Make Making Sustainable: Exploring Sustainability Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities in Making Activities

TL;DR

This paper explores sustainability challenges and practices in the maker community, analyzing waste management, motivations, and obstacles to inform future HCI tools and educational strategies for sustainable making.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth qualitative analysis of sustainability issues in grassroots makerspaces and research labs, offering design insights for fostering sustainable making practices.

Findings

Identified types of waste generated in making activities

Documented current waste management strategies and gaps

Highlighted motivations and challenges influencing sustainable practices

Abstract

The recent democratization of personal fabrication has significantly advanced the maker movement and reshaped applied research in HCI and beyond. However, this growth has also raised increasing sustainability concerns, as material waste is an inevitable byproduct of making and rapid prototyping. In this work, we examine the sustainability landscape within the modern maker community, focusing on grassroots makerspaces and maker-oriented research labs through in-depth interviews with diverse stakeholders involved in making and managing making-related activities. Our findings highlight four key themes: the various types of "waste" generated through the making process, the strategies (or lack thereof) for managing this waste, the motivations driving (un)sustainable practices, and the challenges faced. We synthesize these insights into design considerations and takeaways for technical HCI researchers and the broader community, focusing on future tools, infrastructures, and educational approaches to foster sustainable making.