Veena sahajwalla biography definition

INTRODUCTION: Hi, I’m Craig Reucassel from the War on Waste. Over the past few years I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the problems surrounding waste. But tonight I’d like to introduce you to a woman whose only interest is in finding solutions. Engineer Veena Sahajwalla is a superstar in the world of recycling. Now she’s unveiling her latest brainchild, an invention that transforms unwanted household waste into designer products for our homes. It’s a big, bold idea, but will it work outside the lab?

KYLIE WALKER, KYLIE WALKER, CEO AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING: Veena is known as the "Waste Queen". She is transforming the way in which we manage waste, not just in Australia, but across the world.

PROFESSOR VEENA SAHAJWALLA: I see waste as an opportunity. To me waste is really one of those untapped resources, just waiting to be harnessed. Here in Australia, we are sitting at that tipping point. We have seen the export bans on waste come about and we can no longer send it somewhere overseas and it then becomes somebody else’s problem. We have to solve it, we have to do something about it.

RAMA MAHAPATRA, VEENA’S HUSBAND: Veena is absolutely obsessed with waste.

(Veena at landfill)

Veena: All of this polypropylene easy to be remanufactured right here in Australia, this should not be wasted.

RAMA MAHAPATRA, VEENA’S HUSBAND: And you can see from some of the work she’s done, she completely steps out of the box to solve the problem.

KYLIE WALKER, KYLIE WALKER, CEO AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING: Twenty years ago she invented a way to recycle tyres into the steel making process and saved millions of tyres from going into landfill. Now she's invented a new product that combines the textiles from old clothes with glass and turns them into a product for the building industry.

ANIRBAN GHOSE, MICRO FACTORY ENGINEER, UNSW: It’s a paradigm shift. We have had the Ind

Growing up in the circular economies of the bazaars of Mumbai, a young Veena Sahajwalla learned the importance of reusing waste instead of discarding it.

She later stepped into the world of science, bringing her intuition and a fresh perspective.

The Professor's most notable invention to date is "green steel", which uses discarded tyres instead of coal.

In this episode of Seen, Yumi Stynes chats to inventor and scientist Veena Sahajwalla about the woman who first inspired her and the others she’s brought along on her journey from so-called “mad scientist” to award-winning inventor.

Hosted by Yumi Stynes, Seen is a podcast series about cultural creatives rising to excellence despite arriving in a role-model vacuum. Hear from trailblazers like writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied, musican Ray Ahn, activist Hannah Diviney and more about the transformative moments they felt seen.

Host: Yumi Stynes

Created by: Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn

Executive Producer: Kate Montague

Producers: Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn and Cassandra Steeth

Junior Producer: Alison Zhuang

Sound design and mix: Ravi Gupta

Theme music: Yeo

Art: Evi-O Studios

SBS team: Caroline Gates, Max Gosford, Joel Supple

Special thanks to Samane Maroufi

Transcript

(Theme music building)

Yumi Stynes: To have a mentor… To have somebody guiding you through life and your career is really fortunate… But to be guided by someone you love, well, that is wildly lucky.

Veena Sahajwalla: And I'd be just in total awe of her kn

This year has thrown some curveballs our way, but it has also required us to pause, think about what we want our future to look like and reset accordingly. For National Recycling Week this year we are looking ahead to our Future Beyond the Bin, where materials remain in circulation and what was once seen as waste is understood as resource. To that end, we are asking Australians from all walks of life to share their inspiring stories of how they #gobeyondthebin at work, home, school and in the community.

Scientist, engineer and inventor Professor Veena Sahajwalla is a superstar in the waste and recycling industry. Her long list of achievements includes: launching the world’s first e-waste microfactory; developing a ‘material microsurgery’ technique to extract valuable materials from end-of-life electronics; and inventing a ‘green steel’ technology that replaces some of the coke used in the steelmaking process with defunct tyres. Veena is the founding Director of the University of New South Wales’ Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) and heads up the university’s new ARC Industrial Transformation Hub for Microrecycling of Battery and Consumer Wastes.  

It goes without saying that Veena is a very busy woman. But after talking to her for just a few minutes, it’s easy to see how she expertly juggles it all. Veena’s brilliance is obvious, she speaks rapidly, ideas bursting out of her, and jumps from one topic to the next, making astute connections with ease. What is perhaps even more noticeable than Veena’s intelligence is her clear passion for recycling science. 

“I am a hoarder,” she admits. “There’s so many different things I've got sitting downstairs ... and I’m like, ‘No! My goodness, we can't throw this away’.”  

“In my mind [I] picture all the solutions that we could be developing and that whole strategy of reform