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Sustainable Infrastructure Systems develop a prefabricated structural building panel solution made with recycled plastic.
Australian technological innovation may soon turn the tide on the country’s soft plastics waste dilemma, with the introduction of prefabricated structural building panels fabricated from recycled materials. Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (SIS), a South Australian composites manufacturer, has crafted these panels from glass fibre-reinforced polymer (GFRP) and repurposed soft plastics. (main pic: Nick Wotton, Managing Director of SIS.)
The initiative is a response to the suspension of soft plastics recycling following the closure of the REDcycle scheme’s partner facility, Close the Loop, due to a fire in 2022. Since then, vast amounts of soft plastics have been disposed of in landfills. However, SIS’s development presents a scalable solution to this crisis.
The prefabricated structural building panels, believed by SIS to be a global first, include a blend of unprocessed, mixed, post-consumer soft plastics with proprietary materials, resulting in lightweight, yet robust and high-performing structural panels.Nick Wotton, Managing Director of SIS, underscored the significance of this breakthrough, stating, “There are potentially limitless applications for our panels in transforming everyday rubbish into structures with huge benefits for our clients, communities, and the environment.”
Since its inception in 2012, SIS has been manufacturing and distributing eco-friendly and recycled products globally. The company’s products serve a diverse range of industries, from civil infrastructure and building construction to transportation, logistics, aquaculture, and more. Wotton expressed the company’s vision, “Our structural panels provide clients with a genuine reduction in embodied carbon and will be increasingly attractive as more infrastructure contracts are requiring companies to demonstrate how they will reduce embodied carbon across projects.”
According to company sources, their prefabricated structural building panels offer comparable structural strength to concrete while significantly reducing embodied carbon, potentially lasting over a century. This solution is the fruit of four years of research and development, in collaboration with The University of Adelaide, at SIS’s Wingfield factory.
The first real-world application of these innovative panels has been demonstrated in the construction of a pedestrian bridge in Newenham, Mount Barker SA. This bridge, a partnership project with Mount Barker District Council and Burke Urban, incorporates 70% soft plastics – the equivalent of 29 standard recycling bins filled with items like shopping bags and food wrappers.
