May 26, 2025 • 58 mins
#142 Anthony from Lotus Energy shares how his family business evolved from solar installation to pioneering a world-first recycling process that recovers 98% of materials from end-of-life solar panels. Their groundbreaking technology extracts valuable nano-silicon and silver that can revolutionize battery technology while preventing panels from being illegally shipped to developing countries.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why is it you can get that incredible support from
overseas, but you can't getsupport from Australia?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Personally, I would love to see some industry
standards where they forcedirectors to make declarations
around what recovery ratesthey're achieving, or something
like that, where you actuallyhave to stand behind the claims
that we're making.
How much of the panel isactually getting recycled Now
we're making.
How much of the panel isactually getting recycled Now?
We're at 98% and the 2% isessentially the plastics from
(00:29):
the solar panel.
The waste that we produce isinsane.
It's only fair that we'retransparent and open with how it
all works and what happens andwhere does it go, etc.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
G'day guys.
Welcome back to another episodeof Level Up.
We have another crackingpodcast for you today.
This one actually reallyexcites me and I'm really keen
to see where this conversationgoes and what I learn from it,
because this is a topic that hasbeen on my radar for a long
time.
I'm very passionate aboutsustainability, the, the
building waste from, uh, theenvironment and putting landfill
(01:07):
in big holes in the ground andall that sort of stuff, and I
actually come across our guesttoday.
Uh, from some posts I alwaysget his name right.
I think it's yost backer.
Um, antony might be able tocorrect me if I'm saying it
wrong, but, um, oh, you've donewell, mate.
He, uh, he posted a post aboutthe guests we have on today and
I was all in and I've since beenfollowing them flat out and had
(01:27):
a few conversations and Ireally love what they're doing.
So big warm welcome to Anthonyfrom Lotus Energy.
How are you, mate?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Fantastic.
Thanks for having me on, Dwayne.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So just to give the listeners a little bit of
background, the reason I'vereached out to Anthony is
Anthony is doing incredible.
Anthony, I think it's your oldman.
Is it your son as well?
There's three generations.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, yeah, granddad and different businesses over
the journey, but all sparkiesyeah.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
These guys are doing.
You're going to learn a lottoday from this podcast.
These guys are doing worldfirst things when it comes to
solar panels and recycling them.
So, anthony, can you give us alittle bit of background, mate,
how you got into what you'redoing now?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, I'll try and give you the reasonably quick
version, dwayne, to not bore thelisteners, but essentially I
started installing solar in 1991with my dad.
I was only like 17 years of ageand from there we'll quickly
fast forward.
But essentially we installed alot of solar panels over the
(02:29):
journey and, uh, in around 2018,we were, you know, organizing
to recycle some solar panels andwe came across a company in
South Australia who claimed tobe recycling and, probably like
a lot of us, you know, we takethings on face value and we
thought, all right, that soundsgood.
All the information on thewebsite read really well
(02:53):
Sustainability and responsiblemanagement of waste, and
circular economy, and all thebuzzwords were there.
So we went ahead with that, butthen we subsequently discovered
that they weren't actuallydoing the things that they were
claiming they were doing.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
How did you find out?
Did you visit them?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I have a tendency to be a bit of a serial pest Twain
and running a big company, or ifyou want something done, you
have to continually follow it up.
I'd engage with them and theyoffered for us to visit in
actual fact initially and uh,very coy about visiting, there's
(03:32):
lots of excuses why we couldn'tvisit, etc.
And uh, we ended up finding out, they ended up admitting that
they weren't doing what theywere claiming to be doing and I
actually offered to potentiallyeven invest in them.
And I flew over to SouthAustralia and the gentleman who
headed up the that business wasliterally a no-show.
(03:52):
So I'd flown from Melbourne toAdelaide, turned up at his
office and he wasn't even there.
You know, couldn't even givethe courtesy of turning up.
So that was, it was fair to sayit was a bit of a red rag to a
bull.
And uh, not only did we takehim to court over his situation,
but uh also, uh, we went anddeveloped the entire process.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, so, um, I guess to to jump in a little bit
deeper, the um like, so you'relike, I feel, the same mate,
like so many of the um like,we're now recycling a lot of our
own products on our building.
We've just recently finishedour first completely hand
demolished full home.
All the concrete went to theconcrete recyclers, All the
bricks went to the concreterecyclers.
(04:37):
We ended up getting over 12 tonof hardwood out that is going
to be reused in other projects.
We recycled all the glass andaluminium hardwood out that is
going to be reused.
In other projects we recycle allthe glass and aluminium.
So when I saw that what youguys are doing with the solar
panels, it really sparked aninterest, because solar panels
are something that I've over along period of time.
I've almost got to a pointwhere I was talking clients out
(04:59):
of having them because I didn'tlike the materials that were
getting used to make them andbut my biggest concern was how
they were getting recycled attheir end use.
But you guys have now solvedthat and correct me if I'm wrong
, but you're leading the worldin this technology, aren't you?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Absolutely.
We started with a very what I'dsay which you know wasn't
exactly cutting edge.
I called it the T-model Fordproduction line.
You know where we managed torecover the glass and the
aluminium and the copper, whichby weight is quite a bit.
But you're right in saying youknow solar panels.
(05:40):
Have you know a number ofthings like embedded in them
that are quite problematic.
So the moment it's broken,those heavy metals are exposed
to the environment.
They can cause some leachingproblems.
But yeah, now we've got itreally at a quite high level
from a science and chemistrypoint of view, where we're
(06:00):
recovering the nanosilicon andthe silver out of the solar
panels and we're currentlymoving to a new facility which
has got a 700 square meterlaboratory which is managed
quite literally by scientists.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
That's unbelievable, mate.
Before we started recording,you were saying what's the
percentage of silver that solaruses, according you were saying
what's the percentage of silverthat solar uses?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Oh well, globally the solar industry uses about 40%
of the mining production and forthe last three years running
there's been a massive shortfallof silver, and that's purely
because of the solar industryitself.
So sure it's been fantastic forrenewable energy and everything
(06:49):
like that.
That solar panel pays foritself in energy terms and
carbon footprint in about twoyears.
But its unintended consequencesare there's certain commodities
in that are now, you know,facing a massive shortfall, and
you only have to look at thecharts of silver in the last few
(07:09):
years to see it.
But essentially, a solar panelhas about 0.2% or even less by
weight, of silver, but thatsilver makes up 50% of the
manufacturing costs just under,actually.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So really important piece to the story is we had to
get that silver out and get itback to the solar industry yeah,
so like what sparked yourinterest to do, like basically
set up a whole new businessaround recycling this, like
you're you're, I'm assuming youryour your installation business
(07:43):
was quite large.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, and we worked all over the world, I guess for
many years.
I got the same objection fromperhaps the concerns you had
around well, they can't reallybe recycled and are they all
that environmentally friendly.
And I regularly had a throwawayline about, well, we could send
(08:09):
a man to the moon but so surelywe can recycle a solar panel and
nowadays it's probably not thebest reference because there's
some questions around that aswell, but that was the throwaway
line as well.
But but that was, that was thethrowaway line and I guess you
know, once I discovered thatthis other company was doing the
(08:30):
wrong thing, I you know itdawned on me how important it
was for the industry and and howdamaging it could be if that
information came out publicly.
That you know the onlypurported recycler around was
basically, you know, fair to say, scamming their customers.
So you know we took todeveloping it and you know if
(08:52):
there was one good thing out ofCOVID, for us at least, was we
were in lockdown in Melbourneand we managed to buy a bunch of
machinery from some companiesthat I guess, guess, maybe
panicked a little bit forbusiness reasons around you know
that time and we bought up thatmachinery and did all the
testing, and we're quitefortunate to get it up and
(09:14):
running quite quickly that'sawesome so.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
But people like, as you see it all the time now,
like we uh, we even do it onrenovations There'll be solar on
the existing roof and it'll beworn out and old.
So the spark will say, hey look, this system's garbage.
It's not up to new code, itneeds to go.
And so I've asked the questionbefore.
(09:38):
They always tell me they'retaking it to a recycling plant.
Where is it going?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
recycling plant.
Where is it going?
Well, depending on where you'retalking about, in in australia,
most probably.
Uh, it's been sent off to ayard, bundled into a shipping
container with a second-hand car.
Uh, falsely purported as justsecond-hand vehicles in the in
the container it's's shipped toNigeria, in Africa, where they
either sell them in markets or,if they can't recover or get
(10:10):
them working, still they'reburnt in fields.
What?
Yeah?
So it's actually anenvironmental disaster.
It's listed as one of the top10 environmental disasters in
the world and sadly, ourindustry turns a blind eye to it
or pretends it's.
You know it's actually a goodthing because it's solar, for
(10:33):
you know communities and peoplewho can't afford it.
They're literally sending itoff.
It's not tested, it's not safeor we couldn't certify that it's
safe.
We're not happy to have it onour own roof, but we'll send it
to someone else in africa forten dollars, you know, yeah it's
something that I'm reallypassionate about.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Look, I guess it's it's hard like you, can't you?
We all try and do our best, butlike, like, sustainability is
obviously thrown around a lotnow, especially in the building
industry, and there's a lot ofbuilders out there that are
trying to do the right thing andwanting to do the right thing,
but, like, I'm just, I'm alwaysthat person that, like wants to
look into it further, like allright, oh well, where's it going
(11:16):
?
Like you did with the, with theplant that you're sending to,
but I've never done it with thesolar.
Like I've done it a lot withthe timber and the concrete.
Like I know how that getsmanaged.
But, to be honest, I justthought, electrical waste like
you send it to, you put it inthe e-bens and you, like we take
it to our scrappies and theyseparate it, and I thought, oh,
it's, it's got to be gettingdealt with correctly.
(11:36):
But, um, after hearing your,your stats and some of the
conversations we've had abouthow you're leading the way in
the world, and it's obviouslynot happening the way we think
it's happening, you know solar'snot alone, and e-waste for that
matter as well that, uh,there's so many things that are
(11:57):
just completely wrong.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And you, coming from the building industry, obviously
duane, you've got a whole heapof local, state, federal
building codes and laws andsafety requirements that you
have to adhere to.
The safety requirements stillexist for the recycling industry
, but there are no standards,and I mean none.
There's things that theypurport that they're going to
(12:24):
crack down on, you know if it'sclassified as a hazardous waste.
I've seen it firsthand.
I've reported things to EPAsaround the country or named
particular states or anything,but no one seems to care.
The more interested in you knowwinning a grant from the
(12:48):
government than they are aboutyou know calling out the truth
of what's really going on.
