agree that we need some regulation on polymers used in additive manufacturing both for the environment and for humans. But we’re not going to see regulation until either people start demanding filament manufacturers start posting what additives are in the filaments they produce, which is something industrial polymer manufacturers have been doing for decades. Or funding becomes available for researchers to publish more papers to help persuade governments to regulate this more.
The issue with testing research is that it’s a lot of money. The tests themselves are expensive to conduct and take a lot of time. My time and other researchers time is really expensive. And the information takes a metric truckload of time to analyze into concrete trains of thought. So unfortunately I think it’s unlikely to happen unless people start to demand it.
"I have absolutely zero faith in the Australian Government doing anything useful"
Me too, we aren't getting anything important done with scotty as PM
And we're still looking down the same road now
The cheapest kit I've seen to recycle PLA into filament is the Filastruder at US$300 and you can buy quite a few rolls of filament for that. Also unless you have multiple printers running most of the time, one person probably doesn't produce enough waste to keep the recycler going, so you really need a group of people to make it economic. But I also think we need to find a way to either recycle or find a better material.
re: “people could eat that corn” the US gov actually subsidizes so much corn farming that literal tons of it are just tossed every growing season. But until it decides to stop doing that, actually using that corn for something seems neutral (also kinda fucked that people go hungry and corn gets thrown away but that’s another convo). PLA still bad for all those other reasons though.
That’s a completely different corn than you buy at the grocery store and it’s not meant for human consumption. Next to nothing in nutritional value.
I caught that too. “People could eat that corn” is a statement that is just not true in a logical, logistical, nutritional, or realistic way
Corn is far from the only food people could eat that gets thrown out. Every time I go to the store and see the meat sitting out because it’s past its sell by date I cry a little on the inside. Then I found a Video of a man from Cuba walking through one of our grocery stores and crying because he’s remembering how his mother loved apples, but could never find any, or about how he couldn’t bake a child a cake for their birthday because there were no eggs back in Cuba- standing in front of a mound of apples and a wall of eggs. I think the total food waste in the US is close to something like 50%. It’s either 50 or 30% I think. You can hear the numbers but it doesn’t really hit you hard until the grown man has them turn the camera off because he can’t take walking into a store (this wasn’t even one of the regular sized stores btw, much smaller than safeway or giant.)
@@serpentmaster1323 As sad as that story must be for that man you admitted the problem in your telling of it. He was from Cuba. A communist hellhole. So what exactly should we do? Should we just be shipping food to anyone anywhere in the world because they don't have any? Are you even aware that the whole free food thing ruins the ability for 3rd world countries to actually gain any amount of stable economy because they become solely reliant on the "free" food since their own people cannot make any business of selling food. How is the 3rd world farmer supposed to sell his food when he is competing with a developed country just giving it away. And then how about considering the fact that shit like that breeds corruption. But no you wouldn't care about the child who is sex trafficked to some UN official in exchange for preferential treatment in the distribution of that food. Well I suppose you probably shouldn't care since the sex trafficking is probably little boys having their asses fucked and that kind of behavior is seen as being okay by your kind
The fact is your story is nothing more than emotion driven crap. I am not so easily swayed by an appeal based primarily or solely on emotion
@@senpaichicken9408 You are correct. I looked it up and there are 5 to 6 types of corn and not all of them are edible by humans. The corn they grow for fuel is not the same corn we find in the grocery store. But these are the half truths people use when they argue over a topic. Each side states only the facts, or comments, that support their opinion. So people who are against using plants for fuel will state that it takes food away from people, leaving out the fact that the plant chosen for fuel is not edible by people. That is why it is always best to do your own research. I read your comment, which sparked my curiosity, so I looked it up. Thanks for your comment. Now I am a smidgen smarter than I was yesterday. Have a great day.
Same problem with "Biodegradable" BBs in the airsoft sport. They claim it'll just rot on the ground but it just doesn't.
Pretty weird really. You'd think they'd just fix that and then be done for the foreseeable future. Clearly those stupid amounts of small balls in nature are a bad idea.
@@woutervanr The vast majority of people won't be willing to pay too much extra for (actually) biodegradable ones, which is always the problem.
The only way to fix that would be to no longer allow the other types to exist.
Seems they are actually PLA, so litterally the same problem :-/
Gel balls also don't rot
Yeah, I played Airsoft a lot of years. The bags always says "Biodegradable" in large text on them so I had no issues spreading them in nature. :(
Just an fyi... my family owns farms in the USA. My family has a massive blueberry farm, and we grow for oceanspray drinks. My uncle also grows corn, wheat, soy, and other types of crops as well. Corn that is grown for production and not food... ISNT EDIBLE FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION. The corn that is grown for things like plastics, PLA, and ethanol... is a type of corn that is called "deer corn." Deers love it and eat it, but it's so bitter and harse on human stomachs... you will puke if you ate it. So, to put your mind at ease, the corn used to make things like PLA filament, can't be eaten by humans anyway. The deer corn crops are solely grown for production purposes ONLY and are planned out by farmers that grow these types of fuel producing crops... is all planned way out in advance. Many farmers that have land plots that stop growing good/excellent crops for human consumption... end up growing these "fuel producing" type of crops on their "bad plots" of land that doesn't have the proper soil to grow food anymore...because its extremely low maintenance, easy to grow, and the farmers can still make money when their crops aren't growing so well. have a good, my friend
Really interesting! Thanks for the info :)
Well done for covering this long-overlooked topic.
I feel the issue of disposing of waste plastic from 3D printing has been the elephant in the room for a long time when it really should be a much larger part of the dialog around this hobby.
I hope this episode isn't a one-off and that news and advice on addressing the issue of waste become a regular part of future episodes here and on other chanals.
I am an Optician and celluloseacetate is basically used in almost every Plastic frame in the store i work in. And through optic shopsyou can get blocks of the stuff
yup! i worked for luxotica and we had to learn all about it.
