Month: July 2025
What’s On June
Supplier Webinar 8 – NZ Edition
Suppliers in the spotlight is a bi-monthly supplier showcase hosted by the IS Council, with each edition featuring unique suppliers. This series highlights businesses that provide innovative products and services to support sustainability goals across Australia and New Zealand. Andrea Makris, Head of Engagement at the Infrastructure Sustainability Council, opened the session, setting the stage for an exciting showcase of six businesses committed to driving sustainability in infrastructure.
What to Expect:
- Introduction to six businesses offering sustainable solutions.
- Insights into how their products and services can support your sustainability goals.
- Opportunities to connect with industry leaders and explore innovations in infrastructure.
In this webinar, we heard from –
- Ben Redwood of Mutu
- Tom Rimmington of Vital Chemical
- Maretha Smit of Te Uru Tāngata Centre for Workplace Inclusion
- Paul Curtis of SiteHive
- Israel MacDonald of Pacific Steel
- Tony Costa of SCAADA Environmental and Sustainability
Presentation – here
Webinar recording – here
S2E3 – What is Circular Economy w/ Nicole Garofano
Description:
Dr Nicole Garofano is an Australian leading expert in circular economy systems and sustainable materials management, recognised for her deep expertise in plastic waste and packaging value chains. She is currently the Head of Circular Economy Development at Planet Ark Environmental Foundation, where she works across industry, government, and research sectors to support the acceleration towards Australia’s transition to a circular economy. Nicole has over 20 years of experience in environmental education, waste management, international development, policy design, and circular economy. She holds a PhD from the University of Queensland focused on plastic packaging in island developing states. She has been a key voice in shaping national conversations on circular economy, and her work has advocated for systems-level change to improve design that embraces resource sufficiency and circular solutions.
S2E2 – Circular Innovation w/ Veena Sahajwalla
Description:
This week on Infrastructure Connections we’re talking to Veena Sahajwalla about micro recycling and the circular economy.
The takeaways from this episode give us new ways to look at circularity:
1. Companies are starting to re-think their identity. “We’re not a waste company, we’re a supply company.” We supply resources as feedstock, resources that used to be waste for someone else.
2. “If we zoom down to the micro recycling level, every material is important.” If it was an important component of the original product, it will be important to recover for the next product.
3. “Sustainability is a normal way to think. The more we can make it a norm, the more we can think of practical ways in which sustainability comes to life.”
4. We need to think of sustainability and recycling on a local level, specific to the local industries who need it, and make that recovery a priority. This is compared to the current method of sending our waste overseas and then buying it back as sources.
Veena puts the re in resource.
Veena is the Director of SMaRT Centre (Sustainable Materials Research & Technology) and Associate Dean (Strategic Industry Relations) faculty of Science, University of New South Wales. Her research interests include sustainability of materials and processes with emphasis on environmental benefits. She invented an environmentally friendly process for recycling plastics and rubber tyres in electric arc furnace steelmaking. She is an international award winning engineer. In 2012 she was named Overall Winner of the Australian Innovation Challenge Award. She was awarded the 2012 Banksia Award, the GE Eco Innovation Award and the 2005 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research.