Executive Director Tom McKeag and former SAGE fellow Jeremy Faludi have just published separate book chapters about developing safer and more sustainable additive manufacturing (AM).

Writing in volume 10, of the Handbook of Green Chemistry: Tools for Green Chemistry, ed. Beach, Kundu and Anastas (Wiley), McKeag proposes twelve themes from bio-inspired design to guide additive manufacturing to safer materials and processes. “Shaping the Future of Additive Manufacturing: Twelve Themes from Bio-inspired Design and Green Chemistry” reviews the current trends in AM, cautions about present practices and outlines how themes like self-organization and hierarchy across linear scales could be applied to the industry.

In The Next Production Revolution: Implications for Government and Business by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Faludi compares the environmental impact of today’s typical 3D printing with two classic manufacturing methods, machining and injection molding, citing life-cycle assessments, scoring greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants, material toxicity, resource depletion, and other factors. He and co-authors Cline-Thomas and Agrawala argue for incentives to bring certain 3D manufacturing techniques to the mainstream in order to promote greater sustainability.