It also burns quite well. If are in a location that burns trash in waste-to-energy plants you can get a decent amount of that energy back by throwing it away
Isn’t plastic nearly free as a raw material as a by product of fossil fuel production? I was always told it’s the opposite, plastic bags are better for the environment if disposed of properly because they’re so light weight to transport, didn’t need to be farmed, and companies basically give away the raw material because it would be more expensive to dispose of. A cotton bag needs to be reused upwards 1000x to be less impactful, or was I bamboozled?
I'm so glad that fad is over. My mother worked as a theatre artisan before retirement and it was, among other things, fumes from curing epoxy that caused numerous health issues down the line.
Do nothing: 10 pounds of filament poop has go to the landfill.
Do this thing: 10 pounds of filament poop still exists, + 8 pounds of glue sticks (which is basically a thermoplastic) used, to create something that's eventually going to end up in a landfill.
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Recycling or reuse is not as useful as just not creating waste in the first place.
It's really annoying to me that shredders and filament makers are so expensive. I probably generate less waste than average from my printer, but it still pains me to have to just throw it away because I can't do anything productive with it
The only comforting thing to me about the waste (apart from the fact that our personal 3d printer waste is a margin of error compared to industrial waste so honestly, just don’t worry about it), is that at least PLA is biodegradable.
Interesting. I will do more research on this, thanks. But at the end of the day, even though it's tough for us to see the PLA poop, etc from our prints (I still generally don't like it), my point is that hobbyist plastic waste is basically negligible and making nearly zero difference.
I don't want people to see plastic waste from 3D printing and be discouraged to try it out as a hobby. I just got my first 3d printer 6 months ago (and I did all this biodegradable research mostly so my wife would feel comfortable with it). But the benefits of rewiring your brain in a manufacturing mindset, having the ability to create things, solve custom problems, etc, far outweigh the negligible (in the grand scheme of things) amount of waste compared to all the other plastic shit (toys, etc) the masses buy on amazon. That was my main point.
But it's good to know that it could still take 80 years, and is not as quickly biodegradable as originally thought.
I took a quick look because that sounds odd. They've made a mess of the article's image sizing - only 270px wide if the viewport is <768px. (That top image is 1024px wide on desktop.) There's so much wrong with that decision, regardless of the huge difference between 270 and 768, e.g. apparently not being aware of hardware pixel density on smartphones.
So the author recycled 10 pounds of plastic, but used 8.5 pounds of glue to do so (184 sticks at 0.74 oz which seems to be average for glue sticks).
Cool project, but that ratio seems very ineffective. Especially since there is a realistic chance this ends up in landfill within some decades anyway.
Most of the environmental cost of plastic happens when it’s made. Once it exists, burying it in landfill isn’t nearly as bad as many people think.
95+% of the carbon footprint of plastics comes from production and manufacturing.
It also burns quite well. If are in a location that burns trash in waste-to-energy plants you can get a decent amount of that energy back by throwing it away
Isn’t plastic nearly free as a raw material as a by product of fossil fuel production? I was always told it’s the opposite, plastic bags are better for the environment if disposed of properly because they’re so light weight to transport, didn’t need to be farmed, and companies basically give away the raw material because it would be more expensive to dispose of. A cotton bag needs to be reused upwards 1000x to be less impactful, or was I bamboozled?
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Like those "wood" tables that are 50% made of epoxy. It grinds my gears
I'm so glad that fad is over. My mother worked as a theatre artisan before retirement and it was, among other things, fumes from curing epoxy that caused numerous health issues down the line.
Honestly wtf does the glue matter when people are going through plastic like it's nothing? Bringing up the glue is such a weird nitpick.
When the ratio is almost 1:1 it is a bit more than a nit.
Do nothing: 10 pounds of filament poop has go to the landfill.
Do this thing: 10 pounds of filament poop still exists, + 8 pounds of glue sticks (which is basically a thermoplastic) used, to create something that's eventually going to end up in a landfill.
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Recycling or reuse is not as useful as just not creating waste in the first place.
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hot glue is a petrochemical just like plastic.
1 reply →
I guess this is meaningful recycling also because it occupied the author.
Otherwise the author would have started a different project and likely would have consumed more material.
Sibling comments focus on the end result and that it might end up in trash - but that was always the plan.
It's really annoying to me that shredders and filament makers are so expensive. I probably generate less waste than average from my printer, but it still pains me to have to just throw it away because I can't do anything productive with it
The only comforting thing to me about the waste (apart from the fact that our personal 3d printer waste is a margin of error compared to industrial waste so honestly, just don’t worry about it), is that at least PLA is biodegradable.
"the term biodegradable used by manufacturers and distributors can be somewhat misleading for the final consumer" https://www.beease.com.hk/post/how-long-does-pla-take-to-dec...
This is also misleading. PLA plastic degrades slowly in the environment because it's highly crystalline and mechanically robust.
But once it's fragmented, it's rapidly degraded. So it doesn't contribute to persistent microplastics.
It also does not take 80 years in normal environmnets.
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Interesting. I will do more research on this, thanks. But at the end of the day, even though it's tough for us to see the PLA poop, etc from our prints (I still generally don't like it), my point is that hobbyist plastic waste is basically negligible and making nearly zero difference.
I don't want people to see plastic waste from 3D printing and be discouraged to try it out as a hobby. I just got my first 3d printer 6 months ago (and I did all this biodegradable research mostly so my wife would feel comfortable with it). But the benefits of rewiring your brain in a manufacturing mindset, having the ability to create things, solve custom problems, etc, far outweigh the negligible (in the grand scheme of things) amount of waste compared to all the other plastic shit (toys, etc) the masses buy on amazon. That was my main point.
But it's good to know that it could still take 80 years, and is not as quickly biodegradable as originally thought.
1 reply →
Why is the primary image blurry on mobile but high res if I rotate my phone horizontal?...
I took a quick look because that sounds odd. They've made a mess of the article's image sizing - only 270px wide if the viewport is <768px. (That top image is 1024px wide on desktop.) There's so much wrong with that decision, regardless of the huge difference between 270 and 768, e.g. apparently not being aware of hardware pixel density on smartphones.
bravo! so much better than a landfill
next week my kids arts and crafts project is top news.
Share it now; I'm sure many people (with me included) would find it interesting, just like this post.