Professor Veena Sahajwalla is obsessed with waste. She keeps a collection of rubbish in her house, her car is filled with garbage, she picks her way through her family rubbish bins before they get out the door - but why?
Known as the Waste Queen, Professor Veena Sahajwalla is a revolutionary inventor who sees the enormous potential in everyday waste.
Waste is really one of those untapped resources just waiting to be harnessed.
Waste can no longer be packed off and sent somewhere overseas to be dealt with.
Professor Sahajwalla's innovative thinking has led to her invention of 'green ceramics' - a product made from glass and second-hand textiles, set to revolutionise the way we furnish our homes.
Instead of sourcing marble from mountains in Italy, people can use these eco-friendly 'green ceramics' to tile bathrooms and kitchens.
Professor Sahajwalla has a track record for solving problems. 20 years ago, she invented a way to extract carbon from old tyres to go into the steelmaking process to replace coke and coal. Millions of old tyres have since been diverted from landfill thanks to her.
Every year tonnes of clothes get thrown away, along with glass. Green ceramics has a 'designer-type' look to them - made in a machine called a 'micro factory', it can be used to create the tiles outside of the lab environment.
We are reimaging what manufacturing could look like in the future.
After years of pitching her idea, construction giant Mirvac, saw the potential in green ceramics. The building and construction industry contributes to 60 percent of waste in Australia which equates to 41 million tonnes a year.
"We needed to come up with a sustainability initiative for a particular project," explained Natasha Ryko, National residential marketing director of Mirvac.
"We have never seen anything like what Veena has been doing, it is really pioneering. We were just blown away," expressed Mirvac CEO and managing director Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz.
