Adelaide vascular surgeon Abe Chandra is dissecting potential solutions to reduce waste.
He has just launched a plastic remanufacturing site under his startup company SABRN in the seafood capital of Australia, Port Lincoln.
Dr Chandra, the heart behind the idea, said he did it for the future generation.
"I've got two young children, and I wanted to try and give them as much of a chance as possible to learn.
"That had motivated me to do something. Inaction wasn't an option for me.
"We're in the middle of a climate crisis, and we need to look at addressing it somehow."
His aim? Giving new life to plastics, particularly waste that comes from the fishing industry.
"We're trying to build a micro-ecosystem that takes upstream manufacturing and converting end-of-life plastics into granules," Dr Chandra said.
"Then taking these granules to do downstream manufacturing converting it via a series of technologies."
The facility is in the trial-and-error phase but has already successfully recycled rope, oyster baskets and buoys into reusable plastic sheets.
The fishing and aquaculture industries have amassed more than 1,500 tonnes of waste since 2009 in the council waste resource centre alone.
For years, the City Council of Port Lincoln has struggled to find local solutions to storing the end-of-life plastic materials at the dump, otherwise known as "net mountain".
Mayor of Port Lincoln, Brad Flaherty told the ABC they did not currently have a recyclable solution for the waste.
"We didn't know how to, so the opportunity here for this type of manufacturing to come in and translate waste to a useful product is exciting and interesting," he said.
Dr Chandra hopes to repurpose the product into useful commodities such as placemats, canvas or 3D printer filament.
He wanted to give regional hubs the opportunity to have more autonomy over their own resources.
"The biggest issue is everything is centralised," Dr Chandra said.
"If you wanted to do recycling, then you have to take it to Adelaide. We're trying to decentralise that concept.
"Having a region-based remanufacturing capacity means the community has autonomy over it."
The facility hopes to recycle 100,000 kilograms of plastic per annum, with room to expand, and if successful, it will replicate the model in Whyalla and Mount Gambier.
Fishing industry backs initiative
Dr Chandra said fishing and aquaculture industries must take responsibility for the waste produced.
"There needs to be accountability," he said.
"If you've got an organisation that is using a type of material that has an end life that is going to be detrimental to the environment, they need to be accountable for that."
Sardine SA executive officer Claire Webber said recycling had been a challenge in the past.
"We've actually had portable granulators that have come from places like the Murray lands," she said.
"They bring their granulator on the truck, and we put all the oyster baskets and poly pipes from aquaculture through that, turn it into granules. It then has to be transported."
She said having a local facility would be a game changer.
The region's fishing and aquaculture industry leaders attended the opening event of SABRN's plastic re-manufacturing facility.
Ms Webber said she was confident the majority of the industry would jump on board including the sardine, tuna and prawn associations.
"I would actually say that most people who have waste material know and understand their responsibility to recycle just like we do in our own homes," she said.
"We'd provide samples [to the company] then they can determine what they can then make from the nets that we use, and they can give us some instruction on how we need to handle our nets when they reach their end of life."
Inspiring students to turn green
Port Lincoln High School has also partnered with SABRN to collect and repurpose plastics.
Once enough plastic is collected at the school, SABRN will turn it into sheets that design and technology students will then repurpose into their own masterpieces.
Shaun Thomas, a design teacher at Port Lincoln High School, is excited to teach his students more about how plastic can be turned into a useful commodity.
He will be guiding them through the endless possibilities of what can be made.
"It's up to our students to use their imagination to come up with sorts of things they can design," he said.
"They can create puzzles and games. They can create jewellery, coasters and placemats, really only limited by their imagination."
Nelly Cane, 17, who is in Year 12, said she was delighted to have attended the opening to see the factory.
"I was shocked," she said.
"I have always dreamed that there's some way in Port Lincoln that we can recycle in a full circle.
"I was amazed at the opportunities they showed us, how we can recycle aquaculture and agriculture waste."
Editor's note 18/08/2022: This story has been amended to remove a reference to Dr Chandra operating on hearts, which was incorrect.
