3D printing waste

3D printing creates a lot of waste so what do you do with it? Do you just toss it in the trash or can it be recycled somehow?

I guess it depends on how you define “a lot of waste”.

Compared to the stuff that not got dumped, because I was able to repair it, the fallout is quite low at the moment.

However. I don´t see a huge issue in dumping PLA thats why I use it for prototyping. ABS is more a problem, but compared with the stuff usually gets dumped the footprint is quite low. Usually I only have supports to toss into the trash. Yes people will tell you to print stuff without support or design them so they work without support, but usually this results in failed prints and causes even more trash. So printing a brim and some support when needed is not that bad compared to a failed print.

I guess you can do more for the environment when you think about how you use it. Empty your spools till the end, even if that means to swap filament. Try to buy filament without a spool. That is usually ABS, too and far more trash than some support.

I started out thinking I would save the waste, by filament type & color, and then get a filament extruder to turn it back into filament. But, I have used a number of spools and just don’t have that much waste. I mean, it looks like a fair bit, but that’s because it’s stringy and springy, which makes it take up a lot of space for very little actual material. I may give up on it and just dump the waste.