And uh, hey, you know, recentlyup in queensland, only a week or
two ago, there was an articlein the you know from the abc uh
online and I think it wasjasmine hines uh published the
article about a company, solarrecovery corporation.
(13:10):
They're now saying that they'regoing to be up and running in,
I think, march or may 2026.
They they did a press releasein, I'll say, february 22, 2022
saying they'll be up and runningin a month or two.
They've been bundling up solarpanels and sending them offshore
(13:30):
for years and industry bodiesare holding conferences and
getting these people to talkabout recycling and the
wonderful things they're doing.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
It's quite a farce man, it seems to me it happens a
lot, especially in the buildingindustry, and, like you say,
there's so many companies outthere just doing ticking boxes
to get these grants.
But if people actually digdeeper, they're, they're not
following through on things, butlike I don't, I imagine, mate
with what you're doing.
You're you're getting supportfrom the government?
Speaker 2 (14:01):
not at all it's not not one little bit, mate.
We, we um, look, we, we had a.
We did win one grant fromSustainability Victoria which
actually, ironically, related toavoiding solar panels going to
recycling.
So, and that was arounddeveloping a testing procedure
for, you know, reuse andrepurpose of solar panels, which
(14:23):
we still think is a great idea,and we developed that in
collaboration with VictoriaUniversity and Torres Group
Electrical.
And there was a second part toit which was a safe handling and
decommissioning of solar panels, which we developed a training
course with the Solar trainingcenter.
So we got support fromsustainability Vic for that.
(14:47):
But, as I say, the irony wasthat was to avoid recycling.
Clearly, we've got too manysolar panels, you know if we
want to avoid it.
But, yeah, like, in reality, thebest support we've had thus far
is actually from internationalgovernment.
So we've been recognized foryou know the world-leading
(15:08):
standards that we've achievedand we've got a facility that
we've got in planning and we'vealready signed off an agreement
for Germany and I head off thisweekend back to Germany, germany
and I head off this weekendback to Germany and we've
(15:29):
already signed off on the firstof three sites for India as well
, and, like, both countries havegiven amazing support
financially and other ways interms of, you know, setting up
and you know setting up and youknow employment and HR and uh,
training and planning and allthe different aspects.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Why isn't it that incredible support from overseas
but you can't get support fromAustralia?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
No, well it's.
You know there.
You know there's there's a bigdifference.
You know there's a bigdifference, as we know there's a
big difference between whatpoliticians say on television or
radio or any form of mediaversus the reality, and you know
, it's fair to say, I'm fairlydisgruntled with it all.
(16:20):
We're in Victoria, in Thomastown, we sit in the electorate of
the Minister of Environment,lily D'Ambrosio.
We've invited her out numeroustimes.
Zero interest in coming.
She did a public announcementhow the state government was
investing $10 million into, Ithink, what they called the
(16:42):
circular PV challenge for anyonethat could recycle solar panels
.
Now, bear in mind we'reprobably less than five
kilometers from her office.
They made that statement aboutwhat they were doing.
They never gave out any moneyto anyone, us included in that
story.
And the day before the electionwe were asked to put on a
(17:02):
display for her and DanielAndrews and despite my feelings
in regards to that, we did itbecause I thought it could be
positive, create some awarenessand everything that was on the
Friday before the election.
We did all that and they madeall these amazing statements
about how they were supportingus and what they were going to
(17:23):
do and everything, and we neverheard from them again.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's terrible, it's absolutely
terrible and mainly.
I guess that's another reason Iwanted to get you on the podcast
, because my belief is thatunless there's individuals out
there that are spreading theirpassion about what they do and
highlighting what actuallyhappens in real life, especially
in the construction industry,like politicians have no idea
whatsoever about how ourindustry works.
(17:49):
We've got to share our storiesand tell what happens on a
day-to-day basis in thisindustry.
I guess it's hats off to you,mate, for continually pushing
forward and getting it to whereyou have now.
That's a massive undertaking,I'm sure, for you, financially
bloody in all ways, to get it tothe point where it's at now.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, no, thanks, dwayne.
I'd say it's probably easierthan what you've done, though
dismantling an entire house andtrying to find a home for all of
the various components, that'sa super challenge.
Like a lot of respect, you know, hearing that you'd done that
because, uh, I wouldn't knowwhere to start with half of
those products that come through.
We, we uh recently dismantled a, you know, a small solar farm
(18:37):
in terms of, you know, today'sstandards, but of course you
know it was old, it was at endof life and everything.
So it was, uh, 600 kilowatts,about two and a half thousand
solar panels, and we, uh, weorganized for all the concrete
pads to be recycled, so theywere all moved out.
I think it was like 600 ton ofconcrete.
(18:58):
It was about 60 ton of steelfrom all the structural frames
and everything, about six ton ofaluminum, about four ton of
copper cable, which is very nice.
Of course You're not in theconstruction industry if you
don't know the value of copperand of course all the e-waste
from it had what they callstring inverters, so smaller
(19:22):
inverters you're breaking thesystem up into.
I think there were 60, 10kilowatt systems, effectively,
and then, of course, all thesolar panels.
So we managed to organize forevery single piece of that to be
recycled, and obviously there'sdifferent recovery rates in all
the different pieces there, butwe were really proud of how we
(19:46):
managed that and there was a lotof learning for us as well of
how we manage that and there wasa lot of learning for us as
well.
Dealing with the client was thefirst time we'd dismantled a
solar farm, but, yeah, it'sfantastic that it's happening
now.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah, it's awesome.
So can we talk about somenumbers?
So, on average, what's thelifespan of a solar panel?
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, it's a broad question.
If know, if I, if I said thesolar panels that I started
installing as a, as a youngbloke, they were bp solar panels
.
We get those coming in andthey're 30, you know, 25 to say
35 years old.
They're still working like theday that I made.
They've hardly had anydegradation at all, which is
(20:28):
quite incredible.
Obviously, you know, as we massproduce things and we try and
refine it and, of course, pushcosts down as well,
substantially now, depending onbrands, as short as seven years,
you know, and you know prettyregularly, I would say 10 to 25
(20:54):
years is probably the morerealistic band where they would
sit.
There is still a lot that getdecommissioned prematurely
though.
You know, like what you weresaying, you're doing a, an
extension, or you know, say,knocking over a building and a
rebuild or something, that thesolar system's fine, but you
know if you're going to removeit the moment you remove it,
(21:17):
then you have to meet thecurrent standards and you can't
reinstall it anyhow.
So, uh, there's a lot of thathappening.
There's a lot of the electric,electric vehicle and battery.
You know, combination or evensingular, that people get an
electric vehicle.
They, you know, of course, wantto charge their, their car, you
(21:37):
know off their own solar asset.
They realize that it's probablytoo small what they installed
several years ago to servicetheir house and the car, so so
they then install a battery,make the solar system a lot
larger, probably max out theirroof, and for aesthetic reasons.
Us Aussies, we act like we'rereally laid back, but we're
(22:00):
still a bit superficial.
So we have a tendency to notwant two different looking
systems on the roof, so weremove the old one and put a
nice new big one in yeah, look,I say every day in this industry
is a learning day, it's aschool day.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And we, um, we've got a huge refurb job we're doing
at the moment and the clientsactually only put the um, the
existing system, on the house.
Uh, they tell us about four tofive years ago that, because of
the refurb and extension workwe're doing, um, that section of
roof has to be replaced so thatwe had to remove the solar
system.
(22:34):
And so, honestly, I justthought it was a simple get the
solar company out, take it off.
So when I've quoted the job,I've rung our solar installer up
and he's going oh yeah, it's,it's this per panel to to remove
and it's this per panel toreinstall.
And so that's what I put in myproposal.
And then we've got the job,we're underway, and they've come
(22:54):
out to remove the panels andthey're like oh shit, duane,
there's going to be extra costshere.
We can put these back on, butthe fixing clips need to be
upgraded.
They don't make code anymore.
The electrical fixings don'tmake code anymore.
Code anymore.
The electrical fixings don'tmeet code anymore.
And yeah, I'm like well, mate,like it's got to be up to code,
so give me a price to reinstallit the way it has to be, and the
(23:16):
cost to reinstall it the way ithas to be is half the cost of a
new system.
So we've then we've then goneto the client and explained to
them what's happened and they'relike, oh well, shit, like, for
that amount of money again, wewould rather have a brand new
system.
And I'm like, come on, guys,seriously, it's not that old and
it still works.
Let's just work with it Exactlylike you said.
(23:40):
Us Aussies, as much as we saywe're laid back, we want
everything looking nice andshiny and matching and new.
And this is on a roof, that it'son a three-story house that no
one can see it from anydirection, but like with the
back to the numbers, like out ofa solar panel, like what's the
actual data, like what are yougetting out of a panel, Like how
(24:02):
much of the panel is actuallygetting recycled.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Sure.
So now we're at 98% and the 2%is essentially the plastics from
the solar panel.
There's a back sheet and aplastic junction box and a bit
of cable sheath and anencapsulate which is a piece
that the cells themselves sit in.
(24:24):
The heavy piece to the wholestory is the glass, so that's 75
, 80% of the weight.
Uh, the aluminum is, you know,it ranges of course, but you
know, say, 10 to 10 to 15%.
We recover all that.
We recover the copper cable offthe back and get the copper out
.
(24:44):
Um, probably the, the real, Iguess, intriguing piece and the.
You know, the part of thepuzzle that we'd always had our,
our mindset on achieving wasgetting the solar cells out of
the solar panel themselves.
And so when you, when you lookat a solar panel, you'll see,
you know they're normally blueor black, typically, and as a
(25:05):
general rule, it's your meansthat they're polycrystalline or
monocrystalline.
There's there's lots of othersorts as well, but they're the
most common.
And those solar cells, theysometimes call them a wafer.
It's incredibly thin siliconmetal, and this is why you
should never walk on a solarpanel, whereas if you ever see
(25:28):
someone walk on them Dwayne, onone of the sites they're not
doing a good thing.
They're definitely damaging thesolar panel.
They get what they call microcracks.
So they're incredibly fragile.
They have very low tolerance toany like flexation and they
will shatter.
They will shatter.
So, if you can imagine, we'vegot to somehow manage that solar
(25:53):
panel.
Work out how to get this big,call it sticker, the EVA back
sheet off then it's in it andencapsulate and get the cell out
and try and maintain that piecewith.
You know it's fine to break it,but minimally, uh.
And and then from that piece ofSilicon metal it's got a whole
bunch of other uh, typicallymetals that they've uh layered
(26:14):
on it.