I'm so glad someone finally acknowledged this on a 3d printing channel. I love the technology but can't stand some of the wasteful and pointless printing projects out there. I still have (almost) every gram of failed/incorrect prints I've done in hope of eventually getting it properly composted. Hopefully governments catch on and filament producers make some advances in truly biodegradable products.
Good thing with PLA is that burning it doesn't release dioxins and other very harmful gases, however there may be additives in it that may make it burn toxic
Gerard I agree with you. That’s the reason I stopped watching one of the most popular 3D printing channels. I forgot the guy’s name, he has dark hair and wears glasses, and he prints a lot of huge, pointless stuff. Like a two foot tall lion or benchy or something like that. And even on camera he’s careless with the handling of the more easily breakable filaments, you can just tell that he’s a really wasteful person who is completely uncaring about plastic waste. People like him make the 3D printing community look bad.
I really wanted to get into 3D printing a while ago, but didn't have a space where the fumes would be okay. I still don't have that space, but also now I understand the environmental impacts better and I might not get into it even when I have shop space. I wish for a printing technology that doesn't really on plastic. I've seen some stuff with clay / ceramic, but so far it literally only makes coil pots. Powder bed printing is cool and doesn't have to use plastic, but from what I know it's expensive and fussy. Resin printers are just a reason to get uncured resin, which is terrible at pretty much every scale. It's frustrating to me that this technology is so cool but so bad for the environment.
@@Sa-fd7ih oh my god, you're embarrassing.
@@OrigamiMarie Agree with you Marie. I love this technology and I too hope for better materials.
I think part of the solution is asking yourself if you really need to print what you're printing. We can explore alternate filaments that might have the capacity to break down, but at the end of the day if we create less waste to begin with we'll have waste less to deal with in the first place.
Yeah. Reduce, reuse, recycle are in that order for a reason.
i will take filaments bits over buying a product with ungodly amounts of packaging every single time if i can.
Apart from this biodregradeability I would like to see producers of filament of any kind using ONE type of spool and these spools should be recyclable too. Cardboard comes to mind
Yeah. I was disappointed Prusa only made the spool core of cardboard and still used plastics for the sides. They said cardboard sides would get flappy... just use thicker/denser cardboard.
Overture filament comes on cardboard rolls which was a factor in my selecting it
I think we need a NileRed video on this subject as well. :D
Yes, yes we do!
I AM a material scientist - I am happy to answer any questions I can. Note that if you have a city composting bin, typically that is industrial composting, which means it would degrade PLA, assuming it does not get removed during any sorting process. A common use for cellulose acetate is as the transparent window in foodstuffs like in doughnut boxes since it does let moisture through quite well.
Sorting PLA from other non compostible plastics would likely be too difficult to do. Also the issues of additives as mentioned in the video are a reasonable concern for any "PLA" that could be put into such a composting system.
Here in Germany every town has it's own rules to what can get in the composting bin and what not. 50% don't allow pla because it takes longer to compost than the regular cyclus at the facilitys are, the other 50% don't allow it because it has no benefit to the composted end produkt.
@@nel2834 Composting plastics here in Finland is also problematic because they want to keep composting cycle time around 4 weeks (if I remember correctly) and those plastics would require around 8 weeks to be processed. As it's considered too expensive to sort plastics away from the other waste at industrial level and doubling the composting cycle time is also considered too expensive, we end up with pushing plastics to landfills unless the plastics are burned.
It all comes down to money in the end. If doubling the composting time which would already take care of most plastics isn't done because of cost, any real solution to the problem must be less than 2x the cost of not doing anything over the current situation.
If no composting is available, is (industrial) burning the best option? (We use anaerobic digestion here, so no PLA in the food waste.)
@@mellertid incineration/burning vs landfilling is an ongoing debate now. One directly releases the CO2 and the other leads to piles of waste and microplastics. I tend to favor landfilling instead of incineration despite the microplastics. As Angus said, repurposing yourself is the surest bet but the most work. I collect the material, sorted by color in the hopes of one day making new filament with it, though that is fairly unlikely I think.
I invested in a filament recycler. It melts my waste plastic down and reextrudes it into new filament. So i just save all my filament waste for the month and get half a spool back by the end on average. Machines a little pricey but it’s kinda a “buy once, cry once” situation.
Saves me money and the environment over time.
OMG! This is so so useful! I was also thinking about PLA, how biodegradable it is. I am looking forward to more videos about environmentally friendly filament. Hopefully I can get it in my country :( (need I mention we don't even have industrial composters anywhere in the country?)
I wish recycling it back into filament was more affordable. I would love to do that at home. But companies that make filament would probably fight it. Also with PETG becoming a popular filament, recycling PETG bottles is much better than it ending up in the environment.
This very much. So much bottles out there. All wee need is to remelt them into filament. It IS that easy.
Re-manufactured filament isn't quite the same quality and characteristics as virgin filament so filament manufacturers will still make pretty good business from people needing higher quality prints than recycled PLA can deliver. Also, people being able to recycle PLA a few times before it degrades too much means they can experiment with riskier print projects without wasting a fortune in fresh filament and possibly boost net sales. If filament manufacturers really wanted to, I'm sure they could embrace filament recycling by selling additive packages in the form of specially formulated PLA pellets to increase the quality of people's recycled PLA.
@@DirkLarien Not really, the more you melt down plastic the more it degrades in quality because the long polymer chains that make it flexible and strong don't link back together. Remelting the plastic could work for a little bit but it wont work forever.
@@MrMoon-hy6pn Good point. Can it be analyzed or measured ? If so how about mixing it with "fresh" trash bottles if the melt mix becomes poor and under set quality threshold.
Being made from trees isn't bad, it just has to be FSC certified or come from a country where you legally have to plant more than you harvest. Quite on the contrary, being made from trees means that the filament contributes to carbon fixing.
Plus if you don't want your things being made from non renewables, food crops, or trees. What options are left?
