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.
SustainaPrint can be applied to a wide range of everyday items, including reinforced hooks, plant pots, bottle openers, headphone stands, and phone stands[cite: 821]. [cite_start]Our system enables structurally sound designs that use strong filament only where necessary, minimizing virgin plastic usage[cite: 838, 839]. [cite_start]For example, hooks are reinforced at mounting and hanging points [cite: 836, 837][cite_start], standing plant pots have reinforced bases and leg junctions [cite: 840, 841][cite_start], and bottle openers have strong material assigned to regions under maximum bending stress[cite: 843, 844, 845]. [cite_start]Phone and headphone stands are reinforced at cantilevered hooks or cradles to ensure balance and longevity[cite: 846, 847, 848]. [cite_start]Prints made with 80% biodegradable filament retain statistically significantly greater strength compared to those made entirely from recycled filament[cite: 835].
@inproceedings{Perroni-Scharf:2025:SP,
author = "Maxine Perroni-Scharf and Jennifer Xiao and Cole Paulin and Zhi Ray Wang and Ticha Sethapakdi and Muhammad Abdullah and Patrick Baudisch and Stefanie Mueller",
title = "SustainaPrint: Making the Most of Eco-Friendly Filaments",
booktitle = "The 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '25)",
year = "2025",
month = "September 28-October 1",
address = "Busan, Republic of Korea",
publisher = "ACM",
url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3746059.3747640"
}