Well, they call it doping to uhcreate the positive or negative
charge to, you know, get theelectricity to flow through.
And then the really finelooking tiny little lines on it
not the bigger ones there are,they're silver.
Tiny little lines on it, notthe bigger ones, they're silver.
(26:34):
And so from that point where weworked out how to get the cells
out, we then worked out how toclean the silicon cell down and
get all the other differentpieces off silicon nitride and
chromium and boron and a bit oflead there's some aluminium
embedded in some of them as well, and get all of those things
out and have a pure silicon.
And then we've created aprocess on how to break down
(26:59):
that silicon metal down intowhat's called a nano-silicon.
And nano-silicon is like theholy grail of electric vehicle
and all sorts of batteries, forthat matter.
It's also used in militaryapplications, in biomedicines,
in agriculture and in thesilicon chip.
So nano silicon is incrediblyimportant from a national
(27:25):
security perspective and we'renow producing that, which is
just awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Mate, I just learned a hell of a lot in my last five
minutes.
I never thought a solar panelcould be so interesting, but is
the process itself safe?
Do you have to introduce morechemicals that make all this
happen, or is it a safe process?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Well, we would have done it a lot quicker had we
have used chemicals and justskipped a whole heap of R&D that
we've been doing.
So we managed to do it withnaturally occurring acids, which
means that our waste quiteliterally being alkal, being a
you know, alkaline or acid based, we can actually neutralize it
(28:13):
and it can be washed down thedrain legally and everything
from an epa perspective, and I'mhappy for you to publish this,
this part, uh, the.
We could have used thehydrofluoric, uh acid or
hydrochloric acid,hydrofluoric's like really nasty
, really dangerous stuff, and itwould have quite simply cleaned
(28:34):
down.
But then we would have createda whole heap of other byproducts
, like chemicals, that we wouldhave had to deal, dealt with.
And you know, for us, being arenewable energy related
business, it was justcounterintuitive to say, oh
great, we fix one problem andcreate another yeah yeah like
what?
Speaker 1 (28:53):
what's the outcome of this?
Like, obviously it's incrediblethat you're doing this and it's
happening and they're gettingrecycled.
What's the, I guess whathappens with all the materials
that you're getting out of this?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
so at the moment uh, see the nano silicon we've got a
company overseas that's beenutilizing it from us.
So they're a publicly listedcompany, neo Battery Materials.
So it's getting used to makebattery anodes and like to put
it in perspective we're makingthat nano silicon at 50
(29:26):
nanometers, which is 51millionths of a millimeter, so
the particles are incrediblysmall and those particles
enhance batteries Unbelievably.
So we've already done severaltrials ourselves and we've
(29:47):
produced batteries that areworking at 10 to 12 times
density.
And what that means is thatyou're, say, the electric
vehicle world, because where alot of people talk about drive
range stress and they don'tdrive far enough just yet for
them to, perhaps, you know,purchase one.
It will take a, you know,typical 500 kilometer drive
(30:10):
range vehicle and make itsomewhere between five and six
thousand kilometers.
Yeah, yeah, and this, thistech's already working.
It's not like it's, you know,science fiction and it's got a
whole heap of problems, like,you know, some other things that
get purported out in themarketplace.
This thing actually is alreadyworking.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
It's the sort of stuff.
Look, I'm definitely not a fanof the electric vehicles, but
that again that's something thatwould change my mind, because
if you're getting that sort ofrange out of the vehicle, it
completely changes all theenvironmental stuff that comes
with that vehicle.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, and you can massively reduce the, you know,
because the size of the battery,which means a lot less cobalt,
a lot less lithium, a lot lesscopper um, because obviously we
don't need a five, six thousandkilometer drive range, so only
heavy transport would perhaps beinterested in that.
But you know, two, threethousand kilometers, like if you
(31:08):
could drive, say, from you know, sydney to Melbourne or Sydney
to Brisbane or something likethat.
That's substantial, it's uh.
Maybe do 4,000 Ks and driveMelbourne to Perth, yeah, it's
uh.
That's definitely a gamechanger for the industry.
And of course, that samebattery could be applied to a
power network, or a laptop forthat matter as well.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, that's interesting, but you guys are
doing.
I saw on your like I've seen onyour site shows you're, you're,
you're coming up with somepretty creative ways, aren't you
Like you're making?
Actually, I saw one of yourthings that I was really
interested in some of the Biprocproduct you're using to go into
render or something, aren't you?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, that one's sort of a funny story because we're
getting all this glass comingout of the solar panels and
we're trying to come up withlots of different applications
for it because the volumes arejust ridiculous to manage and
(32:12):
the perfect world.
The glass goes back to makingmore glass for solar panels.
And it's a high purity glass.
For obvious reasons it has tobe nice and clear and, you know,
for the light to go through andnot diffract, and but you know
some of it, you know through theprocess, are already broken so
they may already have some sortof level of contamination in
(32:34):
them.
So we're looking at you know,we made fire rated tiles for it
to go behind batteries andtabletops and tilt mount ballast
systems for solar and, yeah,this render product.
So we had this glass you'relike so it's silicon dioxide
glass and so it's essentially asand and but it was coming out
(32:59):
really fine like around 20microns, which is like talcum
powder, just for the listeners,you can literally rub this stuff
on your face and your skin willfeel smoother, not cut you like
you imagine with glass.
And I had a guy that told us hewas doing some teaching around
rendering products and could heperhaps take some just some
(33:23):
samples and do some trials, etcetera.
And he was teaching at a TAFEout of Melbourne and, of course,
we're quite happy to findanother home for the products
and send it off to him.
In actual fact, I followed himup and he said you know how is
it going?
And I thought you know he wasgoing to explain to me how he'd
(33:45):
done.
You know some walls at the tafeand the students were, you know
, playing around with it anddoing different.
You know trials with it.
Uh, he sends me some photos ofsome heritage buildings that
they've been repairing with itand he, he repairs buildings for
various national trusts aroundthe country and he told me it's
(34:06):
the best render product he'sever ever experienced.
And, uh, he's now teachingeveryone to to use this product,
which at the time was hilariousbecause we didn't even have it
commercially available.
It was just uh, uh, you knowsomething we, something we kept
gifting to him for the purposeof the trials and doing the R&D.
Those photos are literallyheritage buildings in Melbourne
(34:30):
that I think you've seen on oursocials.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Oh mate, they're the sort of little things that catch
my eye.
Not only are you recycling theproduct, but it's getting
repurposed in heritage buildings, which is saving.
Saving like, saving history,really like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Well, one of the most important things for us was to
not just recycle it but makesure that the products get
utilized locally where we canlike and so we can't for
everything, uh but that we'renot a company that will give up
because we've had one or twono's.
We keep looking for othersolutions.
(35:08):
But the glass locally, we'vebeen able to get a home for all
of it.
The big challenge has been themetals.
So Australia has lost a lot ofits manufacturing capabilities,
of course, to China, as we know,and other countries.
But the metal industry is areally odd one, because
(35:30):
Australia is the home to what Ibelieve to be the greatest
resources on earth.
I think we've got every singlecommodity known to man.
We dig it up out of the groundin, you know, bauxite or ores or
whatever, and very littleprocessing happens here.
We send it offshore and we buyit back in the form of a
manufactured product.
(35:50):
We're we're encouragingbusinesses to engage with us and
, uh, look to find ways toutilize the products here.
But, yeah, at, the metals endup in offshore India, china,
singapore, japan, south Korea.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
Australia really needs to wakeup to itself.
With all that stuff, there'sgoing to come a point in history
where we're going to need theresources we've had and there
won't be enough left to do whatwe need to do absolutely like
casing point.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
As I was saying earlier, silver like there's
there's a global shortage of it.
So the best thing we can do ismine the resources we've already
got at hand, which is our waste.
So you know, heard thisreference, urban mining, which I
think is really cool of ofmining the materials that we've
got at hand.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, Back to the Render product.
Is that a product that you'repotentially going to be
releasing or selling, or is itjust something that's a bit of a
trial and error type thing?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Well, it's something that we're keen on, actually
engaging with a company thatperhaps already makes Render.
We don't want to be everythingto everyone and we're quite
happily to find a home for it.
At present, we've beenproducing it ourselves and we
would love to see it off with acompany locally in Australia
(37:16):
using that as a manufacturedproduct.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
No, like I said at the beginning, mate, like I, I
um first saw you on a post thatum, yos Baca did and uh, so that
I'm assuming that was a prettygood experience to like.
I love what he's doing and howhe's thinking outside the box
and just coming up with someincredible ways to to change the
building industry.
(37:40):
So I imagine for you that wouldhave been pretty exciting to
get him involved oh, absolutely,mate, he's.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
He's quite an inspiration and you know, for
full disclosure, he's a goodfriend as well and uh, uh.
But what I love about yost ishe will only promote something
that he truly believes in,he's's passionate about.
He doesn't do it because he'sgetting paid by those people or
anything like that.
He does it because, you know,it's what he believes in and
(38:10):
everything comes from the heart.
Yeah, some of the things he'sdone is incredible.
I went out to the school thathe did out at Dramana in Woodley
in Victoria where they builtthe green roof and it's hard to
comprehend I've also got abackground in construction but a
dead flat roof that holds sixinches of water and that's part
(38:33):
of the engineering design andthat's how they hold these
rooftop gardens, essentially,and grasses and everything that
they're putting on.
It goes against all theprinciples of construction and
how we'd normally do it, ofcourse.
We're trying to get rid of thewater and we're definitely not
making it dead flat.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
So where to for Lotus Energy?
What's the plan?
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Well, we've got the sites that we're developing
offshore.
Now we want to expand intoquite literally every state.
But we're realistic.
We've got to manage thatprocess and you can't do it
overnight for these things.
For us, plus, one of the bigstrategies, which is more medium
(39:24):
to longer term, is developingand manufacturing batteries in
Australia from the recycledproducts, and that's something
that we're working on right now,and I would love to see
Australia manufacturingsemiconductors and silicon chips
as well and somehow be a partof that.
(39:46):
I don't expect we'll be makingsilicon chips, but I'd love to
be the supplier of some of thecommodities to produce it.
It's not something that we allsit back and ponder on, maybe on
a Friday Arvo or something,having a beer or wine, but the
reason Taiwan is so importantglobally has nothing to do with
(40:09):
it's just sitting off the coastof China or America and China
suddenly decided that they're animportant little country in the
world.
It's more to do with a companycalled Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Corporation which,for your listeners' knowledge,
is the biggest company on earth.
