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You can. Just buy a Filabot:

http://www.filabot.com/

When you're done with the 3D printed item, and have gathered a few such discards up, toss them in the Filabot Reclaimer (basically a hand-crank grinder) and then toss the ground plastic into the Filabot. It then spits out plastic filament to use in your 3D printer. It can also be used to recycle, say, lego.

I'll just leave this right here:

http://www.filabot.com/collections/filabot-core/products/filabot-wee-assembled

Filabot craves plastic!

Filabot is one simple way around that. The problem as I see it is the initial price of the printer. The current iteration of the Reprap project is the Mendal Max. This is the best deal out there. For $1500US you get a kit that you can put together yourself. I want one so badly it hurts.. but I don't have the money. I'm assuming I'm not the only one.

Check out the Filabot.

Already on the market! Just at a higher price point since it needs a grinder in addition to the heater extruder that he has, plus it is sold assembled and for a profit! http://filabot.com/

Irrelevant at this stage. What we need first is better support for plastic. I want a hopper that re-extrudes spent ABS into fresh filament.

Filabot.com is your bag, then. Right now it's only making filament from granules, though. Even with a grinder, they're going to have to deal with needing the re-addition of volatile chemicals that are currently lost during printing.

As far as plastics, there is loads of work being done. PLA (biodegradeable polymer), PVA (water soluble), Polycarbonate, even Nylon are successfully being extruded and printed.

So, like this...

http://filabot.com/
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:24583

Work in progress obviously, but people are working on it.