Tag: Earth Day

Every Day is Earth Day with Additive Manufacturing

As we celebrate Earth Day 2025, it’s important to remember that the spirit of Earth Day isn’t confined to just one day each year. Every day can — and should — be Earth Day. The choices we make, the actions we take, and the technologies we support all contribute to the long-term health of our planet. In fact, the small, consistent steps we take every day are just as important as those big moments of awareness and action.

This year, the theme of Earth Day is “Our Power, Our Planet”, but the truth is, we don’t have to wait a year to make a difference. Whether it’s in our personal lives, within our communities, or in the industries that drive our economies, sustainability is a daily responsibility, and one we all have the power to take on. One industry in particular that drives sustainability forward in our consumerist world is the additive manufacturing industry.

Why Every Day Matters: Sustainability as a Constant Commitment

Traditional manufacturing often involves cutting, drilling, and shaping raw materials, resulting in significant waste. In fact, according to Business Waste, approximately 9.2 billion tons of industrial waste are generated worldwide every year. (Yes, billion!) However, unlike typical manufacturing, 3D printing is an additive process, meaning that it builds objects layer by layer, using only the material necessary for the product. This method helps manufacturers eliminate overproduction and greatly reduce the environmental impact of their production. This means that every single print job made through additive manufacturing is an intentional step toward reducing material waste, making it a sustainable choice every day.

The process of 3D printing also directly contributes to energy conservation. Unlike traditional manufacturing, which relies on massive factories and energy-intensive machinery, 3D printing operates with significantly less energy consumption. The printer uses only the energy needed to create the object, making it more efficient and reducing the strain on energy resources. For context, traditional manufacturing uses an estimated 18.2 billion gallons of water per day. This reduction in energy consumption happens daily, meaning that every day, additive manufacturing helps lower our collective environmental footprint.

Localized Production: Reducing Carbon Emissions Every Day

In traditional manufacturing, products often travel long distances from factories to consumers, contributing to a significant amount of carbon emissions. This is especially true for global supply chains, where goods are shipped across countries and continents. Additive manufacturing, however, allows for localized production, meaning products can be made closer to their final destination, often on-demand.

By producing items near their point of use, 3D printing reduces the need for long-distance shipping, cutting down on transportation-related emissions. This reduction in carbon footprint is a daily contribution to sustainability. When products are made locally, they can be produced without the large, wasteful transportation footprint associated with traditional manufacturing, which makes every print job a small but impactful action toward a greener future.

Recycling and Repurposing: A Closed-Loop System for Sustainability

One of the most exciting features of additive manufacturing is its ability to recycle and repurpose materials. In traditional manufacturing, errors and excess materials often go to waste. However, with 3D printing, mistakes or leftover materials can be recycled and reused for future prints, keeping resources in circulation and reducing waste. This ongoing, closed-loop system ensures that materials are used efficiently and reduces the demand for new resources.

At ABCorp 3D, for example, we use sustainable materials like PA11, a nylon derived from vegetable castor oil, which has a 70% recycled content. We also use PA12, with an 80% recycling rate. By recycling unused materials back into the production process, we’re reducing waste every time we print a part. This is a perfect example of how 3D printing is not just a green solution on Earth Day, but a daily practice that reduces material consumption and contributes to a circular economy.

HP 3D Hr PA11Everyday Innovation in Healthcare: Sustainable Solutions for Life

Sustainability isn’t limited to just consumer products. Additive manufacturing is also transforming the healthcare industry by enabling the production of custom medical devices like prosthetics and implants. These products can be made on-demand and tailored to individual patients, reducing the need for mass production and minimizing waste.

At ABCorp 3D, we create FDA-approved prosthetics and medical devices using 3D printing. By leveraging this technology, we not only provide personalized solutions but also contribute to a more sustainable healthcare system. The ability to produce these items on-demand, without the need for excessive inventory or large manufacturing facilities, means that healthcare is benefiting from the environmental advantages of additive manufacturing every day. Through 3D printing, the healthcare industry is becoming more sustainable, ensuring that patients get the care they need while minimizing environmental impact.

The Bigger Picture: How Additive Manufacturing Supports a Greener Future

Every time a product is made using 3D printing, we’re taking another step toward a more sustainable future. From reducing waste and energy use to enabling localized production and creating closed-loop recycling systems, additive manufacturing is making a measurable difference. It’s not just a technology for Earth Day; it’s a technology that makes sustainability possible every single day.