A much more viable source, which also grows a lot faster than trees, is hemp.
@@Becvar80 I was thinking that. It's also incredibly strong, it makes excellent rope.
It’s much more than that though, while worldwide we haven’t had more forests than we do now since time immemorial, what we effectively have done is created huge monocultures which ravages ecological systems and produces lower quality, fast growing, lumber. Nature needs variation to thrive, not vast expanses of sameness. It is also extremely susceptible to vermin and blights, as is obvious looking at the vast areas of pine having to be destroyed throughout Europe thanks to a bark beetle in recent years.
and as we all know the element of carbon is evil. not all the corrosive chemicals lithium batteries are made out of. just carbon.
I would love to see you try to make your own filaments out of scrap plastic and old projects you don’t want anymore; there’s quite a lot of tutorials on how to do it! There’s also tutorials on how to recycle plastic bottles into filament, which I think it kind of cool too :)
I don’t have a 3D printer myself, otherwise I would definitely try it!
great vid, thank you! we absolutely need to find eco-friendly plastics, otherwise we'll be trying to clean up our messes forever. And with all the hype of the 3dP industry, this type of sustainablity push is really needed.
Also, that "landfill with extra steps" was really well said. A lot easier to comprehend than "downcycling", which is what happens to most plastic (well, of the 10% that's recycled at all).
Keep the plastic waste in a nice safe geologically stable hole. Today's landfill is tomorrow's resource mine.
Like spent fuel rods.
@@NaesGalaxy possion
Lixiviation ring a bell?
@@NaesGalaxy that would be great, but, no, you are left with leachates, which if not dealt with, leaches into the ground...
@@NaesGalaxy comunition
This acetate-goop is a great glue for acetate frames to repair. I use it regularly as an optician to fix breaks on frames, since it’s like coldwelding the parts together.
It’s a great material that’s already used for 3D-Printing glasses. There is a Swiss manufacturer which offers a specially tuned printer and filaments for frames.
But it’s ridiculously expensive.
Acetate is a great material, especially when it comes to allergies where it’s almost irrelevant.
In the UK electronic retailers have a legal requirement to give recycling facilities for their products. I think the same should be for fitment manufacturers
I really enjoy your videos. You're very knowledgeable on what you talk about and you're easy to understand. I'm brand new to the hobby with only assembling my 3D printer last weekend. I've had many failed prints but that's not why I'm reaching out. I'm wondering, do you have a solution to recycling/reusing PLA plastic? I've seen mention of recyclers online but I don't understand what I'm seeing. Do you know of a machine that I can feed my wasted PLA into and end up with reusable PLA filament? I appologise if you've covered this in a previous video. I just haven't come across anyone covering this topic yet.
this would be a great one for CNC kitchen to have his way with. If theres a 3d printer guy who could do it, its him
He does have a Benchy or two in his compost, afaik.
Waiting eagerly.
Kewl
He's testing the new NonOilen filament from Filamentum right now in his composter. It's PLA mixed with another polymer which makes it far easier to break down. Aside from the environmental properties, it has thermal resistance of 100C straight off the print bed and prints at lower temps than PLA. If all these properties are true then this could be a holy grail printing material.
@@Bordpie Unfortunately, PLA can only break down under the right conditions. Anything else that is added to it to assist with this process, will simply create more microplastics.
he didnt mention modified filaments like PLA+, he mentioned an environmentally friendly modified filament.@@fredpinczuk7352
Bummer pla contains some sulfur or it would be just another fuel for my wood stove.
Pla burns? or do you mean sulfur makes it not burn.
@Bruce Wang well yes ofc, I dont actually plan to burn it nor do I have any want to.
@Bruce Wang but thank you for the explanation of the sulfur
Hmm, I think burning PLA is a viable option - sure not at home, but at a industrial waste burning facility. Burning PLA is carbon neutral and the exhausts are processed to remove problematic gases like sulfur oxide.
Depending on where you live this is where your plastic trash ends up anyways, which is e.g. the case where I live. I don't see a problem with that - or am I missing something?
There are special PLA’s for casting metals with the print after beeing burnt out of the plaster cast. They are basically made to be burnt with as little residue as possible. Maybe look into them?
First off, good video, love to see somebody passionate about this stuff trying to make a difference. It is nice to see you actually looking into scientific papers for information.
As a chemist that is somewhat familiar with a few of the things you mentioned, I wanted to give a bit of clarification on a few subjects.
Recycling of plastics in the traditional sense comes with a few downsides. The big one is the degrade in quality. Every time you melt and/or work a plastic it's quality degrades. Meaning plastic that gets recycled this way often can't be reused for it's original purpose. Still useful, the new purpose would otherwise have used virgin material, but not infinitely reusable. Ideally you recycle by reducing the polymer back to it's building block so it can be used to make new virgin material. I've seen this done successfully, in person, for PET and PLA. It's uncommon for a polymer to be able to be reduced back into it's building blocks. Making PLA a very interesting bio polymer on top of being made out of a renewable resource.
Regarding dissolving polymer in acetone, this is a terrible test to determine the nature of a polymer. Polymers are a royal pain to dissolve and how quickly they dissolve depends not only on the type of polymer but also on the grade. Additives, shape, but also the polymer itself can drastically change the dissolving behavior of a plastic. To give you an idea of what I'm on about, It might well take days or even weeks to dissolve a high chain length polymer in a sheet and take moments to dissolve a low chain length powder of "the same" polymer. Also, acetone is a great solvent, Poly Styrene (PS) dissolves in acetone as well just to name an example (it's fun to do with Styrofoam). Usually producers put a label somewhere on there product to let you know what plastic is used. Ideally you look for that, or alternatively just contact the producer. I can't think of a single good reason why they would withhold the nature of the polymer from you.
Anyway, keep up the good work. Would love to see a print of cellulose acetate and how it compares to PLA (outside of a scientific paper). If you manage to get your hands on some filament, I'd love to see a video about it!
