Additive Manufacturing with Biodegradable Polymers

Introduction: Since human behavior in the last century has been found to affect the global Earth’s climate, extraction of raw materials and manufacturing processes are gaining a fundamental role in preserving our environment (DellaSala, 2013a; 2013b; Ebi, 2011). The widespread new technologies like additive manufacturing (AM) could contribute to reducing the human footprint (Gebler et al., 2014). In fact, the intrinsic nature of this process leads to material saving, no production of scrap like in subtractive processes, where the excess material is removed to form the final object. Waste material can be turned into final products with a lower amount of energy and chemical treatment (Ford & Despeisse, 2016). Additive manufacturing gives us the possibility of producing an object in any place, in our home, inside the International Space Station, or on the surface of another planet (Cesaretti et al., 2014; Kading & Straub, 2015; Wong & Pfahnl, 2014), where this object is really required. This will lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions due to the lower transportation needs. The development of biopolymers either from renewable or biodegradable resources represents the next step to improve the “green” benefits of 3D printing. In fact, biopolymers provide several additional advantages if compared to conventional plastics, such as a reduced carbon footprint and additional waste management options. Biopolymers are gaining interest in an increasing number of applications from packaging, agriculture, consumer electronics, textiles, to the automotive sector (George et al., 2020). Moreover, AM enables on-demand solutions for a wide spectrum of needs ranging from personal protection equipment to medical devices in the case of supplyedemand deficiency triggered by socioeconomic crises and disruptions of the supply chains (Choong et al., 2020).