Quote Originally Posted by Bassna View Post
I would totally be interested, if the price point was very reasonable and the quality would be good enough to run through a printer. That's just not out yet. Quality, maybe. Price point, no.

Even if it was something that was very slow, but could still eventually turn your old scrap back into usable filament. I'm sure one day it will be there. Not sure when.

I just watched a documentary on Netflix about all the plastic floating around in the ocean's and such. Just imagine when 3D printer's are as common as a regular printer.
Rofl! I think I just watched the same thing. Plastic Paradise or something like that? Totally not what I expected it to be.

I am not a treehugger by any stretch but I don't go out of my way to pollute either. The documentary was rather revealing about the problem and the lack of a solution for it.

I think that 3D printing will be a genesis for a change. Not in a bad way either. See, here is my thinking on this. Are we, as 3D enthusiasts, going to sit down and design a thing. Maybe take hours to develop it. Then spend hours waiting for our printer to print it. Then finally use it once and then throw it out the car window? I think not. We have personal time and value invested in that item and we are unlikely to go through the motions for a simple one use item. We are going to make something we can continue to use and reuse over time.

Hopefully these multi-use items will replace the single use items we consume and opt to dispose of now.

Additionally, if we can leverage spent items (single use or not) to produce supplies for the printers, then I see that as a contribution to the solution. We are then at that point, removing waste from the output stream instead of generating it.

We can do that now with the available equipment. Our problem is the same one the silly Prius has. Its more expensive and the manufacturing burden is higher than any potential cost or environmental savings it can provide. People driving Prius's are completely delusional if they think they are saving money or the planet if thats the sole reason for their car. The same holds true of the current crop of shredders and extruders. They are simply too expensive to be actually worth it. ROI in terms of a decade is completely unreasonable for an individual to absorb. Until the shredders and filament extruders become financially viable, only the rare few are going to use them.

When a shredder/extruder combo is down to $300-$500 then the typical 3D print enthusiast can and probably would look at it as a serious solution.