3D PRINTING WILL DESTROY THE WORLD UNLESS IT TACKLES THE ISSUE OF MATERIALITY
If 3-D printing does not fully take on this responsibility then the sustainability of our current highly ‘customised’ objects is likely to be under scrutiny, as the unit cost of printers falls and hobbyists make legions of white elephants out of toxic plastics and when our landfills are chock-a-block with yesterday’s badly made fashionable shapes. And while some – such as ultrasound embryo portraits – may have enduring sentimental value, it is likely that most will simply clutter up our rubbish dumps and precipitate our plastic marine continents as indestructible rubbish icebergs. Yet, 3-D printing could be a revolution in the making – but it’s not there yet. A lot more work needs to be done on its ecological profile so that it truly ruptures the conventions of industrial practices – and to do this, it must first urgently tackle the weighty issue of 21st-century materiality.
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