They're bigger than Google,they're bigger than Apple and
(40:30):
Microsoft and all these giantcorporations that are household
names.
These guys are the biggestsilicon chip manufacturers in
the world and they areincredibly important because
everything nowadays pretty muchhas a silicon chip in it and, if
it's not already a iot ai sortof base device, someone's
(40:52):
probably making one.
That is so, uh, for, fornational security reasons, for
any country controlling, youknow, critical minerals and some
of these key core products totechnology is really important,
and australia has everyopportunity to bring it back on
(41:13):
shore.
You know we we're no longermanufacturing things with.
You know, people sitting with asoldering iron and smoking a
cigarette, like the old imageswe saw of the 80s and maybe
early 90s of China.
Everything today is fullyautomated.
The picture that we've stillgot in our head is completely
(41:35):
outdated.
China currently has batterymanufacturing plants that they
call dark factories.
These things are incredible,and the reason they call them
dark is there's no lights on inthe building until a human walks
in there, because they'recompletely run by robots,
including the repairs andmaintenance, and it's just
(41:55):
incredible.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, no, it absolutely blows my mind the way
that things are going and itseems to be speeding up at a
rapid pace now, mate.
So just for our listeners, likewhat else does Lotus Energy do?
Like what's we sort of got likethis is.
It's actually been a really,really interesting and educating
conversation.
I've taken away a lot already.
(42:18):
We sort of we did jump forwardquite a bit like where's your
passion?
Like what, what, what made youget to do what you do now?
Speaker 2 (42:28):
yeah, I I love the the renewables side of things.
Like we, you know, build bigcommercial, industrial, uh,
solar pv assets and we weredoing that under what they call
a power purchase agreement, andI would say we were delivering
the only power purchaseagreement, so it was we'll put a
big solar asset, let's say, ona manufacturing plant or
(42:51):
something, and they pay for theenergy that they use and that's
it.
They don't pay anything else andthey get cheaper energy, and so
we were doing a lot of that andwe still do that.
But, uh, you know, we werecreating this way, so we're part
of the problem, of course, andI guess now the passion really
sits in the recycling space and,uh, you know, personally I
(43:15):
would love to see, uh, someindustry standards where they
force directors to makedeclarations around what
recovery rates are achieving, orsomething like that, where you
actually have to stand behind.
You know the claims that we'remaking, but, you know, for now
we just keep working on ourinnovation and, you know,
(43:36):
hopefully one day you'll see aLotus battery out there, which
is, you know, a world-leadingbattery made in Australia.
Yeah, and you know, that said,if we were, you know or not, if
once we're up and running inGermany and India.
We'd have the same intent keepit local there as well.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's bloody awesome, man.
Look, I definitely agree withwhat you just said.
Like I think the whole buildingindustry um needs a shake-up
when it comes to sustainabilityand recycling.
I think, like personally, asowning a building business, I
take it very seriously about theproducts we can salvage out of
homes, and like the buildingindustry contributes so much
(44:16):
waste to landfill and yet wehave all these housing
affordability problems, we haveshortage problems, like there's
like timber there's a lot ofproblems with timber at the
moment, like all those types ofthings and yet we're we're
demolishing timber.
That is the best timber in theworld because it it's been
(44:38):
around 40, 50, 70 years, and yetyou just bring a machine in and
munch it up and throw it backin the Old hardwoods and
everything and yeah, yeah,across the board.
There are so many things, and Iactually think you raised a
really good point about Aussiesjust wanting all the
good-looking flash stuff,because I talk about this a lot.
(45:00):
Everyone expects perfection andso, like we see it a lot in our
buildings, like people buy thebeautiful tapware or the the
light fittings and like,especially, taps.
Like you buy a good quality tapthese days and you open the
cardboard box and inside thecardboard box it's inside a bag,
(45:23):
and then inside the bag it'sall molded foam and then, and
then you then the tap itself isinside another soft bag and like
the waste is unbelievable andand I get it like no one wants
to have a, a new tap in theirhome.
It's got a scratch on it.
But I really do think we'vegone too far.
(45:44):
Like the waste that we produceis insane and that's why, again,
that's why I reached out to youand I wanted to know more about
what you're doing, because Ijust I love seeing and talking
to people that are passionateand that, like you said yourself
, like you were part of theproblem, like I believe that
with my building business, I'mpart of the problem, like I
believe that with my buildingbusiness.
I'm part of the problem.
I'm building homes that areproducing lots of waste, so I
(46:06):
need to come up with solutionsto reduce that waste, and I,
just again, I take my hat off toyou, mate, for doing what you
do.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Have you seen the Rhino recycling facility in
Pinkenba?
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Pinkenba yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah, mate, I actually caught up with those
guys a few weeks ago.
That facility up there is justincredible.
You're doing 450 ton just onthe construction waste piece 450
ton per hour.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Holy doly.
Yes, I haven't seen it.
A guy told me about it a fewmonths ago and said it's
something you'd really need tocheck out.
Is that the one that they'vebuilt to deal with a lot of the
Olympic, because there's goingto be a lot of waste when they
start doing the Olympic work?
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I'm not sure about the reference to the Olympics.
It wouldn't surprise me,because this thing is huge and
it's dealing with, you know,road, road waste, construction
waste it's mainly, you know,construction related waste.
Uh, and it's, it's justincredible, it's unbelievably
impressive and it's great to see.
(47:17):
Like you know, sometimes thebest you can do is create a low
value product coming back out.
You know a cement or bitumenbased, you know additive or
something like that, and to me,anything's better than nothing,
whereas people are very quick todismiss things oh, they're only
achieving X.
Well, it's better thanachieving nothing.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Yeah, and it's better .
Well, and it's better than itgoing back in the hole in the
ground.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Absolutely, because, well, the other thing to that is
the alternative is we dig it upsomewhere and we send it off
and it gets processed and thenit gets transported to where we
want it delivered for theconstruction.
And if we're talking likecement-based products, then
there's a whole nother thingaround the you know the carbon
(48:05):
footprint from the heatingprocess of making the cement and
everything, and so justreducing that is an awesome
thing, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Mate, look, I really appreciate your time this
afternoon.
Thanks for jumping on.
So where can our listeners findyou?
What's your best contact?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Probably easiest just going to our website like
lotusrecyclingcomau, or ourphone number is 1300-0-LOTUS, so
pretty easy, hopefully.
And yeah, look, we're happy toengage with people and, like we
get, we're in melbourne so it'snot always practical for
logistics, you know from allover the country, but uh, we're
(48:49):
really collaborative as well, sowe're open to sharing ideas
with people.
People just want to come andvisit and see how it, how it all
happens.
We're we're very transparentbecause we've you know me in
particular I've been verycritical of some.
You know let's call them badactors out in the out in the
industry.
So you know, it's only fairthat we're transparent and open
(49:12):
with you know how it all worksand what happens and where does
it go, etc.
So, yeah, we doesn't have to bethat someone just wants to send
us, you know, some e-waste orcable or solar panels or
whatever.
We're open to anything and wehappily support community things
as well, yeah, and go and checkout your Instagram.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
You've got a lot of good stuff on your Instagram.
But just before we go, how doesit actually work, like if
someone brings a solar panel toyou?
I'm assuming there's a fee.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah, yeah, there there is.
So at present it's a flat feeof 12 dollars uh per panel.
Yeah, uh, gate fee.
If they bring cable andmounting gear, we uh, you know
obviously credit them money back.
So it typically offsets itanyhow, uh, you know, from from
the other scrap.
If you like, I'll share withyou just quickly the process.
(50:06):
We've got a couple of differentparts to the process.
One's a thermal process that weuse to get the solar cells out.
Once those cells are out,that's when it goes into the
laboratory and that's a bitwe've got heavily under wraps in
terms of the IP.
But essentially that's howwe're getting the silicon and
the nano silicon and then thesilver, the recycling plant
(50:28):
itself, depending on the stateof the solar panel, because they
can come in all states, ofcourse.
But the brutal version is so ifthey're like heavily damaged or
something, that goes through amechanical process.
So it basically shreds them up,sends it down some conveyors
and there's some overbeltmagnets to pull out any steel,
(50:50):
any ferrous metal, and then itgoes into a mill.
Basically it pulverizes it andmakes it into small pieces down
to like five, 10 mil sort ofsize.
At that stage the glassactually, through that process
becomes powder and then it usespneumatic air and gravity and so
it actually transports thematerial up to the roof and goes
(51:12):
through a cyclone and zigzagwhich is pretty common from the
mining industry and so the heavymaterial will fall out at that
point and that's where thealuminium falls out in, almost
like the old slug gun pallets itlooks like.
And then there's air suctionand the air it sucks away the
glass and the plastic and then,because of the size
(51:34):
differentiator, we can sievethem out and actually separate
and have them all separated yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
I'd love to next time I'm with Danaly, mate, I'm
going to try and pop in andbloody see what you're doing
there.
Seriously 12 bucks a day seemspretty bloody reasonable to
considering all the advantagesof what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
I just find the whole thing exciting.
It's something.
Yeah, look, and I'd love tohave you visit.
We're in the process of moving,so we'll have the new site up
and running in 12 weeks, so youcan come and see it.
Sitting there dormant at themoment, unfortunately, because
we're decommissioning, but atthe new location, and with good
(52:16):
reason, we're increasing ourcapacity.
We're more than doubling ourcapacity to where we're going to
Awesome, yeah, also improvingthe efficiency.
Of course, we're doing somereally cool stuff.
We're putting in a NDIS workersline, so we're supporting our
(52:37):
social impact and giving jobsfor some disability workers and
adjusting our process toaccommodate that, and I could
quite easily automate it.
But the reality is, sometimesyou do something and treat
people how you'd like to betreated, and I've got a little
(52:58):
cousin that was mentallyhandicapped and I like to think
that he lives up in Queenslandbut that someone up there would
do the same thing for him.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
Mate.
That's bloody awesome.
Honestly, it's been anincredible conversation.
I know the listeners would havegot a lot out of it.
I've definitely got a lot outof it.
It's really intrigued myinterest even more into solar
panels.
But keep doing what you're doing.
I love it.
I love your passion and lookfor the guys and girls that are
listening.
Reach out to the guys at LatestEnergy on Instagram.
(53:33):
Their page is great.
You can check out everythingthey're doing there and you've
got some really good content onthere.
Look, as always, if you lovethe podcast, make sure you like,
share, subscribe, all thosetypes of things.
Go to the dwaynepearscomwebsite if you want some merch
and look, depending on when thispodcast comes out.