# Solution 3: an automated melt extruder that makes filament out of old or failed prints. At the very least we could use this for test printing.
There is another way to dispose of PLA: Burning it. It can be used to generate power, and from my understanding, it only releases as much carbon dioxide as the plants used to produce it consumed. So it would just be a cycle of CO2 being bound by plants, plants being turned into PLA, and then the PLA becomes CO2 again. Burning plastics always sounds kinda bad, but I think it's not that bad with PLA, but actually sustainable, as you aren't adding CO2 to the atomsphere.
Aren't you forgetting to mention toxic fumes, or burning PLA doesn't produce any toxic fumes? We are also burning gas every time we drive so... I know there is someone who will have a corresponding answer.
@@valent_t That's why cars have filters and catalyzers, to get rid of the toxic fumes and particles, and I'm pretty sure they'll use something like that in waste fueled power plants.
@@valent_t I'm sure if such a device was created fumes would be taken into consideration as with anything that releases fumes. In a first world country of course.
What about the chemical processes used to turn the corn into PLA? There is probably at least one chemical reagent that releases C02 to the atmosphere as a byproduct of it's creation
@@valent_t you just need a furnace that gets hot enough that it consumes the fumes as fuel too
Angus - there's something wrong here, my experience is that PLA DOES BREAK DOWN. I've been printing for about 7 years now, I repaired some of the flush systems in our loos. These recently broke again so I re-printed the parts in ASA. The original PLA parts had become thin and soft - and not just the parts that were under water.
Sun also affects PLA, particularly noticeable for some parts that I made for our greenhouse. This have become brittle and break into shards (as you mention).
We also made toppers for Bamboo sticks - and these are also breaking down.
I believe that the timescales given for PLA decomposition are unrealistic, probably measured in tens of years rather than two. Decomposition can take many levels, from failure to function, to shards to micro-particles.
Given that - I would use a different filament at the prototyping stages. I store my PLA and PETG unusable prints in separate boxes and give those to two different friends - one who recycles into filament and the other makes sheet plastic.
Totally agree with same experience. If PLA would turn unusable within 2 years, noone would use it for serious projects...
Great post. Pragmatic and realistic. Of course PLA breaks down. Sticking it in the ground and expecting it to be even partially degraded after a couple of years is hilarious.
@@S3NTRY While it might seem appropriate to laugh at that, if you can't ensure that people actually do the right thing, it might actually be the better end condition to design for, because that way even if they don't, the desired outcome occurs
Note: even getting closer to this is desirable over the current state of things. If we got even 10% towards that goal it would be a massive improvement
probably highly depend of what manufacturer put in his PLA, i have some old one from 8 years ago and its same as new, main problem most of manufacturers of 3D printer plastics dont survive for long and its hard to get info on what they used in they mix
I've noticed a huge amount of test prints, mess ups, etc. whenever I first started and was saving them for awhile in hopes to one day break them down and reuse the new filament. For awhile, I was giving them to a coworker who was repurposing them for sculptures. Which I did think was pretty cool.
I made a contact sensor cover for outdoor fence gate thats in the sun the entire day. That was 6 years ago and there has been no change in the plastic. It's still like the day i printed it.
However, the printed pla parts for holding a carputer tablet melted and dedormed in one day. I had no idea it got Hot enough to soften PLA inside a vehicle. And the sun wasn't even shining on the PLA parts so it had to have been just the heat inside the vehicle.
Yeah, that's the thing, it's biodegradable UNDER INDUSTRIAL SETTINGS... You can't just stick it in the ground.
Right, which almost never actually happens.
Exactly. This is not only about PLA. It's a general legislation problem. Also in the EU, companies are allowed to use the term 'biodegradable' when it's about Industrial conditions, which is very confusing for the consumers, of course.
then it isn't compostable, then is it?
To compost it, you need your compost to sustain temperatures of over 140F, and it needs plenty of oxygen for the microbiome. Getting that combination is just tough at home. An open air pile just won't get that high, and a bin designed to trap enough heat in would probably have issues with the flow of oxygen. And none of that takes into consideration the additives in the filament.
I don't know. It doesn't matter if it can be composted in theory, if in practice it that's not going to happen.
But keep in mind, PLA breaks down when exposed to UV light, a few years sitting in direct sunlight and it breaks down to its constituent atoms.
50C isn't an unrealistic temperature for a composting bin. Home garden-sized hot compost bins do exist.
It's just a matter of having the microorganisms with the proper enzymes.
At that point, I imagine you could just throw some additive into your compost bin like you would throw yeast into a wort.
But there's the question of what you do with the compost. Most PLA isn't pure PLA, but has additives. Are those additives something you want in your vegetable garden? I know some PLA, like PolyTerra, use additives that are safe when the plastic breaks down, but most PLA I doubt is that safe.
not sure how many actually do such, but composting loos are supposed to exceed 100 deg C to kill off human pathogens.
I agree, that may require factory made compostor with real thermal insulation but it should be doable for home owners.
Thanks, Angus, for putting this out. You're kind of a big deal in the 3D printing community, so if you and a few more community figureheads like SexyCyborg get onboard, maybe manufacturers will listen and spend the dosh to research *actually* biodegradable plastics.
In the meantime, I'll just keep saving my scraps to melt into blocks for my blacksmith friend to create knife handles out of. Landfill with extra, pointy, steps!
Just got suggested this vid 2yrs later, and thankyou for love of god for making a team seas video that actually talks about way to stop plastic being shit into environment and ruining it. Whole push of team seas focused on picking up plastic with very little talk of reducing it and not needing to clean it up in first place which is the main problem.
I would like to see Hemp-based filaments replacing PLA. Now it is more expensive and hard to come by, but hopefully this will be the new first choice when it comes to 3D printing.
