Australia – The Victorian Government is minimizing waste by designing and developing new ways to use recycled materials into daily items.
Lily D’Ambrosio, Minister of Energy, Environment, and Climate Change, announced more than $2.1 million in funding for projects that explore new uses for recycled materials.
The Recycling Victoria Research and Development Fund will provide $2.1 million to ten research institutes to develop innovative products that can utilise recycled materials such as plastic, paper, glass, cardboard, and tyres.
The initiatives will together fund nine new dedicated research positions and partially fund six existing positions, allowing industry to collaborate with researchers to explore new ways to use recycled materials in products and infrastructure like as roads and residential housing.
In collaboration with Yarra Trams, Integrated Recycling, and Advanced Circular Polymer, Monash University’s Institute of Railway Technology was funded $300,000 to research methods for turning recycled plastic into components for the construction of tram stations.
Swinburne University of Technology and its business partners Polyfoam and Frubber have received a $200,000 grant to develop a new technology for utilising recycled expanded polystyrene and tyres in residential home construction.
Minister D’Ambrosio also announced that the Recycling Victoria Innovation Fund now has $750,000 available to encourage ideas that reduce waste in the manufacturing process, with grants of up to $250,000 available.
Grants will be awarded to projects that reduce waste during the production, distribution, and use phases of a resource’s lifecycle, such as redesigning a product to be more durable, repairable, and recyclable.
These expenditures are part of the government’s $515 million investment to reform the trash and recycling sector, generate jobs, and develop a more sustainable economy.