If you can attend my event thatwe are having on Friday, the
(53:55):
30th of May, I'd love to see youthere.
It's going to be the greatestevent the construction industry
has ever seen.
If I had to know more about you, anthony, I would have had you
there so you could be talkingabout what you're doing.
But, as always, guys, lookforward to seeing you on the
next podcast.
Take it easy.
Speaker 3 (54:10):
Hope you enjoyed.
Are you ready to build smarter,live better and enjoy life?
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Then head over to livelikebuildcom forward slash
elevate to get started.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
Everything discussed during the Level Up podcast with
me, dwayne Pearce, is basedsolely on my own personal
experiences and thoseexperiences of my guests.
The information, opinions andrecommendations presented in
this podcast are for generalinformation only, and any
reliance on and recommendationspresented in this podcast are
for general information only andany reliance on the information
provided in this podcast isdone at your own risk.
We recommend that you obtainyour own professional advice in
(54:51):
respect to the topics discussedduring this podcast.
Why is it you can get that incredible support from
overseas, but you can't getsupport from Australia?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Personally, I would love to see some industry
standards where they forcedirectors to make declarations
around what recovery ratesthey're achieving, or something
like that, where you actuallyhave to stand behind the claims
that we're making.
How much of the panel isactually getting recycled Now
we're making.
How much of the panel isactually getting recycled Now?
We're at 98% and the 2% isessentially the plastics from
(00:29):
the solar panel.
The waste that we produce isinsane.
It's only fair that we'retransparent and open with how it
all works and what happens andwhere does it go, etc.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
G'day guys.
Welcome back to another episodeof Level Up.
We have another crackingpodcast for you today.
This one actually reallyexcites me and I'm really keen
to see where this conversationgoes and what I learn from it,
because this is a topic that hasbeen on my radar for a long
time.
I'm very passionate aboutsustainability, the, the
building waste from, uh, theenvironment and putting landfill
(01:07):
in big holes in the ground andall that sort of stuff, and I
actually come across our guesttoday.
Uh, from some posts I alwaysget his name right.
I think it's yost backer.
Um, antony might be able tocorrect me if I'm saying it
wrong, but, um, oh, you've donewell, mate.
He, uh, he posted a post aboutthe guests we have on today and
I was all in and I've since beenfollowing them flat out and had
(01:27):
a few conversations and Ireally love what they're doing.
So big warm welcome to Anthonyfrom Lotus Energy.
How are you, mate?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Fantastic.
Thanks for having me on, Dwayne.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So just to give the listeners a little bit of
background, the reason I'vereached out to Anthony is
Anthony is doing incredible.
Anthony, I think it's your oldman.
Is it your son as well?
There's three generations.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, yeah, granddad and different businesses over
the journey, but all sparkiesyeah.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
These guys are doing.
You're going to learn a lottoday from this podcast.
These guys are doing worldfirst things when it comes to
solar panels and recycling them.
So, anthony, can you give us alittle bit of background, mate,
how you got into what you'redoing now?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, I'll try and give you the reasonably quick
version, dwayne, to not bore thelisteners, but essentially I
started installing solar in 1991with my dad.
I was only like 17 years of ageand from there we'll quickly
fast forward.
But essentially we installed alot of solar panels over the
(02:29):
journey and, uh, in around 2018,we were, you know, organizing
to recycle some solar panels andwe came across a company in
South Australia who claimed tobe recycling and, probably like
a lot of us, you know, we takethings on face value and we
thought, all right, that soundsgood.
All the information on thewebsite read really well
(02:53):
Sustainability and responsiblemanagement of waste, and
circular economy, and all thebuzzwords were there.
So we went ahead with that, butthen we subsequently discovered
that they weren't actuallydoing the things that they were
claiming they were doing.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
How did you find out?
Did you visit them?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I have a tendency to be a bit of a serial pest Twain
and running a big company, or ifyou want something done, you
have to continually follow it up.
I'd engage with them and theyoffered for us to visit in
actual fact initially and uh,very coy about visiting, there's
(03:32):
lots of excuses why we couldn'tvisit, etc.
And uh, we ended up finding out, they ended up admitting that
they weren't doing what theywere claiming to be doing and I
actually offered to potentiallyeven invest in them.
And I flew over to SouthAustralia and the gentleman who
headed up the that business wasliterally a no-show.
(03:52):
So I'd flown from Melbourne toAdelaide, turned up at his
office and he wasn't even there.
You know, couldn't even givethe courtesy of turning up.
So that was, it was fair to sayit was a bit of a red rag to a
bull.
And uh, not only did we takehim to court over his situation,
but uh also, uh, we went anddeveloped the entire process.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, so, um, I guess to to jump in a little bit
deeper, the um like, so you'relike, I feel, the same mate,
like so many of the um like,we're now recycling a lot of our
own products on our building.
We've just recently finishedour first completely hand
demolished full home.
All the concrete went to theconcrete recyclers, All the
bricks went to the concreterecyclers.
(04:37):
We ended up getting over 12 tonof hardwood out that is going
to be reused in other projects.
We recycled all the glass andaluminium hardwood out that is
going to be reused.
In other projects we recycle allthe glass and aluminium.
So when I saw that what youguys are doing with the solar
panels, it really sparked aninterest, because solar panels
are something that I've over along period of time.
I've almost got to a pointwhere I was talking clients out
(04:59):
of having them because I didn'tlike the materials that were
getting used to make them andbut my biggest concern was how
they were getting recycled attheir end use.
But you guys have now solvedthat and correct me if I'm wrong
, but you're leading the worldin this technology, aren't you?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Absolutely.
We started with a very what I'dsay which you know wasn't
exactly cutting edge.
I called it the T-model Fordproduction line.
You know where we managed torecover the glass and the
aluminium and the copper, whichby weight is quite a bit.
But you're right in saying youknow solar panels.
(05:40):
Have you know a number ofthings like embedded in them
that are quite problematic.
So the moment it's broken,those heavy metals are exposed
to the environment.
They can cause some leachingproblems.
But yeah, now we've got itreally at a quite high level
from a science and chemistrypoint of view, where we're
(06:00):
recovering the nanosilicon andthe silver out of the solar
panels and we're currentlymoving to a new facility which
has got a 700 square meterlaboratory which is managed
quite literally by scientists.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
That's unbelievable, mate.
Before we started recording,you were saying what's the
percentage of silver that solaruses, according you were saying
what's the percentage of silverthat solar uses?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Oh well, globally the solar industry uses about 40%
of the mining production and forthe last three years running
there's been a massive shortfallof silver, and that's purely
because of the solar industryitself.
So sure it's been fantastic forrenewable energy and everything
(06:49):
like that.
That solar panel pays foritself in energy terms and
carbon footprint in about twoyears.
But its unintended consequencesare there's certain commodities
in that are now, you know,facing a massive shortfall, and
you only have to look at thecharts of silver in the last few
(07:09):
years to see it.
But essentially, a solar panelhas about 0.2% or even less by
weight, of silver, but thatsilver makes up 50% of the
manufacturing costs just under,actually.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So really important piece to the story is we had to
get that silver out and get itback to the solar industry yeah,
so like what sparked yourinterest to do, like basically
set up a whole new businessaround recycling this, like
you're you're, I'm assuming youryour your installation business
(07:43):
was quite large.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, and we worked all over the world, I guess for
many years.
I got the same objection fromperhaps the concerns you had
around well, they can't reallybe recycled and are they all
that environmentally friendly.
And I regularly had a throwawayline about, well, we could send
(08:09):
a man to the moon but so surelywe can recycle a solar panel and
nowadays it's probably not thebest reference because there's
some questions around that aswell, but that was the throwaway
line as well.
But but that was, that was thethrowaway line and I guess you
know, once I discovered thatthis other company was doing the
(08:30):
wrong thing, I you know itdawned on me how important it
was for the industry and and howdamaging it could be if that
information came out publicly.
That you know the onlypurported recycler around was
basically, you know, fair to say, scamming their customers.
So you know we took todeveloping it and you know if
(08:52):
there was one good thing out ofCOVID, for us at least, was we
were in lockdown in Melbourneand we managed to buy a bunch of
machinery from some companiesthat I guess, guess, maybe
panicked a little bit forbusiness reasons around you know
that time and we bought up thatmachinery and did all the
testing, and we're quitefortunate to get it up and
(09:14):
running quite quickly that'sawesome so.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
But people like, as you see it all the time now,
like we uh, we even do it onrenovations There'll be solar on
the existing roof and it'll beworn out and old.
So the spark will say, hey look, this system's garbage.
It's not up to new code, itneeds to go.
And so I've asked the questionbefore.
(09:38):
They always tell me they'retaking it to a recycling plant.
Where is it going?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
recycling plant.
Where is it going?
Well, depending on where you'retalking about, in in australia,
most probably.
Uh, it's been sent off to ayard, bundled into a shipping
container with a second-hand car.
Uh, falsely purported as justsecond-hand vehicles in the in
the container it's's shipped toNigeria, in Africa, where they
either sell them in markets or,if they can't recover or get
(10:10):
them working, still they'reburnt in fields.
What?
Yeah?
So it's actually anenvironmental disaster.
It's listed as one of the top10 environmental disasters in
the world and sadly, ourindustry turns a blind eye to it
or pretends it's.
You know it's actually a goodthing because it's solar, for
(10:33):
you know communities and peoplewho can't afford it.
They're literally sending itoff.
It's not tested, it's not safeor we couldn't certify that it's
safe.
We're not happy to have it onour own roof, but we'll send it
to someone else in africa forten dollars, you know, yeah it's
something that I'm reallypassionate about.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Look, I guess it's it's hard like you, can't you?
We all try and do our best, butlike, like, sustainability is
obviously thrown around a lotnow, especially in the building
industry, and there's a lot ofbuilders out there that are
trying to do the right thing andwanting to do the right thing,
but, like, I'm just, I'm alwaysthat person that, like wants to
look into it further, like allright, oh well, where's it going
(11:16):
?
Like you did with the, with theplant that you're sending to,
but I've never done it with thesolar.
Like I've done it a lot withthe timber and the concrete.
Like I know how that getsmanaged.
But, to be honest, I justthought, electrical waste like
you send it to, you put it inthe e-bens and you, like we take
it to our scrappies and theyseparate it, and I thought, oh,
it's, it's got to be gettingdealt with correctly.