The feedstock doesn't really matter on the miniscule scales of 3d printing filament
I'd love to grow hemp as it's one of the most useful plants in the world. Unfortunately I don't fancy prison.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid It's the kind that doesn't grow the other useful parts
There ARE filaments that you can get that are specifically designed to be compostable (Maybe you could try some and make a video about them?) and are either the same cost or not all that much more than normal filament. For example, Polyterra PLA from polymaker ($20 per 1kg spool, prints similar to silk pla as far as temps/quality, but has a matte finish with no sheen), Willow Flex (A bit pricey at $35 for 300g, but claims to be compostable. I haven't tried this myself, as I only just got a direct drive printer for flexibles), and some that are made from algae (Algix ALGA filament, $35 for 1kg spool. I haven't tried this one yet either, but have known of it's existence for a while) and the like.
I'm not sure how restrictive it is since you are overseas from places like Polymaker as far as cost. My understanding is it's not cheap for the Aussies (Don't think it is, but is that offensive?) to import things, so you'd probably have to buy in bulk or something. Hope this helps some though, maybe there is a local distributer for Polymaker for you to be able to get this from?
I actually quite like the Polyterra I've tried. Though, there are warnings from some users that it may eat through nozzles a bit faster than regular filament. I do agree that it'd be better to have more accessible recycling, but EVEN IF there were recycling near me for plastics, they still REQUIRE that it has the recycling symbol with the proper markings to be able to accept it (rural us resident). I couldn't roll in with 3 tubs of failed prints and get them to recycle it even if I wanted. Perhaps I could trick them by making things like cups or trays or sheets of plastic like in the video, and stamp my own recycling symbol on it. Don't know. Anyway, have a good day out there everyone!
Polyterra isn't compostable, it's still PLA, same with algix. So no real difference from any other PLA, which is kind of the point of the video. Willow flex does only give anecdotal evidence of the actual filament being compostable, but I hope that it's true.
FYI it's not offensive, Aussies is fine 😉
@@nicklasmartos928 To be fair, it is compostable, but it is really industrially compostable only (not home compostable) because of the temp needed for composting. Slightly better than regular PLA, but basically the same. Right now, it really only breaks down at industrial composting facilities.
Which to me would be fine, if I could find a way to get my PLA to said facilities...
But I can't... I'd love it if I could just save all my used PLA up until I have enough and then take it to a facility. I wouldn't even mind paying for that, but it just isn't really an option for the average person... And that is frustrating...
I have a feeling tho, that something like that might be more reasonable and cost effective than a cellulose based filament.
One nice thing about PolyTerra, the spool is cardboard. Totally biodegradable, at least for the spool. ;-)
The polyterra I have tried was the best filament I’ve ground for my geetech a10m
I'm fairly sure you could add a discreet recycling mark for the filament type onto the bottom face of many 3D prints. That would be something neat for the slicer to auto-add!
I'm happy that people such as yourself are doing something about this, i love 3d printing a lot and i love the environment just as much, just a thought, wouldn't potato starch be worth looking into ? keep up the good work
I feel like the next "killer app" as far as 3d printing goes is some sort of machine that takes your failed prints, and turns them back to filament.
Just one minor point, while the corn used for pla is grown on land that could be /used/ for food it is not an edible variety of corn. Corn grown for starches and ethenol are not actually good for food.
I've been thinking about this since I got into 3d printing years ago. I've always felt guilty throwing out support material, failed prints and test prints. Hopeful that we'll have a solution eventually
Thanks for the mention, I really appreciate it and I'm excited that you've covered this topic as well. Hopefully we'll get more people talking about it and help the community to understand that PLA isn't this magical solution to plastic waste that manufacturers would like us to believe.
Nonoilen filament should be interesting to test with in regards to compostabilitie, as filamentum says it's not only biodegradable but also compostable, they claim it will be composted within around 90 days in a regular home compost so, I will put some in an active controlled compost and see if it compostes and to what degree
Another aspect of recycling is remelting your waste filament into new filament that you could use. Not sure what all it would take to set up a homebrew filament maker or if the filament would be of any quality but if you could just reuse the plastic that wouldve gone to waste I think that would be more or less ideal for dealing with plastic waste. At least that's what i'm baking on, haven't ever thrown away anything to come off my printer, saving it all for when I build a recycler.
There is a machine but it’s a few grand
This is something I have thought about trying to use with the desktop injection molding machine as well. I have melted down a lot of old PLA 3D prints but haven't converted those into pellets to reuse yet. I have converted leftover filament on the spools into pellets but not the already printed parts. Definitely something try in the future.
First of all, like always a great video you did! I actually knew that PLA won't decompose "on its own" and that is only done in industrial composting plants. BUT I did not know that it isn't even possible "at home" with a composting apparatus + enzyme tablets or at least it sounds like it.
Regarding the TeamSeas plug, great that so many creators get in on that. But every time I hear that they want to raise the "enormous" sum of 13 million dollars, I have to shake my head to all those governments that spent more than 1000 times that money to rescue/help companies that cause a part of this pollution without forcing them to reduce waste in their products.
Thanks Angus! This message from trusted sources can't be repeated enough. Another one of my concerns is the use of PTFE (forever chemical) as a wear item in Bowden systems. We've been complaining about lack of recent innovation for FFF. I'd like to see more compact pellet-fed extruders that could be even more eco friendly considering the absence of Teflon and potentially less post industrial waste compared to filament production.
I still want to get a filament extruder so that I can make filament out of my failures and supports.
I've been looking at 3d printing lattice structures to increase strength of aircrete. We could collect PLA and other plastics and use them to make walls with high insulative properties and that last without cracking for decades.
Very good and important video, still today.
In Germany, we have a startup-company who collect and recycle PLA (and since a few weeks also PETG), selling the material on their store. That's definitely better for me and my pile of test-prints that can now go and come back to me in a fresh spool.
