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Money Magazine Australia has just published a feature story about UNSW SMaRT Centre's pioneering recycling and remanufacturing technologies.
Story excerpt:
“Why would we consider end-of-life products as simply a throwaway thing when, quite clearly, we should be talking about re-manufacturing using their materials,” says the professor of materials science.
Along with carrying out the scientific research, SMaRT works with industry, global research partners, not-for-profits and governments to commercialise its solutions and has developed small factories that transform problematic waste materials, such as glass, textiles and plastics, into new value-added materials and products.
Sahajwalla has a vision of these small modular factories – dubbed MICROfactories – dotted around Australian cities and regions, diverting waste from landfill and producing valuable materials and products instead.
SMaRT has already developed MICROfactories to transform several different types of waste.
Its Green Ceramics MICROfactorie in Nowra, south of Sydney, transforms waste materials, such as plastic, glass and textiles, into ceramics for use in buildings, as furniture and ceramic tiles, and for various architectural and decorative applications.
The Plastics Filament MICROfactorie, onsite at UNSW, uses a variety of waste plastics to create valuable filament for 3D printing. Other MICROfactories produce green metals and green aluminium and transform e-waste.
“MICROfactories are all about creating these modular solutions as close as possible to where the waste is and very much focusing on creating those value-added materials or products,” she says. “You have to be able to demonstrate that the pathway to achieving the output is a lot better than just simply moving waste
around the world.”
Sahajwalla says that reusing and recycling materials is in her DNA, thanks to her childhood in India.
“I grew up in Mumbai and learned that there are many different ways in which we can show care and compassion,” says Sahajwalla.
“If you’ve got an excess of something, you don’t have to throw it away. You can actually make that available to those that are less privileged.”
It’s why she still gets her shoes mended instead of throwing them away.
“Can I afford to go and buy new pairs of shoes?” she asks. “Yeah, sure, I can. But would I want to? No, because from my perspective, it’s a different thing that motivates me.”
Sahajwalla says she has always been careful with her money. As a child, she kept her pens and pencils in a glass jar rather than spending her money on a pencil holder.
She prefers to spend money with a purpose and with an eye to the long term, and says the habit helped her and her husband buy their home.
It’s a lesson she learned from her parents, who didn’t have much compared with the high cost of living in Mumbai. “Some habits never really die once they become part of who you are,” she says.