(11:36):
But, um, after hearing your,your stats and some of the
conversations we've had abouthow you're leading the way in
the world, and it's obviouslynot happening the way we think
it's happening, you know solar'snot alone, and e-waste for that
matter as well that, uh,there's so many things that are
(11:57):
just completely wrong.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
And you, coming from the building industry, obviously
duane, you've got a whole heapof local, state, federal
building codes and laws andsafety requirements that you
have to adhere to.
The safety requirements stillexist for the recycling industry
, but there are no standards,and I mean none.
There's things that theypurport that they're going to
(12:24):
crack down on, you know if it'sclassified as a hazardous waste.
I've seen it firsthand.
I've reported things to EPAsaround the country or named
particular states or anything,but no one seems to care.
The more interested in you knowwinning a grant from the
(12:48):
government than they are aboutyou know calling out the truth
of what's really going on.
And uh, hey, you know, recentlyup in queensland, only a week or
two ago, there was an articlein the you know from the abc uh
online and I think it wasjasmine hines uh published the
article about a company, solarrecovery corporation.
(13:10):
They're now saying that they'regoing to be up and running in,
I think, march or may 2026.
They they did a press releasein, I'll say, february 22, 2022
saying they'll be up and runningin a month or two.
They've been bundling up solarpanels and sending them offshore
(13:30):
for years and industry bodiesare holding conferences and
getting these people to talkabout recycling and the
wonderful things they're doing.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
It's quite a farce man, it seems to me it happens a
lot, especially in the buildingindustry, and, like you say,
there's so many companies outthere just doing ticking boxes
to get these grants.
But if people actually digdeeper, they're, they're not
following through on things, butlike I don't, I imagine, mate
with what you're doing.
You're you're getting supportfrom the government?
Speaker 2 (14:01):
not at all it's not not one little bit, mate.
We, we um, look, we, we had a.
We did win one grant fromSustainability Victoria which
actually, ironically, related toavoiding solar panels going to
recycling.
So, and that was arounddeveloping a testing procedure
for, you know, reuse andrepurpose of solar panels, which
(14:23):
we still think is a great idea,and we developed that in
collaboration with VictoriaUniversity and Torres Group
Electrical.
And there was a second part toit which was a safe handling and
decommissioning of solar panels, which we developed a training
course with the Solar trainingcenter.
So we got support fromsustainability Vic for that.
(14:47):
But, as I say, the irony wasthat was to avoid recycling.
Clearly, we've got too manysolar panels, you know if we
want to avoid it.
But, yeah, like, in reality, thebest support we've had thus far
is actually from internationalgovernment.
So we've been recognized foryou know the world-leading
(15:08):
standards that we've achievedand we've got a facility that
we've got in planning and we'vealready signed off an agreement
for Germany and I head off thisweekend back to Germany, germany
and I head off this weekendback to Germany and we've
(15:29):
already signed off on the firstof three sites for India as well
, and, like, both countries havegiven amazing support
financially and other ways interms of, you know, setting up
and you know setting up and youknow employment and HR and uh,
training and planning and allthe different aspects.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Why isn't it that incredible support from overseas
but you can't get support fromAustralia?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
No, well it's.
You know there.
You know there's there's a bigdifference.
You know there's a bigdifference, as we know there's a
big difference between whatpoliticians say on television or
radio or any form of mediaversus the reality, and you know
, it's fair to say, I'm fairlydisgruntled with it all.
(16:20):
We're in Victoria, in Thomastown, we sit in the electorate of
the Minister of Environment,lily D'Ambrosio.
We've invited her out numeroustimes.
Zero interest in coming.
She did a public announcementhow the state government was
investing $10 million into, Ithink, what they called the
(16:42):
circular PV challenge for anyonethat could recycle solar panels
.
Now, bear in mind we'reprobably less than five
kilometers from her office.
They made that statement aboutwhat they were doing.
They never gave out any moneyto anyone, us included in that
story.
And the day before the electionwe were asked to put on a
(17:02):
display for her and DanielAndrews and despite my feelings
in regards to that, we did itbecause I thought it could be
positive, create some awarenessand everything that was on the
Friday before the election.
We did all that and they madeall these amazing statements
about how they were supportingus and what they were going to
(17:23):
do and everything, and we neverheard from them again.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's terrible, it's absolutely
terrible and mainly.
I guess that's another reason Iwanted to get you on the podcast
, because my belief is thatunless there's individuals out
there that are spreading theirpassion about what they do and
highlighting what actuallyhappens in real life, especially
in the construction industry,like politicians have no idea
whatsoever about how ourindustry works.
(17:49):
We've got to share our storiesand tell what happens on a
day-to-day basis in thisindustry.
I guess it's hats off to you,mate, for continually pushing
forward and getting it to whereyou have now.
That's a massive undertaking,I'm sure, for you, financially
bloody in all ways, to get it tothe point where it's at now.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, no, thanks, dwayne.
I'd say it's probably easierthan what you've done, though
dismantling an entire house andtrying to find a home for all of
the various components, that'sa super challenge.
Like a lot of respect, you know, hearing that you'd done that
because, uh, I wouldn't knowwhere to start with half of
those products that come through.
We, we uh recently dismantled a, you know, a small solar farm
(18:37):
in terms of, you know, today'sstandards, but of course you
know it was old, it was at endof life and everything.
So it was, uh, 600 kilowatts,about two and a half thousand
solar panels, and we, uh, weorganized for all the concrete
pads to be recycled, so theywere all moved out.
I think it was like 600 ton ofconcrete.
(18:58):
It was about 60 ton of steelfrom all the structural frames
and everything, about six ton ofaluminum, about four ton of
copper cable, which is very nice.
Of course You're not in theconstruction industry if you
don't know the value of copperand of course all the e-waste
from it had what they callstring inverters, so smaller
(19:22):
inverters you're breaking thesystem up into.
I think there were 60, 10kilowatt systems, effectively,
and then, of course, all thesolar panels.
So we managed to organize forevery single piece of that to be
recycled, and obviously there'sdifferent recovery rates in all
the different pieces there, butwe were really proud of how we
(19:46):
managed that and there was a lotof learning for us as well of
how we manage that and there wasa lot of learning for us as
well.
Dealing with the client was thefirst time we'd dismantled a
solar farm, but, yeah, it'sfantastic that it's happening
now.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah, it's awesome.
So can we talk about somenumbers?
So, on average, what's thelifespan of a solar panel?
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, it's a broad question.
If know, if I, if I said thesolar panels that I started
installing as a, as a youngbloke, they were bp solar panels
.
We get those coming in andthey're 30, you know, 25 to say
35 years old.
They're still working like theday that I made.
They've hardly had anydegradation at all, which is
(20:28):
quite incredible.
Obviously, you know, as we massproduce things and we try and
refine it and, of course, pushcosts down as well,
substantially now, depending onbrands, as short as seven years,
you know, and you know prettyregularly, I would say 10 to 25
(20:54):
years is probably the morerealistic band where they would
sit.
There is still a lot that getdecommissioned prematurely
though.
You know, like what you weresaying, you're doing a, an
extension, or you know, say,knocking over a building and a
rebuild or something, that thesolar system's fine, but you
know if you're going to removeit the moment you remove it,
(21:17):
then you have to meet thecurrent standards and you can't
reinstall it anyhow.
So, uh, there's a lot of thathappening.
There's a lot of the electric,electric vehicle and battery.
You know, combination or evensingular, that people get an
electric vehicle.
They, you know, of course, wantto charge their, their car, you
(21:37):
know off their own solar asset.
They realize that it's probablytoo small what they installed
several years ago to servicetheir house and the car, so so
they then install a battery,make the solar system a lot
larger, probably max out theirroof, and for aesthetic reasons.
Us Aussies, we act like we'rereally laid back, but we're
(22:00):
still a bit superficial.
So we have a tendency to notwant two different looking
systems on the roof, so weremove the old one and put a
nice new big one in yeah, look,I say every day in this industry
is a learning day, it's aschool day.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
And we, um, we've got a huge refurb job we're doing
at the moment and the clientsactually only put the um, the
existing system, on the house.
Uh, they tell us about four tofive years ago that, because of
the refurb and extension workwe're doing, um, that section of
roof has to be replaced so thatwe had to remove the solar
system.
(22:34):
And so, honestly, I justthought it was a simple get the
solar company out, take it off.
So when I've quoted the job,I've rung our solar installer up
and he's going oh yeah, it's,it's this per panel to to remove
and it's this per panel toreinstall.
And so that's what I put in myproposal.
And then we've got the job,we're underway, and they've come
(22:54):
out to remove the panels andthey're like oh shit, duane,
there's going to be extra costshere.
We can put these back on, butthe fixing clips need to be
upgraded.
They don't make code anymore.
The electrical fixings don'tmake code anymore.
Code anymore.
The electrical fixings don'tmeet code anymore.
And yeah, I'm like well, mate,like it's got to be up to code,
so give me a price to reinstallit the way it has to be, and the
(23:16):
cost to reinstall it the way ithas to be is half the cost of a
new system.
So we've then we've then goneto the client and explained to
them what's happened and they'relike, oh well, shit, like, for
that amount of money again, wewould rather have a brand new
system.
And I'm like, come on, guys,seriously, it's not that old and
it still works.
Let's just work with it Exactlylike you said.
(23:40):
Us Aussies, as much as we saywe're laid back, we want
everything looking nice andshiny and matching and new.
And this is on a roof, that it'son a three-story house that no
one can see it from anydirection, but like with the
back to the numbers, like out ofa solar panel, like what's the
actual data, like what are yougetting out of a panel, Like how
(24:02):
much of the panel is actuallygetting recycled.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Sure.
So now we're at 98% and the 2%is essentially the plastics from
the solar panel.
There's a back sheet and aplastic junction box and a bit
of cable sheath and anencapsulate which is a piece
that the cells themselves sit in.
(24:24):
The heavy piece to the wholestory is the glass, so that's 75
, 80% of the weight.
Uh, the aluminum is, you know,it ranges of course, but you
know, say, 10 to 10 to 15%.
We recover all that.
We recover the copper cable offthe back and get the copper out
.
(24:44):
Um, probably the, the real, Iguess, intriguing piece and the.
You know, the part of thepuzzle that we'd always had our,
our mindset on achieving wasgetting the solar cells out of
the solar panel themselves.
And so when you, when you lookat a solar panel, you'll see,
you know they're normally blueor black, typically, and as a
(25:05):
general rule, it's your meansthat they're polycrystalline or
monocrystalline.
There's there's lots of othersorts as well, but they're the
most common.
And those solar cells, theysometimes call them a wafer.
