Professor Veena Sahajwalla
Winner: Engineering Sciences Category, NSW Scientist of the Year 2008 Awards

Professor Veena Sahajwalla is Director at the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology, at the University of NSW and a long-term judge on the ABC’s New Inventors program.

Professor Sahajwalla has invented an environmentally friendly technology for the recycling of waste plastics in Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) steelmaking. She has demonstrated on a commercial scale that coke and coal used in the production of steel can be replaced by plastics used in shopping bags and bottles.

Professor Sahajwalla has invented and patented a process that simultaneously:

• Reduces greenhouse gas and other toxic emissions by reducing the amount of coal used by the steelmaking industry.
• Combats landfill and its associated problems of groundwater contamination and noxious gas production.
• Recycles waste plastic in a more environmentally friendly manner than current recycling methods.
• Results in a more efficient EAF steelmaking process when compared to the use of coke alone.
• Utilises the existing infrastructure used by steelmakers without causing any damage to it.

Professor Sahajwalla has forged close relationships with steel-making companies, particularly OneSteel, to facilitate her research. OneSteel now has exclusive rights to sub-licence her unique technology, and has implemented the process at both its Sydney and Melbourne based EAF Steelmaking facililties.

Professor Sahajwalla is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (since 2007) and is a recipient of the 2005 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research and the 2004 Fresh Innovators Award in Australia and the 2006 Environmental Technology Award from the Association of Iron & Steel Technology (AIST-US), the premier international professional society in iron and steel.