19
2020
Research
Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT)
at the University of New South Wales
(UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, can produce
building panels from old clothing and textiles,
as well as plastics, waste timber and glass. This
Microfactory technology can transform waste
glass into engineered flat ceramic products,
which have been used to make stools and
table-tops, as well as for decorative purposes.
They are now also being tested for flooring
and walling applications.
It can also transform electronic waste
such as phones, laptops and printers into
high-quality plastic filaments for 3D print-
ing, and to extract and reform metal alloys
from printed circuit boards, eliminating the
need for conventional smelting technologies.
Game-changing solutions
These scientifically developed microrecy-
cling processes can provide game-changing
solutions to produce materials from waste on
a small scale, and demonstrate that a period
of disruption is underway.
A key challenge is to harness the commer-
cial appetite and opportunity to create value
from the materials that end up in landfill
to ensure societies divert at scale the waste
that can be reformed into new, valued-added
materials, products and manufacturing feed-
stock. This involves actively working with
companies and organisations seeking to en-
shrine circular economy principles in their
operations so they can know who are the
other participants in these new supply chains,
understand where and how they fit in, and
what the opportunities are.
Seeking a win-win
The main difficulty is there are so many
stakeholders across all the supply chains that
there is no effective connectivity process for
circular economy participants. For example,
an organisation with a waste problem might
be able to send these materials to another
company which is able to use them in its op-
erations, but there is no awareness of this win-
win solution within local economies.
Another challenge is the need to encour-
age designers and producers of products,
packaging and applicable services to ‘build in’
from the very beginning of the product lifecy-
cle a consideration for how all of the materials
used will become part of the circular economy
when an end-user has no further need for the
product and treats it as waste.
Silver lining
China’s National Sword policy banning
other countries from sending their waste to
that country is being replicated across Asia,
and the silver lining in this development
has been to cause an acceleration of positive
reform around waste and recycling policy
among many national, state and local gov-
ernments.
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