You are touching on two points here: Feed Plastic for the printer and the power of convenience/laziness.
As for the feedstock, you’d never consider going to the store to buy the 3 sheets of paper you were going to use in your inkjet printer for that one printout so why would you approach a 3D printer’s “paper” any differently? You’d buy in bulk a couple three times a year. Same could be said for burning CDs or buying flour. (Beating a dead horse but this is fun and I just thought of this one!) Do you buy your toilet paper 6 squares at a time?
Then there is the power of convenience. Or perhaps more properly, Never underestimate the power of laziness. Sure you could get a shower head shipped from China for free in two days but who wants to wait that long? Who even wants to be bothered with running up to their local home improvement store? It’s like DVRs/Netflix vs DVD/BlueRay. Yes, I could get up from my chair, dig around to find the movie I want and put it in the player. Or, I could just pick up the remote and search netflix or my DVR.
This could be the death of the big box stores and the cheap but insanely wasteful worldwide shipping of crap based on where labor is cheapest and environmental laws are loosest.
Just imagine if the feedstock could be something other than a petroleum based substance. The world could become a wildly different place if we didn’t “need” to ship goods or energy around long distances.
