sustainability Article Is the Maker Movement Contributing to Sustainability? Jeremy Millard 1,*, Marie N. Sorivelle 2, Sarah Deljanin 1, Elisabeth Unterfrauner 3 and Christian Voigt 3 1 International Center, Danish Technological Institute, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark;
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[email protected] 3 Centre for Social Innovation, A-1150 Vienna, Austria;
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[email protected] (C.V.) * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +45-7220-1417 Received: 31 May 2018; Accepted: 26 June 2018; Published: 28 June 2018 Abstract: ICT has already revolutionized content creation and communications. In principle, today, everybody with Internet access, the right skills and equipment can produce digital content composed of virtual “bits” and make it instantly available across the globe. The same is now happening to manufacturing for everyone with access to tools like 3D printers. This inter-changeability of bits and atoms is being called the maker movement, which started as a community-based, socially-driven bottom-up movement but is today also impacting mainstream manufacturing through increased efficiencies, distributed local production and the circular economy. The maker movement thus has significant promise for increasing social, economic and environmental sustainability, but is it currently living up to this potential? This paper reports on work undertaken by the European-funded MAKE-IT project has examined this question through detailed qualitative and quantitative empirical research, including ten in-depth case studies across Europe and a detailed examination of 42 maker initiatives at Europe’s foremost city-based maker faire, supplemented by extensive secondary research.