UTS product design team is proud to be part of an innovative circular economy research project aiming to solve the challenge of reclaiming non-woven polypropylene.
NSW Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, Alister Henskens, announced $200,000 initial funding for the project – Achieving Circularity: Development of a sustainable and scalable model to recycle and reduce the cost of polypropylene waste in hospitals – under the state government's Circular Economy Challenge Program earlier this week.
At present in the NSW hospital system, many tonnes of polypropylene materials such as cubicle curtains and sterilisation wraps are either incinerated or sent to landfill. UTS will work as the lead university with multiple corporate, government and research partners on this transdiciplinary project to reclaim such materials.
In their own news of the project, CEO of Multigate, Ben Chen said: “We are delighted to be working with a like-minded, multi-disciplinary team including UTS, UNSW, 180 Waste Group, Allmould Plastics Group, The Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence and South-Western Sydney Local Health District to develop and pilot a scalable, cyclic hospital supply chain model for polypropylene.”
Thanks in part to many of these industry partners' contributions, additional funding will take the overall budget for the project to in excess of $700,000.
The Circular Economy Challenge Program is designed to foster innovation through the state’s world-leading researchers and organisations, remove barriers and build new sustainable supply chains that minimise or eliminate waste, and generate jobs and investment in new circular industries.
The forum was hosted by NSW Circular, a state government-funded body whose remit is to embed environment, economic and social goals into its work. CEO Lisa McLean said collaboration is the key to solving the big challenges of transitioning to a circular economy: “These research projects are proving there are new and better ways to reduce, recycle and reuse waste across many sectors - health, waste management, construction, infrastructure and finance.”
The UTS Integrated Product Design research (IPD-r) team is:
Other UTS staff involved in this project include Prof. Damien Giurco from Institute of Sustainable Futures and Ad.Prof. John Gertsakis from the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence.
Photo: National Cancer Institute on Unsplash