SustainaPrint: Making the Most of Eco-Friendly Filaments

Abstract

We present SustainaPrint, a system for integrating eco-friendly filaments into 3D printing without compromising structural integrity. While biodegradable and recycled 3D printing filaments offer environmental benefits, there is a trade-off in using them as they may suffer from degraded or unpredictable mechanical properties, which can limit their use in load-bearing applications. SustainaPrint addresses this by strategically assigning eco-friendly and standard filaments to different regions of a multi-material print—reinforcing the areas that are most likely to break with stronger material while maximizing the use of sustainable filament elsewhere. As eco-friendly filaments often do not come with technical datasheets, we also introduce a low-cost, at-home mechanical testing toolkit that enables users to evaluate filament strength before deciding if they want to use that filament in our pipeline. We validate SustainaPrint through real-world fabrication and mechanical testing, demonstrating its effectiveness across a range of functional 3D printing tasks.