I find this concern a little odd because most people tend to do very little in their life to make a difference in ways that count way more than a couple kilograms of PLA filament.

Let’s take 1kg of filament, which is enough for multiple print projects depending on the size of the items.

That is approximately the same weight of petrochemical material as 1/3 of a gallon of gas (making a bit of an assumption that the amount of processing per weight of both materials is roughly the same).

Every time you drive 10 miles in a car that gets 30mpg it’s like you are burning an entire roll of filament.

So the average American is using probably 1-4 rolls of filament just to get to work and back. The last time I bought a roll of filament was multiple months ago.

I’m not singling you out, I am really just pointing out that humans are terrible at understanding the quantities of things and what things actually use a lot of material and create a lot of carbon emissions.

This is especially true since cost is so detached from material use, waste, and carbon emissions.

A gallon of gas is an order of magnitude cheaper than the equivalent weight of filament.

Burning a bunch of BTUs of natural gas to make my house 4 degrees warmer and gain a trivial amount of additional comfort wastes a whole bunch of energy but costs me so little that I don’t even know what my gas bill is.

It’s cheaper for me to replace most of my home appliances with brand new ones than hire a repair service.

I can fly to Florida for $50 and burn 15 gallons of jet fuel.

If I put more garbage out in my bin I’m not charged more. I can even put furniture and appliances out there and I am not charged more.

These are all examples of waste and environmental impact where I don’t really see or feel the magnitude of them because our systems don’t show them.

Anyway I know this is kind of a huge tangent of a discussion. But really, 3D printing is the least of your worries.