Two years later it's fascinating to discover various disciplines in science discussing the benefits of plastics in our oceans and the downsides to removing them. Before we all throw our arms up in horror (which I did), there was a very noteworthy point made and it was this...
It's been calculated there is ~90% less driftwood available in our oceans than there was circa pre-industrial times. This has lead many macro & micro-fauna species, from crustaceans to cephalopods, to adopt plastics to play the role driftwood once did - a substrate to lay their eggs upon and even protection for some species broods. So the discussion is leaning towards management (open gate, bolting horse) over total removal which risks killing off thousands of small species critical to the food chain.
Fun fact, cellulose acetate film (as used in movie theaters) prints can degrade and smell like vinegar (acetic acid) when they do. This degradation is contagious between reels of film stored in the same container and can basically ruin the whole lot. I have a bunch of old movie trailers, and the last time I opened the box I was very sad. Don't think I'd dare put them through a projector now.
This has been an issue that's annoyed me for years, especially when I've heard or seen people in videos leave PLA shreds in the environment because they thought it would be safe.
People do that?
Isn't that.... just basically littering?
@@mitchib1440 Basically, but the cases I'm thinking of they did try to pick everything big up, but weren't worried about missing small pieces because they believed it to be biodegradable. They had been doing projectile and explosion videos.
@@Dr.Fluffles Ah, alright. From my previous understanding, PLA is biodegradable, but it takes a really long time, and requires very special conditions.
Now, I've started thinking of it as not biodegradable at all, just seems like the better mindset to have.
@@mitchib1440 I watched a video from a company that made "biodegradable" cups, and it had to state twice that "leaving these in the environment is littering". I know people who used to take Mcdonalds styrofoam burger trays back home to throw away, but now throw the paper ones out their car window because "it will biodegrade"
@@rjc0234 Wow. Some people are idiots. Littering is littering. No 2 ways about it.
My first encounter with PLA came several years before I first started 3D printing; the first truly mass-produced 'bio' airsoft BBs were PLA. Not as good for the environment as the literal pressed-starch biodegradable BBs they were replacing, but you could actually use them without every fifth shot exploding inside your gun, and they were affordable. Cellulose filament would be awesome, and cellulose doesn't have to come from trees you know...literally any fibrous plant material will do. Even grass, for instance. Or, if you want a more industrially sustainable scale; bamboo. I don't know that I'd use cellulose filament for final mechanical parts... But I'd definitely use it during the iterative design process and for just faffing about, because I definitely feel a great deal of concern over the waste I generate while designing stuff.
For plastic parts to be recycled correctly, adding recycling markers to them indicating the type of material might help. With the latest version of PrusaSlicer, it's possible to use SVG for this.
Here in Georgia, US there are several tree farms. The land is planted for the express purpose of harvesting them for the timber rather than getting timber at the cost of deforestation. It would be cool if the same approach could/would be used to create these suggested filaments. Just, you know, with the right tree (assuming it isn't pine)
1:36 - The question there is how would they know they'd been "disposed of". ;-) I've always taken PLA's "bio friendliness" as meaning it's non toxic, and actually somewhat digestible if small bits get ingested by animals. Not that it would magically crumble into compost if left outdoors for a few weeks; that would make it nearly useless.
Yep
I live in Australia and I just throw the leftover PLA in the recycling bin. Honestly I couldn't tell you what they do with it
Don't worry about it, you could run the extruder normal speed directly in to the sea 24/7, and produce less plastic waste than i do at my job removing plastic wrap from pallets send from one side of the building to the other. 3 large trash cans of compressed industrial plastic wrap per shift. That's just me, one position in one warehouse in one company.
I believe that fillamentum released their nonoilen filament recently which is supposed to be very eco friendly
Thats cool, but over 50 usd is a big ask for most people
@@sylaswojciechowski6895 well i just wanted to point it out :) there might be other alternatives too. Even cheaper ones
It's literally just a modified PLA. The only bonus is possible lower energy use due to its lower melting point.
@@FranNyan as i said i haven't done a whole lot of investigation, just wanted to throw it in there
The Nonoilen filament looks very promising with good thermo characteristics and being recyclable. I think the higher price can actually be a good thing. It makes you think twice before maybe casually just print something instead of really thinking through your design before comitting to printing. If there is an affordable way to recycle this material, maybe in local community form or yourself, then the higher price for the filament maybe just isn't that high after all .
I never thought that I could throw PLA in the ground and it would degrade, I didn't realise anyone would think that it's so dumb. I don't print a huge amount, but everything I have left over goes in my recycling bin that our council then puts in an industrial composter.
Hmm, how sure are you that the local composter is set up to deal with PLA, because most aren't. Your waste is likely in landfill already, I'm sorry to say
I'd like to see more interest into using sheets of re-melted prints to replace flat surfaces, or or even build structural scaffolding for 3D prints. Would probably require modifications to how we do 3D printing, being able to add new printed material over whatever base one rigs up, but an example that could be explored right now would be 3D prints with a flat base; why print the base from scratch, when one could use a remelted sheet made from failed prints? Either making the sheet real flat, or acquiring a correction mesh before printing, should work for that.
I love your constructive approach to this problem!
I believe plastic isn't the future for the 3D printing/prototyping use case. I'm convinced we can create an even better material now that we know what kind of properties we need. Perhaps the foundation of 3D printing would have to change though.
I'm thinking about surfaces that can change shape, like programmable molds, and a more modular workflow. There's still a lot of amazing things to discover.
What about a standard for filaments to make them intercompatibale in terms of recycling. That is, there can be companies that recycle and resell filament, but to make sure the filament can be accepted for recycling you would need some sort of certification and verification process to ensure that decent filament would come out of this process. None of that filled shiny rubbish, just filament with additives within standard to make sure it can be blended and extruded back into usable material. And have a few of these: PLA, PET/PETG, ABS perhaps. With fairly local facilities for recycling it.
