The announcement late last year that the Australian Government endorsed the Solving Plastic Waste Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) bid offers the Australian packaging and recycling industries a truly unique opportunity to harness academia to develop transformational circular economy solutions.
CRC programmes are university-guided projects that engage with industry and government and the resources available to this particular project, led by Griffith University, are worth $140.6 million.
Whilst this is exciting news, I feel well-placed to offer a cautionary perspective regarding how impactful this CRC bid will be. My working life has been almost equally split between academia and industry, and this has given me an excellent overview of the very real risk of missed opportunities these initiatives, headed by educational institutions, incur.
Industry must take the lead
Without a doubt, the close collaboration between academia and industry does have the potential to fast-track innovative solutions tailored to the industry’s very specific roadblocks. But this will only really occur if the project is industry led.
More times than not, it has been the other way around. Universities receive the funding and then go to industry with a specific research topic in mind. Whilst the research in question is always interesting, often even groundbreaking, it does not automatically follow that it will solve any of the industry’s biggest challenges.
In fact, in many instances, it may totally miss the crux of a big issue, such as the recent failure of the Recycle program to develop new and high-value markets for post-consumer films. While this might not sound like blue sky research, it represented a looming problem that needed a prompt and economic solution.
Re-framing Australia’s waste eco-system
And it is this disconnect that must urgently be addressed because, as I see it, this is a golden opportunity for Australia to re-frame how it addresses plastic waste. As an Australian who has lived and worked for many years in the UK and Europe, I have had unprecedented insights into how individual countries harness these types of grants.
Certainly the situation whereby universities drive the research topic is a global phenomenon, however I am particularly keen to see Australia grasp this opportunity given the size of the country. This truly is the perfect opportunity to explore and roll out some unique ways of solving plastic waste, starting with addressing the way we design packaging.
Simplifying packaging and designing it to be easily recycled without compromise is the most direct route to boost recycling. One notable example that missed the bus was a new milk bottle cap for HDPE milk bottles, that switched from coloured to natural (good move), yet was still made from PP instead of HDPE (not a good move).
Notoriously silo-inclined, the business world is not known for harnessing academia’s full potential. I have seen it happen time and again, and despite best intentions, it is easy for both parties to drift back into their own well-worn modus operandi. Both parties need to understand how they each operate, set a clear common goal and assist in the rapid development of solutions needed by businesses, government and community.