It's incredibly thin siliconmetal, and this is why you
should never walk on a solarpanel, whereas if you ever see
(25:28):
someone walk on them Dwayne, onone of the sites they're not
doing a good thing.
They're definitely damaging thesolar panel.
They get what they call microcracks.
So they're incredibly fragile.
They have very low tolerance toany like flexation and they
will shatter.
They will shatter.
So, if you can imagine, we'vegot to somehow manage that solar
(25:53):
panel.
Work out how to get this big,call it sticker, the EVA back
sheet off then it's in it andencapsulate and get the cell out
and try and maintain that piecewith.
You know it's fine to break it,but minimally, uh.
And and then from that piece ofSilicon metal it's got a whole
bunch of other uh, typicallymetals that they've uh layered
(26:14):
on it.
Well, they call it doping to uhcreate the positive or negative
charge to, you know, get theelectricity to flow through.
And then the really finelooking tiny little lines on it
not the bigger ones there are,they're silver.
Tiny little lines on it, notthe bigger ones, they're silver.
(26:34):
And so from that point where weworked out how to get the cells
out, we then worked out how toclean the silicon cell down and
get all the other differentpieces off silicon nitride and
chromium and boron and a bit oflead there's some aluminium
embedded in some of them as well, and get all of those things
out and have a pure silicon.
And then we've created aprocess on how to break down
(26:59):
that silicon metal down intowhat's called a nano-silicon.
And nano-silicon is like theholy grail of electric vehicle
and all sorts of batteries, forthat matter.
It's also used in militaryapplications, in biomedicines,
in agriculture and in thesilicon chip.
So nano silicon is incrediblyimportant from a national
(27:25):
security perspective and we'renow producing that, which is
just awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Mate, I just learned a hell of a lot in my last five
minutes.
I never thought a solar panelcould be so interesting, but is
the process itself safe?
Do you have to introduce morechemicals that make all this
happen, or is it a safe process?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Well, we would have done it a lot quicker had we
have used chemicals and justskipped a whole heap of R&D that
we've been doing.
So we managed to do it withnaturally occurring acids, which
means that our waste quiteliterally being alkal, being a
you know, alkaline or acid based, we can actually neutralize it
(28:13):
and it can be washed down thedrain legally and everything
from an epa perspective, and I'mhappy for you to publish this,
this part, uh, the.
We could have used thehydrofluoric, uh acid or
hydrochloric acid,hydrofluoric's like really nasty
, really dangerous stuff, and itwould have quite simply cleaned
(28:34):
down.
But then we would have createda whole heap of other byproducts
, like chemicals, that we wouldhave had to deal, dealt with.
And you know, for us, being arenewable energy related
business, it was justcounterintuitive to say, oh
great, we fix one problem andcreate another yeah yeah like
what?
Speaker 1 (28:53):
what's the outcome of this?
Like, obviously it's incrediblethat you're doing this and it's
happening and they're gettingrecycled.
What's the, I guess whathappens with all the materials
that you're getting out of this?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
so at the moment uh, see the nano silicon we've got a
company overseas that's beenutilizing it from us.
So they're a publicly listedcompany, neo Battery Materials.
So it's getting used to makebattery anodes and like to put
it in perspective we're makingthat nano silicon at 50
(29:26):
nanometers, which is 51millionths of a millimeter, so
the particles are incrediblysmall and those particles
enhance batteries Unbelievably.
So we've already done severaltrials ourselves and we've
(29:47):
produced batteries that areworking at 10 to 12 times
density.
And what that means is thatyou're, say, the electric
vehicle world, because where alot of people talk about drive
range stress and they don'tdrive far enough just yet for
them to, perhaps, you know,purchase one.
It will take a, you know,typical 500 kilometer drive
(30:10):
range vehicle and make itsomewhere between five and six
thousand kilometers.
Yeah, yeah, and this, thistech's already working.
It's not like it's, you know,science fiction and it's got a
whole heap of problems, like,you know, some other things that
get purported out in themarketplace.
This thing actually is alreadyworking.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
It's the sort of stuff.
Look, I'm definitely not a fanof the electric vehicles, but
that again that's something thatwould change my mind, because
if you're getting that sort ofrange out of the vehicle, it
completely changes all theenvironmental stuff that comes
with that vehicle.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, and you can massively reduce the, you know,
because the size of the battery,which means a lot less cobalt,
a lot less lithium, a lot lesscopper um, because obviously we
don't need a five, six thousandkilometer drive range, so only
heavy transport would perhaps beinterested in that.
But you know, two, threethousand kilometers, like if you
(31:08):
could drive, say, from you know, sydney to Melbourne or Sydney
to Brisbane or something likethat.
That's substantial, it's uh.
Maybe do 4,000 Ks and driveMelbourne to Perth, yeah, it's
uh.
That's definitely a gamechanger for the industry.
And of course, that samebattery could be applied to a
power network, or a laptop forthat matter as well.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Yeah, that's interesting, but you guys are
doing.
I saw on your like I've seen onyour site shows you're, you're,
you're coming up with somepretty creative ways, aren't you
Like you're making?
Actually, I saw one of yourthings that I was really
interested in some of the Biprocproduct you're using to go into
render or something, aren't you?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, that one's sort of a funny story because we're
getting all this glass comingout of the solar panels and
we're trying to come up withlots of different applications
for it because the volumes arejust ridiculous to manage and
(32:12):
the perfect world.
The glass goes back to makingmore glass for solar panels.
And it's a high purity glass.
For obvious reasons it has tobe nice and clear and, you know,
for the light to go through andnot diffract, and but you know
some of it, you know through theprocess, are already broken so
they may already have some sortof level of contamination in
(32:34):
them.
So we're looking at you know,we made fire rated tiles for it
to go behind batteries andtabletops and tilt mount ballast
systems for solar and, yeah,this render product.
So we had this glass you'relike so it's silicon dioxide
glass and so it's essentially asand and but it was coming out
(32:59):
really fine like around 20microns, which is like talcum
powder, just for the listeners,you can literally rub this stuff
on your face and your skin willfeel smoother, not cut you like
you imagine with glass.
And I had a guy that told us hewas doing some teaching around
rendering products and could heperhaps take some just some
(33:23):
samples and do some trials, etcetera.
And he was teaching at a TAFEout of Melbourne and, of course,
we're quite happy to findanother home for the products
and send it off to him.
In actual fact, I followed himup and he said you know how is
it going?
And I thought you know he wasgoing to explain to me how he'd
(33:45):
done.
You know some walls at the tafeand the students were, you know
, playing around with it anddoing different.
You know trials with it.
Uh, he sends me some photos ofsome heritage buildings that
they've been repairing with itand he, he repairs buildings for
various national trusts aroundthe country and he told me it's
(34:06):
the best render product he'sever ever experienced.
And, uh, he's now teachingeveryone to to use this product,
which at the time was hilariousbecause we didn't even have it
commercially available.
It was just uh, uh, you knowsomething we, something we kept
gifting to him for the purposeof the trials and doing the R&D.
Those photos are literallyheritage buildings in Melbourne
(34:30):
that I think you've seen on oursocials.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Oh mate, they're the sort of little things that catch
my eye.
Not only are you recycling theproduct, but it's getting
repurposed in heritage buildings, which is saving.
Saving like, saving history,really like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Well, one of the most important things for us was to
not just recycle it but makesure that the products get
utilized locally where we canlike and so we can't for
everything, uh but that we'renot a company that will give up
because we've had one or twono's.
We keep looking for othersolutions.
(35:08):
But the glass locally, we'vebeen able to get a home for all
of it.
The big challenge has been themetals.
So Australia has lost a lot ofits manufacturing capabilities,
of course, to China, as we know,and other countries.
But the metal industry is areally odd one, because
(35:30):
Australia is the home to what Ibelieve to be the greatest
resources on earth.
I think we've got every singlecommodity known to man.
We dig it up out of the groundin, you know, bauxite or ores or
whatever, and very littleprocessing happens here.
We send it offshore and we buyit back in the form of a
manufactured product.
(35:50):
We're we're encouragingbusinesses to engage with us and
, uh, look to find ways toutilize the products here.
But, yeah, at, the metals endup in offshore India, china,
singapore, japan, south Korea.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
Australia really needs to wakeup to itself.
With all that stuff, there'sgoing to come a point in history
where we're going to need theresources we've had and there
won't be enough left to do whatwe need to do absolutely like
casing point.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
As I was saying earlier, silver like there's
there's a global shortage of it.
So the best thing we can do ismine the resources we've already
got at hand, which is our waste.
So you know, heard thisreference, urban mining, which I
think is really cool of ofmining the materials that we've
got at hand.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, Back to the Render product.
Is that a product that you'repotentially going to be
releasing or selling, or is itjust something that's a bit of a
trial and error type thing?
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Well, it's something that we're keen on, actually
engaging with a company thatperhaps already makes Render.
We don't want to be everythingto everyone and we're quite
happily to find a home for it.
At present, we've beenproducing it ourselves and we
would love to see it off with acompany locally in Australia
(37:16):
using that as a manufacturedproduct.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
No, like I said at the beginning, mate, like I, I
um first saw you on a post thatum, yos Baca did and uh, so that
I'm assuming that was a prettygood experience to like.
I love what he's doing and howhe's thinking outside the box
and just coming up with someincredible ways to to change the
building industry.
(37:40):
So I imagine for you that wouldhave been pretty exciting to
get him involved oh, absolutely,mate, he's.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
He's quite an inspiration and you know, for
full disclosure, he's a goodfriend as well and uh, uh.
But what I love about yost ishe will only promote something
that he truly believes in,he's's passionate about.
He doesn't do it because he'sgetting paid by those people or
anything like that.
He does it because, you know,it's what he believes in and
(38:10):
everything comes from the heart.
Yeah, some of the things he'sdone is incredible.
I went out to the school thathe did out at Dramana in Woodley
in Victoria where they builtthe green roof and it's hard to
comprehend I've also got abackground in construction but a
dead flat roof that holds sixinches of water and that's part
(38:33):
of the engineering design andthat's how they hold these
rooftop gardens, essentially,and grasses and everything that
they're putting on.
It goes against all theprinciples of construction and
how we'd normally do it, ofcourse.
We're trying to get rid of thewater and we're definitely not
making it dead flat.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
So where to for Lotus Energy?
What's the plan?
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Well, we've got the sites that we're developing
offshore.
Now we want to expand intoquite literally every state.
But we're realistic.
We've got to manage thatprocess and you can't do it
overnight for these things.
