Sustainability in Manufacturing Is Footprint and Handprint — and Additive Aids Both

I heard a speaker at an industry conference remark that manufacturing’s gains in sustainability can be measured in both manufacturing’s footprint and its handprint. I wish I had noted the speaker’s name. That framing has remained with me, and it helps me more fully appreciate what additive manufacturing is achieving, and why its advance is important.

Additive manufacturing changes the conversation and the analysis when it comes to manufacturing more sustainably, because AM can remove the cost premium of this priority. Questions of what efforts are warranted in areas such as conservation, recycling and waste reduction no longer have to be abstract or politicized, or focused so centrally on image. With AM, the simple, frugal, responsible considerations of minimizing resource use and stewarding the impact of production can often be met as secondary effects of just pursuing the efficiencies and freedoms AM provides.

Efficiencies and freedoms. This gets to the distinction between the footprint and handprint of manufacturing. “Footprint” is where manufacturing stands, what lasting imprint it makes. The “handprint,” meanwhile, speaks to manufacturing’s reach, what it enables others to do. AM is delivering in both areas, as various recent articles describe.

In terms of manufacturing’s sustainability footprint, one of the more striking examples of AM’s positive effect relates to, well, footwear. Waste in manufacturing is a problem not just at the plant, but also for the consumer who has to think about disposal — the footprint extends this far. Through 3D printing, shoe maker Hilos realized a shoe design that liberates the wearer from this concern. The 3D printed design makes it easy and economical for the shoe maker itself to see to the shoe’s recycling at the end of its life.

Compare this to the promise 6K Additive is pursuing. The application and the scale could not be more different, but the closed loop is much the same: 6K is developing a system for reclaiming and reusing industrial metals, including end-of-life metal components.

And then there is the handprint. These questions about sustainability, including how much and whether to conserve, and what effort to make: They extend well beyond manufacturing. They extend as well to design engineers and inventors, and the possibilities these innovators make available to you and me. In these areas, too, AM is lending a hand.

For examples, look to the following stories of AM’s sustainability handprint. AM promises better-performing and more resource-efficient choices when it comes to electric cars, airflow systems and the façades of buildings. Just those few examples together give a sense of awe at the range of possibility. Additive can do all this!

One other recent article about sustainability focuses on Sintavia. This company’s attention to the waste streams of AM is clearly a matter of footprint. But the products of this company, the parts it makes through AM, enable planes to fly and spacecraft to launch with less weight and less manufacturing assembly. This is the sustainability handprint reaching, in a literal sense, as far and as high as it might go. Sintavia’s example illustrates a fundamental point: Handprint and footprint go together. The conversation around sustainability in manufacturing has changed, the sense of what is possible and practical has changed, because of the breadth of new possibilities — from one extremity to another — that additive manufacturing brings to the discussion.