With a both a large number and severity, a combination of crises have resulted in a record 339 million people that will need humanitarian assistance in 2023: one in every 23 people (UN OCHA, 2022). For example, acute food insecurity has grown to at least 222 million people and need urgent assistance, while 45 million people are at risk for starvation (UN OCHA, 2022). There is thus an urgent need for effective humanitarian responses to disasters as they occur, which can be focused on the logistical efforts to move goods (e.g., food or supplies) from where they are available to where people need them (Van Wassenhove, 2006; Kovács & Spens, 2007; Banomyong, et al., 2019). The field of supply chain logistics for humanitarian responses is complex because it is challenging to forecast the demand because of the timing and location of a future disaster being unknown and the supply of aid as it is constrained by manufacturing potential and often funded by donations (De la Torre et al., 2019). Unfortunately, there can be a mismatch between both the quantity, type and timing of supplies delivered and the supplies that are needed in a given crises (Loy et al., 2016; James & Gilman, 2016). More than half of aid money is used to purchase these materials, so the mismatch wastes critical funds as well as negatively impacting the long-term economics of the regions suffering the disasters (James & Gilman, 2016).
With the open-source release of the self-replicating rapid prototyper (RepRap) 3-D printer (Sells et al., 2010; Jones et al., 2011; Bowyer, 2014) and the rapid innovation that ensued (De Jong & De Bruijn, 2012), the costs of additive manufacturing have decreased enough to make distributed manufacturing a threat to disrupt global value chains (Laplume et al., 2016). In fact, the costs have been reduced enough to make it viable in resource-constrained contexts like those found in impoverished communities, the developing world or during a crisis (Pearce et al., 2010). Thus, an approach to partially solve humanitarian aid issues gaining attention in humanitarian logistics circles is the concept of rapid manufacturing on site using 3-D printing (Tatham et al. 2015; James & Gilman, 2016; Loy et al., 2016; De la Torre et al., 2019; Mohammed, et al., 2019; Corsini, et al., 2022; Sniderman, et al, 2023).
Distributed additive manufacturing can reduce time and money for procurement of common consumer goods (Wittbrodt et al., 2013; Petersen & Pearce, 2017; Pearce & Qian, 2022) by reducing the amount of capital required for manufacturing locally. Distributed manufacturing also allows for customization (Gwamuri et al., 2014; Wittbrodt et al., 2015). This form of manufacturing for local needs during a disaster response, waste is eliminated as the only materials that need to be shipped to the disaster site are 3-D printers and feedstock, which need less space for storage and transport, are more durable and eliminate most packaging in a disaster response (Loy et al., 2016; James et al. 2016; Sniderman et al., 2023). New 3-D printers have been designed specifically for humanitarian use (Savonen, et al., 2018; Lipsky et al, 2019). In addition, by only manufacturing what is needed on site, the mismatch that results in relief organizations shipping thousands of items that are not required and missing thousands of others that are required.
Perhaps even better than shipping 3-D printing feedstock to an area needing humanitarian aid, would be using local materials and then only needing to ship the equipment, which includes 3-D printers and recyclebots (waste plastic extruders that make filament for fused filament-based 3-D printers) (Baechler, et al., 2013; Zhong et al., 2017; Woern, et al., 2018; Mohammed et al., 2018a;b; 2022). This approach has been proven successful with a range of common plastics including acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) (Mohammed et al., 2017; Zhong & Pearce, 2018), high density polyethylene (HDPE) (Baechler, et al., 2013; Chong et al., 2017; Mohammed et al., 2017;2019), linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) (Hart et al., 2018); polypropylene (Pepi et al., 2017; Zander et al, 2019), and PET (Lee et al, 2013). In addition, there are open-source printers that can directly 3-D print ground plastic waste from a wide range of materials using fused particle fabrication/fused granular fabrication (FPF/FGF) at both the small scale (Volpato, et al., 2015; Whyman et al., 2018; Alexandre et al., 2020) and the large-scale cartesian based systems (Woern et al. 2018b; Byard et al., 2019; Reich, et al., 2019; Little, et al., 2020) and hangprinter/cable robot (Petsuik, et al., 2022). Finally, for materials which are hard to fit into the distributed recycling and additive manufacturing (DRAM) method (Sanchez et al., 2017;2020), it is possible to 3-D print a mold and then extrusion mold into it (Dertinger et al., 2020). For these reasons 3-D printing appears to be particularly well-suited for humanitarian responses for everything from malnutrition identification bands (Michaels & Pearce, 2017) and housing (Gregory, et al., 2016) to vehicle repair (De la Torre, et al., 2016), surgical tools (Angela & Khan, 2015) and even surgical tables (Bow et al., 2022). Humanitarian relief non-profit organizations are using this technique now including Refugee Open Ware (ROW) (Wharton et al., 2018), who 3-D prints prosthetics (Ramadurai, et al., 2019) and Field Ready, which 3-D prints medical devices (Saripalle, et al., 2016) like umbilical cord clamps (Dotz, 2015) and also has a long list of other approaches that are on the spectrum of full distributed manufacturing to localized central manufacturing (James & Gilman, 2016). These approaches include those that could be considered “do-it-together” where the success of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) phenomenon is transferred to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Dupont et al., 2021). In this approach networks of makerspaces, hackerspaces, factories, FabLabs or other spaces (e.g. libraries, schools or community centers) equipped with digital manufacturing tools like 3-D printers have enabled distributed production based on commons-based peer production off of open source designs in the 2022 digital commons (Fox, 2013; Pearce, 2014; Kohtala & Hyysalo, 2015; Dupont, 2019; 2022). Although all these mechanisms to produce humanitarian goods are technically possible, both the economics and environmentally-most responsible solutions have not been determined. This study aims to fill that knowledge gap in relation to the environmental benefits of one approach to another, which will provide insight into the long-term most sustainable approach.
The goal of this life cycle assessment (LCA) study was to determine the life cycle impacts for production and distribution of a humanitarian supply item under various supply chain paradigms in order to illustrate the potential environmental benefits of organizing production and supply operations for these items in novel ways. To do this a case study is used on a family-size water storage and dispensing bucket, such as the 14L-capacity polyethylene (PE) bucket commonly produced by Oxfam International. The system boundary for this study is cradle-to-gate and includes the production and transportation of PE plastic feedstock, fabrication of the water bucket, and transportation of the bucket to a common distribution site representative of a humanitarian aid location. Three different humanitarian aid locations are used to illustrate the range of potential impacts for each processing and supply system: Nepal, South Sudan, and Peru. Six processing and supply scenarios were investigated, which are described in more detail below: 1) centralized Oxfam traditional system, 2) centralized commercial Chinese supply and distribution, 3) quasi-centralized Field Ready supply and distribution, 4) distributed supply and distribution system with 3-D printing, 5) distributed supply and distribution system with 3-D printing and local waste feedstock, and 6) distributed supply and distribution system with extrusion molding and local waste feedstock. The results are presented and discussed in terms of the environmental impact, logistics, and applications and future work.