14 DAY TRIAL // Plastic milk jugs aren't the most recyclable of items, not just because they are plastic but because milk doesn't exactly help either. Still, a good washing can fix half the problem, and 3D printing can take care of the rest.
That's what Joshua Pearce of Michigan Technological University says in a study that he and some of his fellows conducted recently.
He figured that a 3D printing extruder is basically just plastic that gets overheated (and thus rendered fluid) during the 3D printing process.
So why not come up with a way to easily recycle plastic waste, like old milk jugs? Sure enough, the study shows how 3D printing filament can be made from those things.
Joshua Pearce and his team conducted a life-cycle analysis on a good, old-fashion milk jug made from HDPE plastic.
First they cleaned it, then they cut it to pieces and then they ran it through an office shredder, as well as a RecycleBot.
So we suppose you won't be able to just change milk jugs into 3D printing extruders at home, unless you own all those things as well.
Anyway, it won't make too big a different because companies and 3D printing service providers are, in essence, the only ones that are likely to have a 3D printer on hand.
Sure. MakerBot, Stratasys, and others have “consumer” 3D printers for sale, but barely anyone ever bought one, something that isn't likely to change anytime soon.
Anyway, if you recycle milk jugs into 3D printing extruders, you save 99 cents out of a dollar/euro, and also use 3% less energy than it would take an ideal urban recycling program to do the same thing (collects and processes plastic locally).
And since filament retails to $36 / €26 to $50 / €37, you should basically save precisely that amount of money. Even if you buy a RecycleBot, you'll ultimately gain more than you lose in the long run.
Recycling milk jugs uses 90% less energy than making plastic from petroleum, which is no small matter, especially since plastic is a pollutant so it's rather unfortunate that humanity needs to actively create more of it all the time.
So if you drink a lot of milk and want to gain some benefit out of those plastic milk jugs instead of just throwing them away with the trash, you might want to buy all the things we mentioned above and voila! You'll never want for a 3D printing extruder again.