It works in theory, but it's impossible to enforce this all over the world. For the recycling to succede you have to know the composition of all recycled material. If someone returns a benchy printed with a 3rd party material with wonky additives it is basically impossible to detect and will potentially ruin the material properties of that batch of materials.
The only problem I see with your idea is that a heterogeneous mixture of different filament compositions will have widely varying material properties because different additives used on filaments by different manufacturers. It would be a lottery every time a consumer gets a recycled filament roll unless all filaments of a specific material has the same chemical composition and additives between manufacturers, which would kind of kill business competition.
@@Eadsn You don't need to enforce. Have filament producers apply for certification. QA is indeed the biggest question since people who are sending the parts to be recycled must keep track of what filament they have been using. This however can be solved with some form of streamlined testing process (e.g. DSC + tensile testing) throughout production.
You don't mix plastics. When recycling they are sorted into PET, HDPE, PVC, LDPE, PP, PS, etc. Then they can be remade into something useful. PLA and PET are pretty hard to differentiate btw. This sorting in groups is only useful in higher quantities. Mostly PET and some HDPE is recycled into equivalent quality material. Down cycling happens more often, but isn't a circular process, just one step extra till it's waste.
Even if you could convince more than a handful of Scandinavian countries and Japan to comply, you'd still have the issue of pollution over time without 100% compliance. Plus the real people to convince are the corporations. If it's not cheaper to do (and they're not forced by government mandate), good luck getting industry to move a muscle.
I love this video; killing misinformation about PLA.
Angus, I think this video/theme should be an annual event - so we can review how this mission is progressing and encourage more awareness. Plus, would be good to see you review earth-friendly filaments, spools and products launched over the last year.
What can be done on the software side to reduce filament use? Composting is great, but the best is to not use the filament in the first place. Do we *really* need 0.8mm walls? I never see anyone print with single walls. Everyone talks about sanding, but maybe filling is better than sanding(Titebond 3 is great!). With new infill patterns that seem to support the shell better, maybe we need less shell.
How could we help people best choose the settings to reduce plastic use? Could there be a contest on printables for low-plastic stuff? Can designers make more use of internal voids in places that don't need infill?
How about paper-reinforced prints, or using paper inserts to replace some of the walls? some things could replace the whole bottom shell with a piece of card stock.
Maybe we need some way for models to tell the slicer how they will be used, so it can reduce the strength of non load bearing parts?
A lot of prints are test and failed prints. How can we make that no longer a thing? What if we put the extruder on a load cell and measure exactly how much pressure we are extruding with, so we can smoosh the layers together with exactly the right amount of force? Can we reduce clogging at all just by using more pressure? Why do we get spaghetti, instead of promoted to clear a jam and continue the print where we left off? What if instead of a heated bed, we had a laser that preheats the point we are about to print onto? The same laser might even be able to do some smoothing!
Ultimately I think they just need something like plasma gassification so they can recycle arbitrary trash, but I'd love to print with truly sustainable filament.
my 3d printing journey has been more on the artsy side, and now im tempted to experiment with using scrap plastic as melted down sheets that i could cut out instead of printing everything
I going to start melting mine into sheets, that I can use on my mill.
Hey Angus, I'd actually considered setting up filament recycling in a makerspace here in California. I was wondering if you had any tips regarding collaborating with other makerspaces, libraries and schools into doing the same. The makerspace hasn't been set up yet, but gathering and turning old filament into new filament using something like a filastruder or 3Devo and allowing it to be sold to members for a small fee was close to what I had in mind. Can you foresee any problems with this? (other than plastic that wasn't separated properly?)
That's probably the best way to do it, especially if they are coming in and not making sperate trips for it. Make sure to make the collection box open for the public and make it as easy as possible for them to do so (making things even 1 second longer or more difficult means more people won't do it), and then keep the prices just below the cheapest on the market since you're wanting people to actually re-use those rolls.
One major thing is companies would like to donate several pounds per week, however due to proprietary nature you'll want some kind of thing that says you respect privacy and won't re-engineer or mention what comes through. Now that's not going to cut it for most companies, but maybe some would be willing (like the place I work for we absolutely could not use your service, and usually if we have a misprint its between half and 1 entire consumer size roll which is pretty common). Unfortunately just for saving maybe 5 to 10 pounds/week that's only 250 to 500 pounds of plastic/year (which is like $250 to $500 in waste), that's not enough for a business to justify spending thousands of dollars plus someone running it especially if production improves and the waste is lower than that. Basically you need at least a couple pounds per day to justify the machine cost (which also is going to use a huge amount of recourses to produce, that machine doesn't appear from thin air either)
@@jakegarrett8109 the initial idea was that the donating would be free, or free to members, but buying the remade filament would be like 8 bucks a roll
@@ghostbeebuilds That sounds like a good deal, I'd definitely opt for that if we had something like that nearby (I'm on the other side of the US). I think something like that should work well, won't really be any profit but it will certainly do well recycling which is probably your goal.
I've always thought they needed a drop box at schools etc so any student could easily drop of recyclables like that and picks it up once a week, or other public areas where people would normally be going to anyways, that way its easy for the people and can be collected once relatively full. So if your makerspace goes well you might even have options for more sourcing and help creative students have another option for more affordable roles.
Good luck!
@@jakegarrett8109 thank you for the supportive words. I'll do my best.
I would both love a more planet friendly filament/ more accessible ways to make filament from failed prints.
Me and my friends just sort all our failed prints by type of plastic, label them properly, and give them to someone with a proper filament recycler.
Sometimes we melt and recycle them ourselves too. Usually we make small sorting boxes, ash trays and sheets of plastic for other projects.
All it takes is the discipline to sort them properly.
