Nearly 500kg of soft plastics have been saved from the dump, thanks to a South Australian initiative unveiled this week in the Adelaide Hills.
Schaefer Crossing – a world-first South Australian manufactured pedestrian bridge at Newenham Estate in Mount Barker – has been made from soft plastics.
In conjunction with an Adelaide University PhD researcher, Sustainable Infrastructure Systems in Wingfield have spent the past four years devising a way to re-purpose the material that is notoriously hard to recycle.
Yesterday the team unveiled the bridge, along with their project partners Mount Barker District Council and developer Burke Urban.
In 2019, Mount Barker District Council was among nine councils to sign a Memorandum of Understanding as part of the LGA’s Circular Procurement Pilot Project, to prioritise buying products made from recycled materials.
The bridge has been named Schaefer Crossing honouring four generations of the Schaefer family who have lived and worked in the area since the early 1900s.
Managing Director of Sustainable Infrastructure Systems Nick Wotton has told ARN’s Chris Guscott that it has been a real passion project.
“We need to be using Australian post-consumer soft plastic, that’s where the challenge is. We’ve developed something that’s pretty special and we believe can be used across the world,” he said in an ARN Radio interview with Chris Guscott.
Hear the interview via the audio play window below:
