Illegal dumping of household waste continues to be a constant and growing issue, in particular the dumping of large, bulky items like mattresses. Kandui Technologies is an Australian company that commenced operations managing a recycling social enterprise for a leading Australian charity.
Founder and Managing Director Andrew Douglas wanted to address a rising landfill problem.
“I could see that waste items like mattresses contained all kinds of components that had potential value, including steel, timber and textile. I knew that these materials could be individually repurposed, and I was looking for an affordable and sustainable solution.”
– Founder and Managing Director Andrew Douglas
When he began researching and trialling various recycling processes, he came across the work of ARC Laureate Professor Veena Sahajwalla and her colleagues from the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) at UNSW.
Once Kandui presented the mattress textile problem, a valuable partnership was formed. The SMaRT Centre team soon began working with Kandui on developing a solution to the problematic textile.
“Our proven success in transforming other problematic waste into valuable source material for engineered products paved the way for our collaboration with Kandui,” said ARC Laureate Professor Sahajwalla.
“Using science and our revolutionary MICROfactorie™ waste-to-product technology, our engineers were able to develop a new generation of high performance, non-toxic, green ceramic tiles that can be used in buildings, as furniture and for various architectural and decorative applications.”
Meeting market demand
“What is especially exciting is that these Green Ceramics we have created from textile waste found in mattresses are providing a use for products that were not previously used in recycling due to contamination and material complexity,” she added.
With support from the Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy, Green Ceramics are increasingly used in numerous industrial and community settings, including kitchen benches, tabletops, floor tiles, furnishings and many other applications. Additional waste streams being explored for use in circular ceramic products include waste wood, glass and plastics.
“This safe and sustainable alternative to harmful engineered stone, widely used in common kitchen benchtops and known to cause silicosis among workers, will be even more important in future as the building and retail industry look to better quality products that will have a lower sovereign risk in their supply chains.”
– ARC Laureate Professor Sahajwalla
In 2021, Kandui became the first MICROfactorie™ licensee and exclusive manufacturer of Green Ceramics for the built environment, opening the first independently commercially operated Green Ceramics MICROfactorieTM at a site in Cootamundra in regional NSW and taking advantage of the waste resources available on site.
The company now also operates both a Green Ceramics MICROfactorieTM module and Plastics (EcoFilament) MICROfactorieTM module in Nowra on the South Coast of NSW with support from Shoalhaven City Council.
In partnership with the UNSW SMaRT Centre, Kandui receives orders from right around Australia, offering a safe and sustainable building material.
Learn more about SMART@UNSW and Kandui Technologies.