Regrettably I can only confirm this. I did an experiment on my own - several unsuccessful PLA prints inside a composter for 3 years. The prints that were near the compost wall were completely unharmed and not even deformed. Prints that were in the deeper section (my composters have 1 m circumference) - were visibly deformed by heat (as temperatures inside compost reach 60+ degrees celsius easily). But still were stiff and hardly breakable with bare hands. The only thing that seemed a bit easier to break than original were the support structures. Maybe thin walled PLA structure would decompose within lets say 10 years ... but I cant give that results yet :D
Where can I see the upgrades you did in that ended 3 I want to print the same spool holder and wire holder you have for yours!!
The only actually good for the enviroment solution I can see is to burn all the garbage and capture all the co2 or other bad gasses.
For example, you're sorting your trash so it's all recycled?
Well only fraction of it is actually recycled and it costs a lot to work with, and those costs being for example electricity that usually comes from non enviroment friendly plants...
Plastic is not only molecules made of C,H,O,N atoms, there are other atoms used for plasticizes, inks, pigments, stabilizers, etc. Also burning plastic creates molecules that are either bad for health, or straight poison, think benzenes, aldahydes, etc. And that is assuming only plastic is present in the trash.
There are ways to avoid some of these issues like making it burn at even higher temperature, but then you need to add extra fuel to make it happen, and you are still left with the filtering needs on the hot gases created. There are power generation stations that do this, but not cheap.
There are experiments for gasifying waste and turning it into common precursor chemicals like methanol that can then be used to make new stuff, with the ~10% that won't gasify ending up as a sort of synthetic stone that could be used in construction, but no full-scale facilities that could handle a whole town's waste yet. Supplemented with a biological stage to get out anything compostable first, it'd make a great complement to existing recycling systems.
Why burn it if you care about capturing the CO2? If you want to capture the CO2 PLA is already doing a good job of that. Just bury the PLA in a proper landfill and you you've sequestered the CO2.
fun fact, most corn isnt edible off the plant. so saddly no that PLA couldnt have been someones meal. it might have ended up in a highly processed 'food' though
animals eat alot of corn and the stalks right? these is the sweet corn varietes we eat but most corn that is planted is a variety that we dont eat but animals do
@@tinaprice4948 They do but corn is so genetically bastardized it's purpose built. Feed corn, popcorn, sweet corn are all different and the livestocks diet does need to be balanced and not all will have the nutrients necessary I wouldn't be surprised if there's one specifically engineered to grow the core components of PLA.
Livestock feed corn (dent corn) is absolutely edible by people, my family would eat it regularly when I was young.
@makersmuse - any updates on this Angus? Also what about a video on viable home filament manufacture? I only print PLA / PLA+ and would love to be able to rework scrap material into filament (even if it's just a random colour with slightly mixed properties).
I saw a guy that recycled cardboard and paper by mixing it with water and using 3d printed molds to create new things that he can use. If you have a 3d printer (and im sure 90% of the viewers from this video have) you could use the same idea but with your waste PLA. At 5:40 we can see how flexible and soft the plastic became after it had been in the oven. If you need anything that can be produced by molding waste PLA, I think this could be a great way to re-use plastic, that otherwise would be thrown away.
I've never thrown a scrap of my PLA (and other 3D printed materials) so i can assert that even my oldest bits, haven't decomposed in any capacity. Hell, my first tests with PLA, for strength and quality are still around from when PLA was the new hotness.
I also have PLA prints that have been in the sun for at least 4 years now, not even the least bit degraded. So yes. Greenwashed.
Most all plastics photodegrade. Into microplastics.
@@mandowarrior123 One of the early claims to fame for PLA was that under sunlight exposure, it would degrade to the point where it would become mulch. A "clean" one. I know microplastics abrade off, kinda like skin, but we're talking structural, near invisible particles. In retrospect, i should've put some of the early PLA prints inside a clean box to see just how much falls off them. I know ABS loses quite a bit with use and sunlight.
The best way to use waste prints is to store them up and turn it back into filament.
I highly doubt that most hobbyists have the money needed to invest in the equipment to do this. There's really no cost effective way for me to recycle used filament into filament that actually prints reliably.
@@Becvar80 what we need is a cheap service that will recycle prints into filament and sell it for a lower price If we can recycle prints into viable filament for a lower price than making new filament and do it at scale...... that would be even better than biodegradable filament then we are talking
.
.
If we start to make 3d printing something widely used by the majority of a population we can start recycling filament at an systemic level and manufacturing it with a large portion of recycled filament.
i found a research paper on printing with cap (cellulose acetate propionate).
besides the amazing name, they mentioned that the difference between melting and burning is not very high
I've been 3D printing for a month now and I have never thrown away any of my print failures or cutaways. I blend them up, separate the fine from the bulky, and melt them into Bio Balls for my aquariums which can be used over and over.
The important part of PLA is that it's renewable. THAT is what makes it environmentally friendly. It does not require mining to produce and is made from a material that is endlessly renewable and easy to produce in bulk. Looking only and the end result and using only that to determine how eco-friendly something is will only give you half the picture and lead you too making choices that are more detrimental to the environment in the long run.
(Source, I work in Green Building Education vetting products for their impact on the environment. This stuff is HELLA complicated and cannot be so easily simplified down to this hyper focus on "plastic bad because landfills" Nothing biodegrades in a landfill. The things you threw away 20 years ago are still there, compacted and preserved for future archaeologists to wonder over.)
yeah I remember watching a show ages ago where they dug up a landfill and there were preserved newspapers, wild.
Exactly. Landfills don't help decompose anything. There is no aeration for bacteria or anything else to have air. A landfill is just a giant time capsule of broken shit layered by years.
I know it’s a bit much but an additional video on resins would be appreciated. I know it’s in a similar “doesn’t degrade” category, but info on alternatives seems sparse
Great !!! I bought an x1 Carbon and it's my main issue with PLA or plastic, so I don't print usless stuff for the fun of it, of infinite benchy tests. Tks for this video ! I really hope they will provide a true eco frendly filament. 5 STARS & don't forget to give for Ocean cleanup !
A good honest look at the situation. The best video you’ve made in my opinion. I’d watch more of this