How You and I Can Become Sustainable and Help Heal the Earth

With this blog, I want to focus how a type of product, now available, can possibly not only help us achieve individual and community sustainability also be as link to solving the serious environmental problems of our oceans. It follows up on a recent blog describing my belief that 3-D printing or what we call tabletop manufacturing is a key element of making individuals and communities sustainable in order to live, shop, and work locally. I believe as individuals cooperating in communities, we can play an important role in solving environmental problems, particularly in ridding the oceans of increasing amount of plastic wastes that is killing ocean life, including important source of food for much of the earth’s population, as well as contaminating our beaches.

The oceans are 70% of the earth’s surface and our waste —  plastic bottles, medical waste. As Stiv Wilson has written, “… replace the ocean surface with space, and the stars with plastic; it’s dispersed and it goes on infinitely.” To learn more about the scale of this problem, check out Columbia University’s report “The Garbage Patch In The Oceans: The Problem And Possible Solutions.”  

The huge span of goods and products that can be made virtually in a home seems limited only by human imagination – everything from medicines and parts for the human body.

By instead of removing waste from our communities, we use it to make the products tabletop manufacturing is capable of making. One such product is called a desktop extruder. As described on its site, Filabot is a desktop extruding system, “capable of grinding various types of plastics, to make spools of plastic filament for 3D printers. Not only is it user friendly, but it is also environmentally friendly. The Filabot can process things such as: milk jugs, soda bottles, various other types of plastics, and bad prints, to make new filament for a future print. Filabot will bring the real power of sustainability to 3D printing, allowing for a one stop shop to make anything.”

I  believe this is an easy connection – turning what we don’t use into what we do use – and in the process – reducing the costs of exporting wastes, the cost of importing the goods we need, and in the process bolstering our local economies. While not every home would have a desktop extruder, small businesses can provide this or community associations ca

For an initial free consultation to explore this or another sustainable livelihood that bests suits your personality and your community, contact us.

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Comments on the substance of the blogs are welcome. If you have other questions, please contact me directly for a consulting appointment.