Professor Veena Sahajwalla is a recycling superstar with big and bold ideas on how to save waste from landfill.
Living in Mumbai as a child, Veena could see that everything had a value and potential. This ‘waste nothing’ mindset shaped her engineering career and sowed the seeds for her ground-breaking ideas. She has won awards for creating Green Steel and showing the steel industry how to use waste tyres to make the alloy.
Her latest invention is a micro factory which creates Green Ceramics and building materials from discarded clothes and glass. This revolutionary concept could be situated near recycling centres so communities can be responsible for their own waste.
Veena switches on the first micro factory and the first tile is produced.
A table made from recycled glass and textiles.
Kitchen tiles
A designer wall
A side table created from old banners at the university campus.
You can watch Veena’s inspiring story here: