Queen of waste In 2018, the global waste recycling market and | Tech for Good

Queen of waste

In 2018, the global waste recycling market and Australia in particular were shocked by China's recycling ban, restricting the waste imports of all but the highest purity. China's share of imports of paper and plastic waste from Australia at that time was about 30%.

The Australian government has taken a number of short-term measures to bail out the situation, such as sending waste to other Asian countries, temporarily increasing waste storage limits, and financial support for recycling companies facing increased recycling costs. However, it was clear that these measures were temporary and would not solve the long-term issue of increased landfilling within the country.

In December 2020, the country passed a law banning the export of unprocessed waste overseas. This measure should stimulate local waste processing and create local demand to reuse these recovered materials in infrastructure, packaging and products as part of a move towards a circular economy.

Veena Sahajwalla, professor of materials science at the University of New South Wales in Australia, is one of the leaders for these changes . Veena is known in Australia and beyond as the "Waste Queen". Her job and mission are to find hidden opportunities and untapped resources in the rubbish mountains.

Veena has become world-famed for her "green steel" production technology. She was the first to research waste materials to replace coal and coke in a steelmaking. In 2005, she received the Eureka Prize (so called "Oscar in Australian Science") for her technology of using recycled plastic and rubber from old car tires as a fuel for electric arc furnaces in steel production. In 2011, this technology was introduced at the Sydney Steel Works, then at the electric furnace in Melbourne, and then taken overseas. The commercial version of this technology has allowed to replace more than a third of the coal used in steel production with waste products and save millions of tires from being sent to a landfill.

Now Veena is working to market the green ceramics technology. This technology allows manufacturing of ceramic tiles from old fabrics and broken glass. These designer-look tiles can be used for floor and wall cladding, making of countertops and other interior decoration products.

Veena's team has designed and already got a prototype of the micro factory for green ceramics up and running. The micro factory is a series of modules that can take a variety of different waste materials and transform it into a new product. It can be assembled in a small shed. Textiles and glass are loaded into the machine and get converted into a hard green ceramic tiles. A micro factory like these costs between half a million, a million dollars. At the moment, prototyping is funded by Australian university grant.

The main idea of such micro factories is to rethink waste management and pass the initiative for their recycling to the local level, that is, to local communities where this waste is generated and collected.

Veena's further plan is to refine the green steel technology in order to completely eliminate coal from the process and replace it with waste products.

Veena believes Australia can become a zero-waste economy. To get this, it is necessary to involve ordinary people into the process, and not only government and science. People will be able to reimagine themselves as manufacturers, asking for resources and materials that come from waste streams, and inspire each other to do things better.

Video about Veena's work
What green ceramics look like - starting at 19:30
Micro factory operation - starting at 24:00

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