So many of our purchases are made of plastic. I can imagine owning a 3D printer within my lifetime.

The problem is that while a high percentage is made from plastic, they're not all made from the same plastic. And most of them aren't entirely plastic.

And I hope not from a certain perspective. Can you imagine the ecology of being able to just toss your nalgene water bottle when it gets empty and you'll just print a new one in the morning.

Or toss it onto the grinder on the back of the printer and recycle it yourself.

Yeah, but if you're home when it becomes an empty annoyance you wouldn't in the first place. It's because you don't want to carry an empty bottle home when you can easily get a new one.

But in this universe where everyone has one, wouldn't it be safe to assume you could hand it off to someone or someplace? That is, assuming there is one SuperPlastic at that point.

I saw a show that was looking into future tech, and they talked about printing 3D living body parts (in this case a heart). They take your stim cells, tell them to be heart cells, put them into the "ink cartridge" and printed it. This has already been tested to a degree. They printed a patern on a petri dish using live bacteria to see if they would servive the process and grow, and they did.