One of Australia's newest cutting-edge companies is setting up a research centre in Jerrabomberra, just on the NSW side of the ACT border.
Samsara Eco is a commercial spin-off from fundamental research done at the Australian National University. The result of that research was a new way to recycle discarded plastic at a lower cost than conventional ways, and with a much higher quality product emerging.
Accordingly, the new company's decision to locate near Queanbeyan takes some of the most exciting - and important - research being done anywhere to the New South Wales town.
The Samsara Eco complex will be part of the new "Poplars Innovation Precinct" at Jerrabomberra (near the Aldi, 7-Eleven, KFC, McDonalds and the new high school).
Samsara Eco's chemical process is different from conventional methods where, according to the company, plastic gets worse in quality each time it's recycled.
In contrast, the company says its method creates recycled plastic with no loss of quality. That means a plastic bottle, for example, can be recycled ad infinitum. In the jargon of the trade, the new process produces "virgin-grade plastics" each time.
Its process involves creating substances - enzymes - which "eat" discarded plastic. The enzyme breaks the plastic down into its most basic parts, and those core elements can then be put back together as renewed "virgin-grade plastics".
"With our process, the enzymes that we have engineered actually break plastic down all the way to the chemical building blocks that the plastics are made of. We can then take these chemical building blocks and use them to make virgin quality plastic again, with no compromise to the quality over an infinite number of cycles, which is where the term 'infinite plastic recycling' comes from," Vanessa Vongsouthi, one of the founders of Samsara, and an ANU researcher, told the Digital Nation website.
"Traditional recycling or mechanical recycling is really a melting and reforming process," she said. That means that recycled plastic has to have new plastic added to it so that quality is kept high - and new plastic needs carbon in the manufacture.
One of the advantages, the company says, is that a discarded bottle doesn't have to be separated from the bottle-top or from food contamination. The enzymes still break the plastic components down.
"Traditional recycling or mechanical recycling is really a melting and reforming process," Vongsouthi said.
The new company was formed two-and-a-half years ago to commercialise the ANU's basic research. The new centre near Queanbeyan will do the research for the commercial side. Basic, fundamental research will still be done at the ANU, according to the company's chief executive Paul Riley.
He said that "millions" had been paid to the ANU for the taxpayer-funded research done there. The ANU was a shareholder in the new company.
As well as the ANU and the founders, venture capitalists had also put up money. How big a stake each of the parties has is not being disclosed.
