News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Independent footwear brand Oliver Cabell has entered the blossoming market of 3D printed shoes with the release of its new “Phoenix” sneaker. Priced at $95, the simple but stylish shoe is 3D printed from recycled water bottles and can be machine washed.
Food waste is a growing issue, with estimates suggesting that nearly one-third of all food produced is scrapped. In the UK, for instance, which has a population of about 66 million, eight million tonnes of food are wasted a year. Like most environmental problems, a significant part of the food waste is caused at an industrial level, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that consumers can do on an individual basis to help reduce, reuse and recycle.
Though technology is often thought of in contrast to the natural world, certain innovations—such as generative design and 3D printing—are helping to connect us to nature in new and exciting ways. Large-format 3D printing company BigRep, for instance, recently unveiled a project called BANYAN ECO WALL, the world’s first fully 3D printed green wall.
Julia Daviy, a fashion designer with an inclination towards 3D printing and sustainable practices, has introduced a new wearable product that combines all three elements: a zero-waste, fully customizable 3D printed skirt. The garment is now available to order on the designer’s website.
Rotterdam-based design studio The New Raw is no stranger to environmental causes—it’s whole mandate is to raise awareness about eco issues such as plastic waste with innovative design and technologies like 3D printing. Most recently, the group teamed up with the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation in Greece to highlight the specific problem of abandoned fishing nets in marine ecosystems.
German chemicals company Henkel Corporation is expanding its novel Recycling Program for its additive manufacturing customers. The program, established in collaboration with TerraCycle, will enable Henkel clients to easily recycle 3D printing materials and adhesives from its Loctite brands, pushing sustainable 3D printing further ahead.
One of the primary ecological concerns of our time is plastic consumption and waste. Of the plastic we use on a day-to-day basis, less than 10% is recycled, with the rest going into landfills and, as it becoming increasingly clear, the ocean. In addition to curbing plastic consumption and reducing what we use, there is also a growing effort to find sustainable alternatives to the ecologically taxing material. One such effort is coming out of MIT, where the Mediated Matter lab is developing a technology for 3D printing water-based biopolymer composites.
AMT-Specavia, a Russian company specializing in construction 3D printing technologies, is partnering with a team in South Korea with the aim of producing artificial coral reefs for the Yellow Sea. The 3D printing effort, which it utilizing high-strength hydrophobic concrete to create the artificial coral, aims to rehabilitate the quickly deteriorating coral reef ecosystem in the Yellow Sea.
UPM, a Finnish biopolymer specialist, is demonstrating large scale robotic 3D printing of wood composite applications, using its granulate biocompatible cellulose material. The project was developed in collaboration with ABB and Prenta and is being presented at the Nordic 3D Expo in the Espoo Dipoli Congress Centre.
The rate at which the world’s oceans are filling with plastic is unsustainable. Every minute, the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic reportedly enters the ocean, polluting the many ecosystems it contains. And though cleanup efforts do make small differences, the scale of the crisis makes it impossible to remove all the plastic. Because of this, alternative methods for improving biodiversity in the ocean are becoming increasingly important.