More than 25 years ago, Louise Hardman made a vow to do everything she could to rid the ocean of plastic.

Plastic Collective and its project partners have received the Australian Government Collaborative Research Centre grant, which will help fund the roll-out of an upgraded version of Ms Hardman's Shruder recycling machine, which can process hard and soft single-use plastics into saleable raw materials or new products.

"The entire plan was to provide these recycling units to every single island in the Asia-Pacific region," Ms Hardman said.

"There's over 4,000 islands out of 55,000 that are inhabited in this region, and if you add up the amount of people on those islands, there's 370 million people.

"Plus there's the remote and regional communities within Australia that need support."

Inspired to help

The death of a green turtle was the inspiration for the first Shruder machine.

Ms Hardman had been volunteering in a marine tagging program on the NSW coast when she discovered a turtle that had become sick after eating plastics that had settled into seagrass beds.

The turtle died three days later.

"We did an autopsy on it and found that 30 different types of plastic were stuck in its entire digestive system, and that's what it died from — it actually starved to death.

"That was quite shocking for me, because it was in a national park, in a marine park, a place you would think would be the last place where there would be plastic pollution, but all the stuff got caught in the seagrass and I realised that this turtle couldn't escape it, and that's basically why I started the Plastic Collective."

In the years following, Ms Hardman developed her Shruder recycling machine, which takes plastic waste, shreds it into a raw product that can be sold to companies that manufacture recycled plastic products, or extruded into moulded products or filament for such things as weaving.

About 30 per cent of the plastic is made into new products on site, with the other 70 per cent being sold for $1 to $2 a kilogram as raw shredded material for manufacturing. The Shruder can make 20 kilograms of raw product in an hour.

Three Shruders were placed in remote and island communities in Bali, Sabah and on Whitsunday Island as part of a pilot program.

In Bali and Sabah, Ms Hardman saw first-hand the challenges that communities faced to treat their plastic waste.

The villagers either burned, buried or dumped their plastic in the ocean; all of which posed risks to the heath of the environment, and the villagers themselves.

"The village head in Bali said after having the Shruder, the village now had a new fragrance.

"I thought that was so beautiful, because when I first went there the toxic smell from the burning plastic meant you couldn't stay there for very long; your eyes hurt, your throat hurt."

A bigger and better Shruder

The federal grant money will allow Plastic Collective and partners, including Southern Cross University, to research and develop an upscaled Shruder.

The pilot programs provided many insights into the challenges that still needed to be overcome in the remote island communities.

Infrastructure was one of them.

"One of the projects we went to, their workshop looked like a bomb shelter. There was very poor electricity and quite dangerous in many respects," Ms Hardman said.

"So we decided we need to provide the workshop as well, so we want to build a containerised solution with equipment stack that can process hard plastics and soft plastics, but on top of that we want to provide a software solution. "

The ultimate aim is to give the communities a true "circular economy" solution that allows them to make a profit, employ people and also make products for the community.

"We cover the 'triple bottom line', as the business world says; it's economically viable, it produces social outcomes and also environmental outcomes."

Three next-generation Shruders will be produced over the next two years and rolled out to remote Indigenous communities.

Southern Cross University professor Steve Smith will be part of the research and development of the new Shruder recycling stations, which will include developing new products for communities.

"They may not be brand new products, but the way they're manufactured is going to be brand new, so this will be looking at community needs and then delivering those products which are going to be used within the community," he said.

One of the ideas already being looked at is developing plastic roof tiles.

"In some remote communities it's a fairly basic need, particularly in northern Australia, where we get some pretty intense monsoonal rain," Professor Smith said.

"But I think really we're limited only by imagination in what we can actually produce."

In addition to developing the technology and products, the SCU team will also measure the impact recycling the plastic has on the environment.

Story By | Melissa Martin