Most "bioplastics" like PLA want 60C or so; this is achievable in industrial composting (it's actually achievable in normal composting if you find an expert) bu

Most "bioplastics" like PLA want 60C or so; this is achievable in industrial composting (it's actually achievable in normal composting if you find an expert) but the process of getting and keeping the bioreactor to that temperature is slow. We'd need a lot of these things, so I hope society starts to build them. But the more I experiment with 3D printing, the more obvious it is that the problems include: - separating this stuff out in the first place so that you know what can be composted - parts fixed with non-biodegradable glues - dyes, pigments, plasticisers that aren't biodegradable either - difficulty reusing manufacturing waste Industrial 3D printing is going to be a bigger and bigger part of our plastics use over time, because it enables products to be iterated long before you reach the kind of economy of scale that supports injection moulding. This also cuts down on waste; shocking amounts of plastic goes directly to landfill because of high-scale unsold inventory. So a significant development would be actually improving the chances of reusing waste. But it's only a small part of that problem.