Victorian projects has seen a massive $1.6 million investment to develop products sourced from recycled plastic and glass.

Victorian projects has seen a massive $1.6 million investment to develop products sourced from recycled plastic and glass.

New Victorian projects that are Nine in number will receive a combined total of about $1.6 million in funding to invest in research and development trials that will be able to make use of  plastic,recycled glass, e-waste and paper.

This funding is the one of the latest announcement from our Development, Research and Demonstration grants program it will support innovative research to develop and test new uses of technologies for materials recovered from commercial recycling and Victorian household.

There are other projects also in progress that will be able to test new extraction technologies to improve the recovery of precious materials from e-waste such as solar batteries and solar panels.

This handsome funding is supposed to increase business and consumer confidence in the quality of recycled content in a variety of products, support the scaling up of existing or new products and ultimately keep valuable resources out of landfill.

Sustainability Interim Victoria’s CEO Carl Muller said, “This is all part of Victoria’s growing economy” He further added that we need proven recycled content markets and products for those products to make recycling viable. This will build market demand and confidence.”

The Funded project’s research findings will inform industry of the opportunities to use recovered materials in  infrastructure and manufacturing and that will support purchasing of products using recycled materials.”

There is an opportunity to develop strong local markets so the recovery of resources can be increased with recent shifts in international markets, like in China,.

The new life of recycling through funded projects:

The nine Solar panels funded projects will bring together government, industry and universities for innovative research collaborations for recycled content products and materials thus changing the face of the commercial market.

An amount of $200,000 will be received by The Australian Road Research Board  in collaboration with Brimbank City Council and VicRoads to trial recycled crushed glass in asphalt on local roads.

With an estimate around 250,000 or more tonnes of glass is recovered from business and households in Victoria each year. As road base has the potential to create viable markets for the vast amounts of glass collected in Victoria they use finely crushed glass, especially that which is not easily recycled back into other glass products and is low-value.

For evaluation of the use of recovered glass Swinburne University will receive $192,950, crushed concrete and plastics in the foundations of railway structures, in partnership with Melbourne Trains Metro, Rail Projects Victoria and Level Crossing Removal Project.

Currently, railway foundations are made of quarried virgin materials. This project has the potential to create a sustainable long-term market for recovered materials such as plastic and glass which are challenging to recycle and process locally at present.

The benefits of using recycled content materials and products for the environment are clear, including, reducing production of high energy products and reducing the need for resources such as concrete and curbing greenhouse gas emissions from production,” said Mr Mueller.

“Victoria is investing in a sustainable and strong circular economy that is environment, jobs and economy focused where using recycled content products and recovering resources is the norm.”