Sustainability

Sustainability is not a buzzword for us, but a self-imposed commitment on which our entire company is based. We voluntarily commit to the following four principles: 

1. Sustainable treatment of our employees

The most important thing in our lives are the people we encounter every day. That is why we pay fair wages and provide our employees with a pleasant and friendly working environment with potential for growth and personal development. It is more important to us that everyone understands each other, feels heard, and feels seen than optimal sales.

2. Sustainable handling of valuable materials

A large part of our products is made of plastic – but: plastic is not just plastic. We print exclusively with PLA, a material that is 100% derived from renewable resources such as corn or sugarcane.

PLA is also industrially compostable and can be recycled using suitable facilities. We send our waste to the recycling factory https://www.recyclingfabrik.com/. There, it becomes new filament. Unfortunately, we cannot use recycling filament at the moment because our technical components have high demands on dimensional accuracy. For private users, this is usually not a problem. If 3D printing becomes a standard manufacturing process in the future for plastic parts to prevail, I think there will also be more recycling centers. 

Unlike aluminum parts, plastic parts generally require much less energy during production and therefore produce fewer emissions. This applies to injection-molded parts, and 3D printing is even more energy-efficient, especially for small series < 10,000 pieces.

Lastly, there is hardly any waste in 3D printing because it is an additive process. With aluminum, you always have a larger plate from which something is milled out. The chips then have to be melted down again, which is energy-intensive. Moreover, our objective plates, as you already mentioned, are not disposable items but last a long time. 

All in all, 3D printing with PLA is currently the most resource-efficient and low-emission manufacturing process for technical components from our perspective.

3. Sustainable Waste Management

Wherever there is planing, shavings will also fall, as is well known. This is also the case with us. That is why we work with the small startup "Recycling Fabrik" from Braunschweig and send you all our 3D printing waste quarterly so that they can produce new filament from it.

The recycling of the shipping packaging we use is handled by your local recycling center. We, as the retailer, bear the costs in the form of a legally mandated contribution to the Central Packaging Register.

4. Sustainable management of the world

We love photography and we love photo gadgets. At the same time, we are aware that there are people in this world who are not as well off as we are. That is why we donate 1% of our total revenue to various NGOs. The last donation went to a company that produces prosthetics for mine victims in Central Africa using 3D printing.

Link: https://ugani.org/