Helping give waste plastic a new life

In 2016 Darren Lomman heard a TV advert stating that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Shocked by this statement he started researching plastic and was disgusted to discover that non of the plastic being collected in the yellow top bins in Western Australia was being reprocessed into new plastic. Instead, it was being baled up and sent to countries in SE Asia such as China who didn’t exactly have the best environmental records with scientists estimating that 90% of the plastic in our oceans was coming from just 10 rivers in the world, with 8 of them flowing through China… the place we were sending our plastic.

Knowing we had to do better for our future generations, Darren began using his engineering background to research plastic reprocessing. With a starting idea of turning waste PET bottles into 3D printer filament, in 2017, Darren launched a crowdfunding campaign and established a social enterprise called Greenbatch Pty Ltd

Over the next couple of years lots happened:

• Darren and his cousin Kevin hand-built a shredder using the precious plastics open-source plans and began collecting bottles. It could process about 5kg worth of bottles an hour

• Quickly running out of bottles being rescued from his own recycling bin he launched a school recycling program with 5 pilot schools to help collect more bottles

• Quickly Darren’s garage was overflowing with bottles and had filled a shipping container and had run out of room.

• UWA generously offered Greenbatch a peppercorn lease on a workshop that wasn’t being used at the time.

• Greenbatch moved out of the home garage into a big workshop

• Through a grant from the WA Government we were able to purchase an industrial shredder that could shred 50kg/hr of bottles.. a big step up

With this new space and new shredding capacity, a call was put out to the public to bring their bottles to us that Saturday.

• This bring your bottles call to action become the genesis of our infamous open days on the first Sat of every month ever since so people could some see us first hand.

• A second-hand 3d printer filament line was purchased and a group of UWA students started R&D on turning the bottles into 3d printer filament.

• Greenbatch still had the capacity to shred more bottles and wanted to start educating more students so the schools program was expanded to 20 schools

• After 3 years of campaigning to the WA state government, we a small grant towards the purchase of a PET and HDPE flaking and shredding line… the very first reprocessing line of its kind in WA. It took our capacity from 50kg/hr to 500kg/hr

• The schools’ program expanded to over 100 schools

• A collection program was expanded to include events, hospitals, cafes, and a whole heap of other places that started collecting plastic for us.

• Following the leap from 50kg to 500kg per hour, planning started on the next leap.. 5000kg/hr.. this would be enough capacity to reprocess 100% of WA’s collected PET and HDPE

Along the way, we amazing a very strong social media following including 15,000 Facebook followers making us one of the strongest community voices in Australia. This was leveraged along the way many meetings were held with government ministers at all levels including local, state, and commonwealth.

• Thousands of hours of work went into this 5,000kg facility including engineering work, financial modeling, business plan development, and international research and study trips and visits to numerous equipment manufacturers globally.

• With the work complete a capital raising campaign targeting commercial and impact investors was launched to secure the $15M to build this plant, with numerous parties interested.

• The investment talks came to a grinding halt for a few months as COVID-19 rear its head and created a whole heap of global uncertainty.

• in Aug 2020 after 4 years of lobbying, the Australian Prime Minister announced $190 million dollars in funding as part of the National Recycling Modernisation Fund, which was being topped up by State Government and Private investors resulting in a total investment of almost $1 Billion to transform the industry.

• Greenbatch tendered for $15M of this funding to build and operate the PET and HDPE plant that it had been proposing to the government for a number of years.

• Unfortunately, the WA Government chose not to support Greenbatch with these funds and instead awarded funds to Cleanaway to build and operate a PET and HDPE reprocessing plant.

• With this decision, Greenbatch was left high and dry and unfortunately had to be wound up as it had no funds to continue.

• Ironically Cleanaway who was awarded significant portions of this government funding was one of the companies sending their plastic to China when this campaign started 5 years ago, so whilst was a sad day for Greenbatch, founder Darren Lomman, the hard-working team of staff and volunteers, the funders and donors, the 15,000 passionate social media supporters, 100,000+ students exposed through the 100+ schools, the silver lining is that the industry is now being transformed in a pretty major way

• The Prime Minister of Australia has introduced legislation that bans waste plastic being exported out of Australia

• The general public is much more conscious of their waste generation with a big focus on the reduction of their use in the first place.

• The Australian Packaging Covenant has set the target of 100% of packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025 and contain 30% recycled content in its formation.

• Hopefully, with this huge effort by Greenbatch, and many other campaigners across Australia and globally, we are on track for 2050 more FISH in the OCEAN than PLASTIC which wasn’t the forecast when this journey started in 2016

For further enquiries, Darren can be contacted at darrenlomman@gmail.com or 0413 866 221