A vision for sustainable additive manufacturing

Radical technological innovations are emerging in response to environmental, economic and geopolitical pressures. This affects how we design and manufacture new solutions. Additive manufacturing, one of the enabling technologies of the digital transition, can support more-sustainable manufacturing processes if developed through a system-level approach. In this Perspective, we adopt such an approach: we propose to use established sustainable design methods to innovate additive manufacturing systems and to consider how to make additive manufacturing an enabler of sustainable design in combination with conventional manufacturing. We then discuss how to implement our vision to enable additive manufacturing for sustainability. Additive manufacturing is gaining growing attention as an alternative to conventional methods, but it can support more-sustainable manufacturing processes if developed through a system-level approach. This Perspective discusses how to achieve such a holistic development of additive manufacturing systems for sustainability.