“It has been years in the making with many ups and downs, and now seeing the team at Renew IT and SMaRT operating the Filament Microfactorie and making it work really makes you step back and smile,” Sahajwalla said.

SMaRT’s Head of Microfactories, Anirban Ghose, said old office equipment was disassembled to find the “right plastic to go after”, which was then fed into the “microfactory”.

“That plastic gets thermally transformed through controlled heat and cooling, and it’s finally spooled and can get fed into a 3D printer at the end of the process,” he said.

It sounds deceptively simple, but the process of transforming a material regarded as waste into a high-quality product for 3D printing requires a strong foundation of science and engineering.

“In many cases, when people think about plastic, it’s just this kind of one single material,” Sahajwalla said. “But there are so many different versions of plastic.”

Her challenge was working out a way to safely transform the plastic from obsolete computers and printers into a material that could be remanufactured in a commercially viable way.

An early version of the technology produced material that was turned into a pair of spectacles gifted to the Indian leader Narendra Modi by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

“We were able to show that our technology was fit for purpose,” Sahajwalla said.

The development of the microfactory follows the collapse of the REDcycle scheme that led to 400 tonnes of soft plastic being sent to landfill, impacting consumer confidence.

Sahajwalla said the invention had the potential to restore public faith in recycling and reduce landfill.

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3D printing has previously been mostly reliant on virgin plastics.

“Filament is almost entirely imported to Australia, so being able to locally make it from used plastics also reduces the environmental impacts from global freight,” Sahajwalla said.

Lancaster said it could also help organisations lower emissions and bring manufacturing to Australia.

“If 3D printing feedstock can be competitively produced by recycling plastic, we shouldn’t be producing it with virgin materials,” he said.

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