From simple beginnings

While studying the Bachelor of Science: Astrobiology at Federation University and gaining full time employment as their Admission, Retention and Success Officer. Unfortunately I suffered a heart attack at age 30. After being rushed to hospital and having tests done to find the cause of the heart attack, I spent the next 12 days in hospital with time to re-evaluate my life and what I wanted to do. At the time my wife was heavily pregnant with our second child, and our first child was only 2 years of age, I knew I wanted to do something for them, for their world.  

After recovering from my first heart attack and being diagnosed with the rare heart condition “Brugada Syndrome” my life expectancy dramatically took a hit, with the average life span being 40 years of age if untreated. I knew time was against me and I knew I needed to start right away.   

Having a good understanding of chemistry from my studies and having followed the non-for-profit “Precious Plastics” based out of Netherlands, I decided that I wanted to do my part and help fight this single use plastic problem the world is facing.   

Knowing that a single use plastic milk lids could be recycled into a brand-new practical product I began doing research into what was needed to begin this journey. I started with a $20 Kmart Sandwich press to make my first recycled plastic sheet, after having my first “eureka” moment I knew this path was for me.  

Follow your passions

I decided to quit my 9-5 secure job in December 2020 and commit the rest of my life to making this dream a reality. After doing weeks of research, I knew I needed to work out the following; 

• What plastic I was going to use 
• Where I was going to source this plastic from 
• What products I was going to make 
• How was I going to make these products  

I knew that I wanted to use single use plastic milk lids, I heard about a charity called “Lids4Kids Australia” who collected all types of single use plastic lids, bread tags and other hard to recycle items. After reaching out to them I found that they had a very large continual stock of single use plastic waste but nowhere to take it. I asked if I could partner with their charity and purchase their #4 LDPE lids for my products.  

After running some successfully test using their LDPE lids, I was able to move onto my next 2 questions – what products I was going to make, and how I was going to make them. 

Shred, Heat, SQuish, repeat

Relying on the knowledge pool from the Precious Plastic Community I decided that the injection machine would be the most versatile to begin with as it allowed me to make the largest variety of products. 

I purchased a starting pack of 10 molds from the Precious Plastic website which included; 

• Keyrings shapes – Turtle, shark, whale and dolphin 
• 2 combs – large and small 
• Phone stand 
• Earring shapes – diamonds, feathers, teardrops and lightning bolts 
• Hexagon coaster 

Once we started making these products we really took off, from here we then started putting the profits back into the business and getting more and more molds,

There has been so much research and design that we have had to do in order to get to where we are now, most of the issues we have come across have been un-Googleable (that’s a word right). However every time we failed we learnt from it, we adapted and grew and after many late nights, burnt finger tips and frustrating problems we made it.  

As of today we can make just over 50 different products from recycled plastic waste. Some of our most popular products are our recycled plastic pens, USB flash drives and 20cm3 boxes.   

This is only the start of what we can do and create and with sunglasses and notebooks being the next products that we are bringing to life we look forward to the future and showing the world what can be done with what so many people call waste.