Australians, on average, use 130kg of plastic per person each year and only 12% of that is recycled.
Co-founders and wife-husband team Lesley and Colin Van Staveren had been in plastics for many years when they decided to look at the current issues around plastic recycling. In particular, the lack of recycling regionally in far north Queensland.
“Most people don’t know that everything is sent away to be processed and then we buy it back in finished products. That set us on the exploration into how we could establish a recycling facility ourselves,” Lesley says.
“But as we moved forward, we realised it was more realistic to have an end market product first, otherwise we’d just be collecting and stockpiling plastic.
“We did explore getting larger scale funding, amounting to around $4 million to create a recycling facility, however we needed to demonstrate something tangible first.”
This is when they shifted their approach and started refining a product that could easily be used across many applications.
“My husband Col has around 30 years of experience in plastics and he came up with the design of the ReGenWall panels as a first port of call,” Lesley says.
“This is when ReGen Plastics was born, with the goal to create a more sustainable solution to excess plastics. We can then help others to understand the difference between low-grade plastic that can’t be recycled and the plastics that can be utilised as a resource.”
The main problem ReGen Plastics aims to solve is around the lack of recycling plants presently in operation in north Queensland.
“Plastic waste is currently being sorted and freighted to facilities in south Queensland before being processed and returned back up to us,” Lesley says.
“The costs incurred and emissions generated could be reduced or eliminated.
“If we can grow the recycling infrastructure, we can reduce plastic wastage, generate employment opportunities in north Queensland, encourage environmental sustainability, reduce unnecessary freight costs by producing usable, long-lasting and environmentally friendly products and reduce the cost and carbon footprint associated with the transport of goods and waste.”
ReGen Plastics has been able to develop an innovative product using 100% recycled plastic that will compete with cladding and structural items for the construction industry.
“We are also educating the market on high-value, long-term plastics that can continue to be captured and then either remanufactured or reused in another use,” Lesley says.
“This also leads us to being able to educate the market on the different types of plastic. For example, we only use one type of plastic in what we produce, we use the number two on the plastics symbol, which is high-density polyethylene, things like milk bottles and vitamin containers.
“By doing this, we know how the material will perform. If you use different types of plastic and try to merge them into one, you can never guarantee how it is going to react to different temperatures and extremities. This means we know how our plastics will perform.”
There comes another challenge in the material itself that Regen Plastics uses.
“It is challenging to indicate plastics value as a resource,” Lesley says.
“There are also barriers of distance, so working to solve those and create more of a circular economy is a big goal of ours.
“We want to catch the plastic up here and continue to create opportunities, products and a whole new industry.”
There have been many highlights along the way.
“Col and I have put everything, our whole hearts and souls, into this project and being able to see big wins has been great,” Lesley says.
“A massive highlight for us was in gaining a 50% match dollar for dollar funding from the Australian Government in the Regional Jobs and Investments Package.
“Another big milestone was having the product structurally tested, so now it has got all of the mechanical strength it needs. This is important as a huge barrier within the recycling industry is the standards of the products themselves.”
The ReGen Plastics team have also seen challenges.
As Lesley mentioned above, a big one is through educating people on the recycling situation in far north Queensland
“It is so commonly thought that there is recycling up here and I think that is around the widely spread terminology. People think they are sending their plastics to the local facility to be recycled, but that local facility is further afield than they think. It is another misconception that north Queensland doesn’t have the volume of plastics to do what we are doing, but that just isn’t the case,” Lesley says.
“There have also been barriers in doing research and being able to do that out on the ground, to speak to multiple industries when we are so remote.
“Like most startups, a big challenge was in finding the funding. We knocked on so many doors and also had to invest directly ourselves, so when we did manage to secure some funding it was such a win.
“We have also experienced delays with equipment arrival coming several months late, which impacted our whole manufacturing line and all the calculations and operations we had based on our timeline.
“And finally, commissioning a whole team who are working on the extrusion process and testing the product itself was a big job. There are 48 different settings on our line of machinery for things such as temperature and water pressure. Every single change you make with these settings will have a different outcome and will impact factors like texture and structure. We need to get all those settings so precise.”
However, Lesley and the ReGen Plastics team have just seen these challenges are great lessons to learn from.
“We started with our first business, FNQ Plastics, which is plastic fabrication, and getting the funding was actually what allowed us to establish ReGen Plastics,” Lesley says.
“These businesses do very different things. As mentioned FNQ Plastics is about fabrication, whereas ReGen Plastics is 100% recycled manufacturing.
“The funding allowed us to invest in the equipment, labour and material we needed to get this new venture going.”
Looking forward, the ReGen Plastics team is creating their market, creating demand and getting their product out there to be used.
“We have all the ticks we need and now we can really get it going,” Lesley says.
“We really want to have a full circular economy.”