By embracing additive manufacturing, industries can streamline their processes, reduce their carbon footprints, and contribute to a more sustainable future. Whether it’s making consumer goods, medical devices, or industrial parts, 3D printing offers an ongoing solution to the challenges of resource depletion and environmental impact. And because it’s an evolving and adaptive technology, its potential to drive sustainability will only continue to grow.

As we celebrate Earth Day 2025, let’s remember that sustainability isn’t a one-time event; it’s a daily commitment, and additive manufacturing is helping industries and businesses like ABCorp make that commitment easier by enabling greener, more efficient production. We hope you will join us in supporting and embracing technologies like 3D printing that allow us to make every day Earth Day.

 

 

 

Earth Day: How 3D Printing Supports Green Initiatives

It’s no secret that we, as a society, are experiencing rapid climate change and resource depletion. This Earth Day, and as global citizens, it’s our responsibility to do our part and leave our planet better than we found it.

Except it’s not just individuals who can save the planet. Large plant manufacturers and industrial facilities are some of the biggest offenders when it comes to pollution. However, there is a budding industry on the manufacturing horizon: 3D printing.

Compared to traditional manufacturing, 3D printing allows manufacturers to reduce their material waste, use energy efficiently, localize production, and reduce pollutants, but it also gives them the opportunity to recycle and use more sustainable materials. When broken down to the bare bones, 3D printing is far more economically and environmentally friendly than traditional manufacturing.

Reduced Material Waste and Energy Efficiency

In traditional manufacturing, sustainability and energy efficiency are not usually top concerns. The cutting, drilling, and shaping of raw materials produce quite a lot of waste and excess materials that often aren’t recycled or reused — not to mention the amount of energy and natural resources that are needed for large-scale productions. For context, traditional manufacturing typically uses an estimated 18.2 billion gallons of water per day (yes: per day), whereas 3D printing typically requires no water and only uses enough energy to operate the printer and heat the printing material, which is minor in comparison.

On the contrary, due to its additive nature, 3D printing only uses the amount of materials necessary to complete the job and is produced layer by layer. Often done on a smaller, on-demand scale, there isn’t much room for overproduction, excess waste, or higher energy consumption. In fact, in 2017, the U.S. Department of Energy stated that, when compared to traditional manufacturing, the future of 3D printing would lead to an approximate 90% reduction in waste and material costs while reducing energy use by 25%.

Localized Production

Since 3D printing makes way for more customizable products without the need for mass production, manufacturers can have much more precise and localized production, meaning that it can often be done in-house or locally. By having a more localized location, manufacturers can not only reduce the carbon emissions that are typically associated with shipping, leaving behind a smaller carbon footprint, but they also don’t require massive facilities, which can often benefit local economies more.

It’s also worth mentioning that, due to its on-demand and streamlined production, manufacturers don’t have to worry about bottlenecking that is common with larger productions, and it provides engineers with the flexibility to swiftly create prototypes and fine-tune their designs. In addition, 3D printing allows for a smaller production facility where space constraints to manage inventory aren’t an issue, further reducing costs.

Recycling Capability

Mistakes happen; we know this, and (most of us) have come to accept it. However, when mistakes happen during a 3D-printed production process, there’s no real reason to panic. The faulty product’s materials, whether plastic or metal, are simply processed and transformed back into usable filaments or resins for future production runs or even non-3D printed manufacturing, eliminating waste or the need for an excess of materials.

ABCorp 3D’s Green Initiatives

At ABCorp 3D, we offer environmentally and sustainable 3D printed products. The PA11 from Arkema is a sustainable nylon material made from vegetable castor oil with a 70% recycled rate, while PA12 has an average recycling rate of 80%. Recycling the unused material into the next build lowers our carbon footprint and reduces the cost of the parts. Not only does this ultimately lower production costs, but it also allows for less demand for raw materials while minimizing carbon footprint.

It’s also worth mentioning that ABCorp is a registered FDA facility, meaning we’ve gone through an extensive validation process that has proven the safety and effectiveness of our 3D printed medical devices, specifically our prostheses. Being registered and a manufacturing facility with the FDA not only proves the credibility of our products, but assures our customers, healthcare providers, and regulatory agencies that we successfully meet stringent quality and safety standards.

Conclusion

As we continue to fight the good fight when it comes to manufacturing sustainably, 3D printing embraces greener initiatives unlike any other. With a proven track record to reduce material waste and conserve energy, localize production, and allow for recycling on a large scale, industries can not only streamline their production processes but also play their role in working towards a greener, more sustainable future for generations to come.