Prusament PETG Recycled saves 56 percent of spool CO₂
Prusament PETG Recycled emits 2.55 kg of CO₂ for every kilogram of filament, against 5.85 kg for virgin Prusament PETG. That is a 56 percent cut, or 3.3 kg saved per kilogram, backed by a life-cycle assessment Prusa ran before launch. The feedstock is factory scrap from Prusa’s own PETG production.
Key Takeaways
- One kilogram of the recycled filament makes 2.55 kg of CO₂ instead of 5.85 kg.
- The savings come from skipping new granulate and its shipping.
- The plastic is factory scrap left over from making PETG.
- Every spool arrives a different color, because the scrap color shifts batch to batch.
- Print settings match virgin PETG: 250°C nozzle, 80°C bed, no enclosure needed.
What does the 56 percent CO₂ cut measure?
Virgin Prusament PETG carries 5.85 kg of CO₂ equivalent per kilogram. The recycled version carries 2.55 kg. That works out to 3.3 kg less CO₂ per kilogram, which Prusa states as a 56 percent reduction. Prusa’s launch post calls the 3.3 kg a per-spool saving, but on its own per-kilogram figures a full 2 kg spool saves about 6.6 kg.
The Prusa launch post on PETG Recycled and its life-cycle assessment names the mechanism: the drop comes from skipping the shipping and making of new granulate, while the polymer and the factory are unchanged.
The sibling material, Prusament PLA Recycled, cut its emissions 57 percent, from 5.76 kg to 2.47 kg CO₂ per kilogram. Two nearly identical cuts across two polymers point to the recycling step itself as the source of the saving.
Independent numbers back the size of that cut. The Association of Plastic Recyclers life-cycle study puts 100 percent recycled PET at 0.91 kg CO₂ per kilogram against 2.23 kg for virgin resin, a 59 percent drop, and the Society of Plastics Engineers puts the whole range for recycled 3D-printing feedstock at 30 to 80 percent. Prusa’s 56 percent falls in the middle of that range.
A Filamentive roundup lists Kimya’s recycled PETG at only a 35 percent cut, which puts Prusa at the high end for the material. The likely reason is the feedstock itself: clean single-source factory scrap instead of mixed post-consumer waste.
| Material | Virgin CO₂ per kg | Recycled CO₂ per kg | CO₂ cut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prusament PETG | 5.85 kg | 2.55 kg | 56% |
| Prusament PLA | 5.76 kg | 2.47 kg | 57% |
How to read a filament life-cycle assessment without getting sold
A life-cycle figure is only useful once you know four things about it. Prusa documents its study unusually well, so it makes a good checklist for any green filament claim.
Start with the boundary. Prusa’s study runs from mining or farming the raw resource, through transportation, to packing the filament into its box. Shipping the spool to your door falls outside that line, and so does whatever happens to the print after you are done with it.
Then check what else was measured. Besides carbon, the study reports acidification (SO₂ equivalent) and eutrophication (PO₄ equivalent), and Prusa says it ordered every impact category.
Look at what the model counted. Prusa lists manufacturing, transportation, water use, power for producing molded parts, and the energy for the extra grinding step the recycled versions need.
Last, ask who did the work and with what tool. The study used SimaPro 9.3.0.2 from PRe Sustainability, and was authored by Ing. Marie Ticha, who has worked in the field since 1993 and helped write the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards. A named analyst and a named model are rare on a filament spool, and they make the figure easier to trust. Bambu earns trust the same way with PLA Pure’s ingredient checks, naming the four companies behind its ingredients.
Still, these sources do not publish the full study data, the per-stage breakdown, or an end-of-life figure, and no independent lab has re-run or peer-reviewed it. Third-party filament sellers repeat Prusa’s figure without auditing the method. You can trace the 56 percent to a method, but you cannot recompute it yourself yet.
Factory scrap is not post-consumer recycling
The word “recycled” covers two very different supply chains, and this filament is the industrial-scrap kind. It is made only from waste left over from manufacturing Prusament PETG, so failed prints, bottles and customer returns are not part of it.
Prusa sells this as an advantage: because the input is its own material, the output is what the company calls 100 percent pure Prusament, with the same tight tolerance as virgin stock. The Prusament PETG Recycled material page repeats the claim in one line: every batch is 100 percent recycled Prusament PETG, so every batch has a different color.
The industry term for this grade is pre-consumer, or post-industrial, recycled content. Filamentive, itself a recycled-filament maker, describes it as “typically single source, free of contamination” with “performance on par with virgin material,” which is the independent reason Prusa can promise virgin-grade quality. The same page notes the flip side: post-consumer waste streams are “more likely to go to landfill,” so recycling them is the harder and more useful job this filament does not do.
Reusing your own factory scrap beats sending it to landfill or downcycling it. It is still a closed internal loop, though. The plastic never left the building, so this filament takes nothing out of the wider waste stream the way post-consumer recycling does.
Supply of the recycled filament is capped by how much virgin Prusament PETG the company makes. Neither source states how many kilograms of scrap fill one recycled spool, so nobody outside Prusa can size the diverted-waste claim.
What the recycled spool costs you at the printer
A greener filament is only worth loading if it prints like the original, and this one does. The print profile is ordinary PETG, unchanged from virgin stock:
Extruder: 250 +/- 10°C
Heated bed: 80 +/- 10°C
Part-cooling fan: about 50 percent
Enclosure: not required
Print surface: PEI or glassManufacturing tolerance is +/-0.05 mm. That is tight for the market, though Prusa’s own datasheet lists standard Prusament PETG at 1.75 +/-0.02 mm, so the recycled grade runs a touch looser than Prusa’s virgin flagship. In practice the recycled spool should still feed and flow the same through a profile you already use. Temperature resistance is 68°C, with the usual PETG character: tough, low warping, strong layer adhesion, and a glossy finish.
Expect the usual PETG annoyances: some stringing, poor bridging, very strong bed adhesion, and harder support removal. Acetone smoothing is off the table.
The main trade-off is color. Each batch arrives in a different, unspecified color inherited from the scrap it came from. That is fine for functional parts and useless for a matched multi-part build. It also ships on 2 kg spools rather than the usual 1 kg, which changes spool-holder clearance on some printers.
Is Prusament PETG Recycled worth switching to?
For functional printing, yes. Jigs, brackets, enclosures and printer parts, where strength counts and color does not, swap over easily, because the filament behaves like virgin PETG with a lower carbon number and your workflow does not change.
The random batch color rules it out for display models, matched assemblies, and anything you plan to reprint later in the same shade.
Saving about 6.6 kg of CO₂ per 2 kg spool adds up fast at Prusa’s production scale, but for a single hobbyist it is close to a rounding error against a printer’s own running energy. Buy it for the parts you print, and treat the lower footprint as a bonus.
No independent lab has published a mechanical comparison of recycled versus virgin Prusament PETG, so the parity claim is the vendor’s own. Pricing has also moved: the launch post listed 54.44 USD, while the material page now shows 44.99 USD for the standard color and 46.99 USD for recycled black, so check the live figure before you buy. For a filament you will print anyway, a traceable 56 percent carbon cut at the same price is worth taking.