Additive manufacturing has some real environmental benefits, the biggest one being material usage. With additive, you only use the material required to create the part (plus a little for support material in some applications). This means that we’re producing very little material waste compared to traditional, subtractive manufacturing methods. Along with this, we can adopt other benefits, such as light weighting parts, using material to add strength where it’s needed only, further reducing material usage.
The downside of additive manufacturing comes from the energy required to create the
parts. This is why we’re taking steps towards trying to counteract our CO2 emissions through the tree planting initiative with TreeApp. The trees planted today will go on to capture carbon and generate oxygen for years into the future. It doesn’t fix the problem, but it is a positive step and the more of them we take the better.
We are delighted to announce that we have partnered with Treeapp to try to reduce our C02 emissions. With Treeapp, we will be planting a tree with every order that we ship.
Steps towards positive change for additive manufacturing
Understandably this isn’t a fix, and within our industry we acknowledge our energy usage is high. The key is to drive machine and material providers to deliver cost-effective, energy efficient products that are commercially compelling.
Working with Treeapp allows us to track our impact we are making within their dashboard. Looking at our own carbon footprint and how many trees we have planted.
This is a step in the right direction, we look forward to a long partnership with Treeapp & exploring more ways we can give back to the environment.
