Prof Sahajwalla Is Turning Old Clothes Into Building Tiles, And Saving Our Planet From Garbage

We've previously talked about Prof Veena Sahajwalla, an IIT-trained Indo-Australian scientist who developed the first micro factory to repurpose e-waste into commercial products.

Now, her team is scaling up their plan, by turning trash into building materials.

Sahajwalla's earlier project had involved turning garbage into value-added products like decorative glass panels, acoustic panels with waste cloth and high-grade wood-plastic panels.

Now, researchers at UNSW Sydney's Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) have developed a process to turn old clothing and textiles into high-quality building products like flat panels.

Also Read: This Ex-IIT Indian Scientist Has Pioneered The World's 1st Micro Factory To Tackle Our E-Waste

According to the team's description, these materials can have a wood veneer or a ceramic-style finish and were lab tested to ensure fire and water resistance, as well as flexibility, and acoustic and load-bearing capabilities. All that's left is for them to get formal regulatory assessment.

"These newly published results of the wonderful products developed from waste come as an effort to find ways to reduce waste and address our unsustainable landfill problems, which all countries are experiencing," Sahajwalla said.

"It could be said that consumers and the fashion industry have a lot to answer for, given that clothing is now one of the biggest consumer waste streams, with 92 million tons estimated to be thrown out a year globally. The clothing and textiles industry is the second most polluting sector in the world, accounting for 10% of the world's total carbon emissions." That's why she believes efforts to lower the industry's waste output could go a long way.

Also Read: China's Raising Billions of Cockroaches For Waste Disposal, Instead Of Burning It And Polluting

Shajwalla says that, seeing as our population growth rate is ever-increasing, the earth's resources need to be preserved and re-used rather than put in landfill or incinerated. "Rather than export our rubbish overseas and to create more land fill, green microfactory technology has the potential to enable small- and large-scale creation of newly manufactured products instead."

It's not just that they're getting rid of a chunk of waste output, the team's research also has other benefits. For one thing, despite seeming to be high-performance materials, producing them doesn't require expensive machinery. Additionally, it also saves on having to mine for resources.

Their biggest roadblock, according to Sahajwalla, is getting the technology into the market, especially without government incentives to make it more attractive. She does hope though that, even if industry change is slow, it's coming.