Stratasys has given its sustainability program something it has mostly lacked until now: numbers that can be checked. In its fifth annual ESG report, announced in a Business Wire release dated November 4, 2026, the company commits to four measurable 2030 targets: a 40% cut in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, a 15% reduction in water consumption, diversion of at least 55% of non-hazardous waste, and a total recordable incident rate (TRIR) below 0.40. The report also includes the company's first climate risk analysis aligned with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework.
The targets fall under Stratasys' "Mindful Manufacturing" strategy. The more useful part of the release is the 2025 performance data that comes with them. It shows where the company stands today, and on several measures that is a long way from the 2030 line.
The Scorecard, Target by Target
The simplest way to read the report is to put each 2030 goal next to the most recent result.
Scope 1 and 2 emissions. The target is a 40% reduction by 2030. In 2025, Stratasys reported that combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions fell 6.2%. That is real progress, but most of the 40% is still to come, and there are only a few reporting cycles left to deliver it. The company says its 2025 greenhouse gas data received limited assurance from an independent third party. Limited assurance is a lower bar than reasonable assurance, but it is still outside verification, which not every sustainability report carries.
Water. The goal is a 15% cut. Absolute water consumption fell 3.6% in 2025. As with emissions, the direction is right and most of the distance remains.
Waste. Stratasys wants to divert at least 55% of its non-hazardous waste to reuse, recycling or energy recovery. It diverted 40% from landfill in 2025, which 3D Printing Industry notes leaves it 15 percentage points short of the goal.
Safety. The TRIR target is below 0.40. According to the company's release, its TRIR stood at 0.5 in 2025, so it also needs to improve on worker safety, not only on environmental measures.
None of these gaps is unusual for a first year of public targets. That is the point of publishing a baseline next to a goal. Still, the report is better read as a starting position than as a record of achievement.
The 92% Problem
The most revealing figure is not in the headline targets. 3D Printing Industry reports that Stratasys' 2025 report was the first to cover the full value chain, at 188,843 metric tons of CO2-equivalent, and that Scope 3 makes up 92% of that total.
That puts the 40% Scope 1 and 2 target in perspective. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from company-owned sources, and Scope 2 covers purchased electricity and heat. Together they make up about 8% of the company's measured footprint. The rest is Scope 3, which covers emissions elsewhere in the value chain, such as purchased materials, logistics, and the use and disposal of products. Meeting the 40% target in full would still leave the large majority of Stratasys' emissions outside its headline commitment.
The company does report progress on the value chain. Value-chain emissions intensity fell 11.9%, and Stratasys recycled or reconditioned 357,000 kg of product materials. Intensity measures emissions relative to business activity rather than in absolute terms, so it can improve even when total emissions do not. It is a legitimate metric, but it is a different one, and it is worth keeping the two apart when reading the report.
The same gap between what a vendor controls and what its products cause applies across additive manufacturing. A target that covers only Scope 1 and 2 covers the part of the footprint the company directly operates, which is the easiest part to set a number against and to verify.
Context: An Industry Under Scrutiny
Stratasys is not the only AM company making climate claims, and the claims are attracting more skepticism. 3D Printing Industry places the report alongside several other developments: Oerlikon's pledge to become operationally climate neutral by the end of the decade, EOS's cost and carbon calculator for comparing the CO2 output of 3D printing with alternative manufacturing methods, and a $600,000 sustainability project run by ASTM International through America Makes. It also cites consultancy Roland Berger, which has called the industry's sustainability benefits "superficial" and potentially "misleading" and argued that more life cycle assessments are needed.
That criticism goes to the core of how AM is usually sold on sustainability. The pitch is that printing reduces waste compared with subtractive machining, enables lighter parts, and shortens supply chains. Each of these can be true for a particular part. None of them is automatically true for every printed part, and the energy intensity of some processes, along with the materials they consume, can cancel out the gains. Quantified, externally assured, framework-aligned disclosure is the obvious answer to that critique. Stratasys' report moves in that direction, even if most of its hard commitments cover only its own operations.
The company does have a third-party credential to point to. Its EcoVadis Gold Medal puts it in the 96th percentile of more than 150,000 companies assessed, according to 3D Printing Industry, which also carries comments from Rosa Coblens, Stratasys' Vice President of Sustainability and Communications.
What It Means for Makers
For most hobbyists, a corporate ESG report does not change anything in the workshop tomorrow. It is still useful in a few ways.
First, the Scope 3 figure is a reminder that most of a printing company's footprint sits outside its own buildings. For individual makers, the parts of printing they control are materials, machine runtime, and waste. Print settings that cut failed jobs, smaller support structures, and keeping spools and resin from expiring on the shelf all reduce waste, though none of that is quantified in Stratasys' report.
Second, the 357,000 kg of recycled or reconditioned materials points to a growing focus on materials circularity. Professional users buying Stratasys systems should ask which take-back or reconditioning programs apply to their machines and consumables, and what conditions apply.
Third, the report sets a standard for comparison. Now that one of the largest AM vendors publishes measurable targets, a TCFD-aligned risk analysis, and limited-assurance emissions data, buyers can reasonably ask competitors for the same. Vague "sustainable printing" marketing gets harder to defend when a peer reports concrete numbers, including unflattering ones.
Bottom Line
Stratasys has moved from talking about sustainability to accounting for it. The four 2030 targets are specific, the 2025 results are public, and the gaps (most of the 40% emissions cut still ahead, 15 percentage points on waste diversion, TRIR of 0.5 against a target below 0.40) are plain to see. What the targets leave out matters just as much: 92% of the company's measured emissions sit in Scope 3, where its only reported progress is an intensity metric. The coming annual reports will show whether the trend lines bend fast enough.