For us, plus, one of the bigstrategies, which is more medium
(39:24):
to longer term, is developingand manufacturing batteries in
Australia from the recycledproducts, and that's something
that we're working on right now,and I would love to see
Australia manufacturingsemiconductors and silicon chips
as well and somehow be a partof that.
(39:46):
I don't expect we'll be makingsilicon chips, but I'd love to
be the supplier of some of thecommodities to produce it.
It's not something that we allsit back and ponder on, maybe on
a Friday Arvo or something,having a beer or wine, but the
reason Taiwan is so importantglobally has nothing to do with
(40:09):
it's just sitting off the coastof China or America and China
suddenly decided that they're animportant little country in the
world.
It's more to do with a companycalled Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Corporation which,for your listeners' knowledge,
is the biggest company on earth.
They're bigger than Google,they're bigger than Apple and
(40:30):
Microsoft and all these giantcorporations that are household
names.
These guys are the biggestsilicon chip manufacturers in
the world and they areincredibly important because
everything nowadays pretty muchhas a silicon chip in it and, if
it's not already a iot ai sortof base device, someone's
(40:52):
probably making one.
That is so, uh, for, fornational security reasons, for
any country controlling, youknow, critical minerals and some
of these key core products totechnology is really important,
and australia has everyopportunity to bring it back on
(41:13):
shore.
You know we we're no longermanufacturing things with.
You know, people sitting with asoldering iron and smoking a
cigarette, like the old imageswe saw of the 80s and maybe
early 90s of China.
Everything today is fullyautomated.
The picture that we've stillgot in our head is completely
(41:35):
outdated.
China currently has batterymanufacturing plants that they
call dark factories.
These things are incredible,and the reason they call them
dark is there's no lights on inthe building until a human walks
in there, because they'recompletely run by robots,
including the repairs andmaintenance, and it's just
(41:55):
incredible.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, no, it absolutely blows my mind the way
that things are going and itseems to be speeding up at a
rapid pace now, mate.
So just for our listeners, likewhat else does Lotus Energy do?
Like what's we sort of got likethis is.
It's actually been a really,really interesting and educating
conversation.
I've taken away a lot already.
(42:18):
We sort of we did jump forwardquite a bit like where's your
passion?
Like what, what, what made youget to do what you do now?
Speaker 2 (42:28):
yeah, I I love the the renewables side of things.
Like we, you know, build bigcommercial, industrial, uh,
solar pv assets and we weredoing that under what they call
a power purchase agreement, andI would say we were delivering
the only power purchaseagreement, so it was we'll put a
big solar asset, let's say, ona manufacturing plant or
(42:51):
something, and they pay for theenergy that they use and that's
it.
They don't pay anything else andthey get cheaper energy, and so
we were doing a lot of that andwe still do that.
But, uh, you know, we werecreating this way, so we're part
of the problem, of course, andI guess now the passion really
sits in the recycling space and,uh, you know, personally I
(43:15):
would love to see, uh, someindustry standards where they
force directors to makedeclarations around what
recovery rates are achieving, orsomething like that, where you
actually have to stand behind.
You know the claims that we'remaking, but, you know, for now
we just keep working on ourinnovation and, you know,
(43:36):
hopefully one day you'll see aLotus battery out there, which
is, you know, a world-leadingbattery made in Australia.
Yeah, and you know, that said,if we were, you know or not, if
once we're up and running inGermany and India.
We'd have the same intent keepit local there as well.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's bloody awesome, man.
Look, I definitely agree withwhat you just said.
Like I think the whole buildingindustry um needs a shake-up
when it comes to sustainabilityand recycling.
I think, like personally, asowning a building business, I
take it very seriously about theproducts we can salvage out of
homes, and like the buildingindustry contributes so much
(44:16):
waste to landfill and yet wehave all these housing
affordability problems, we haveshortage problems, like there's
like timber there's a lot ofproblems with timber at the
moment, like all those types ofthings and yet we're we're
demolishing timber.
That is the best timber in theworld because it it's been
(44:38):
around 40, 50, 70 years, and yetyou just bring a machine in and
munch it up and throw it backin the Old hardwoods and
everything and yeah, yeah,across the board.
There are so many things, and Iactually think you raised a
really good point about Aussiesjust wanting all the
good-looking flash stuff,because I talk about this a lot.
(45:00):
Everyone expects perfection andso, like we see it a lot in our
buildings, like people buy thebeautiful tapware or the the
light fittings and like,especially, taps.
Like you buy a good quality tapthese days and you open the
cardboard box and inside thecardboard box it's inside a bag,
(45:23):
and then inside the bag it'sall molded foam and then, and
then you then the tap itself isinside another soft bag and like
the waste is unbelievable andand I get it like no one wants
to have a, a new tap in theirhome.
It's got a scratch on it.
But I really do think we'vegone too far.
(45:44):
Like the waste that we produceis insane and that's why, again,
that's why I reached out to youand I wanted to know more about
what you're doing, because Ijust I love seeing and talking
to people that are passionateand that, like you said yourself
, like you were part of theproblem, like I believe that
with my building business, I'mpart of the problem, like I
believe that with my buildingbusiness.
I'm part of the problem.
I'm building homes that areproducing lots of waste, so I
(46:06):
need to come up with solutionsto reduce that waste, and I,
just again, I take my hat off toyou, mate, for doing what you
do.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Have you seen the Rhino recycling facility in
Pinkenba?
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Pinkenba yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah, mate, I actually caught up with those
guys a few weeks ago.
That facility up there is justincredible.
You're doing 450 ton just onthe construction waste piece 450
ton per hour.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Holy doly.
Yes, I haven't seen it.
A guy told me about it a fewmonths ago and said it's
something you'd really need tocheck out.
Is that the one that they'vebuilt to deal with a lot of the
Olympic, because there's goingto be a lot of waste when they
start doing the Olympic work?
Speaker 2 (46:56):
I'm not sure about the reference to the Olympics.
It wouldn't surprise me,because this thing is huge and
it's dealing with, you know,road, road waste, construction
waste it's mainly, you know,construction related waste.
Uh, and it's, it's justincredible, it's unbelievably
impressive and it's great to see.
(47:17):
Like you know, sometimes thebest you can do is create a low
value product coming back out.
You know a cement or bitumenbased, you know additive or
something like that, and to me,anything's better than nothing,
whereas people are very quick todismiss things oh, they're only
achieving X.
Well, it's better thanachieving nothing.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Yeah, and it's better .
Well, and it's better than itgoing back in the hole in the
ground.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Absolutely, because, well, the other thing to that is
the alternative is we dig it upsomewhere and we send it off
and it gets processed and thenit gets transported to where we
want it delivered for theconstruction.
And if we're talking likecement-based products, then
there's a whole nother thingaround the you know the carbon
(48:05):
footprint from the heatingprocess of making the cement and
everything, and so justreducing that is an awesome
thing, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Mate, look, I really appreciate your time this
afternoon.
Thanks for jumping on.
So where can our listeners findyou?
What's your best contact?
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Probably easiest just going to our website like
lotusrecyclingcomau, or ourphone number is 1300-0-LOTUS, so
pretty easy, hopefully.
And yeah, look, we're happy toengage with people and, like we
get, we're in melbourne so it'snot always practical for
logistics, you know from allover the country, but uh, we're
(48:49):
really collaborative as well, sowe're open to sharing ideas
with people.
People just want to come andvisit and see how it, how it all
happens.
We're we're very transparentbecause we've you know me in
particular I've been verycritical of some.
You know let's call them badactors out in the out in the
industry.
So you know, it's only fairthat we're transparent and open
(49:12):
with you know how it all worksand what happens and where does
it go, etc.
So, yeah, we doesn't have to bethat someone just wants to send
us, you know, some e-waste orcable or solar panels or
whatever.
We're open to anything and wehappily support community things
as well, yeah, and go and checkout your Instagram.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
You've got a lot of good stuff on your Instagram.
But just before we go, how doesit actually work, like if
someone brings a solar panel toyou?
I'm assuming there's a fee.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Yeah, yeah, there there is.
So at present it's a flat feeof 12 dollars uh per panel.
Yeah, uh, gate fee.
If they bring cable andmounting gear, we uh, you know
obviously credit them money back.
So it typically offsets itanyhow, uh, you know, from from
the other scrap.
If you like, I'll share withyou just quickly the process.
(50:06):
We've got a couple of differentparts to the process.
One's a thermal process that weuse to get the solar cells out.
Once those cells are out,that's when it goes into the
laboratory and that's a bitwe've got heavily under wraps in
terms of the IP.
But essentially that's howwe're getting the silicon and
the nano silicon and then thesilver, the recycling plant
(50:28):
itself, depending on the stateof the solar panel, because they
can come in all states, ofcourse.
But the brutal version is so ifthey're like heavily damaged or
something, that goes through amechanical process.
So it basically shreds them up,sends it down some conveyors
and there's some overbeltmagnets to pull out any steel,
(50:50):
any ferrous metal, and then itgoes into a mill.
Basically it pulverizes it andmakes it into small pieces down
to like five, 10 mil sort ofsize.
At that stage the glassactually, through that process
becomes powder and then it usespneumatic air and gravity and so
it actually transports thematerial up to the roof and goes
(51:12):
through a cyclone and zigzagwhich is pretty common from the
mining industry and so the heavymaterial will fall out at that
point and that's where thealuminium falls out in, almost
like the old slug gun pallets itlooks like.
And then there's air suctionand the air it sucks away the
glass and the plastic and then,because of the size
(51:34):
differentiator, we can sievethem out and actually separate
and have them all separated yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
I'd love to next time I'm with Danaly, mate, I'm
going to try and pop in andbloody see what you're doing
there.
Seriously 12 bucks a day seemspretty bloody reasonable to
considering all the advantagesof what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
I just find the whole thing exciting.
It's something.
Yeah, look, and I'd love tohave you visit.
We're in the process of moving,so we'll have the new site up
and running in 12 weeks, so youcan come and see it.
Sitting there dormant at themoment, unfortunately, because
we're decommissioning, but atthe new location, and with good
(52:16):
reason, we're increasing ourcapacity.
We're more than doubling ourcapacity to where we're going to
Awesome, yeah, also improvingthe efficiency.
Of course, we're doing somereally cool stuff.
We're putting in a NDIS workersline, so we're supporting our
(52:37):
social impact and giving jobsfor some disability workers and
adjusting our process toaccommodate that, and I could
quite easily automate it.
But the reality is, sometimesyou do something and treat
people how you'd like to betreated, and I've got a little
(52:58):
cousin that was mentallyhandicapped and I like to think
that he lives up in Queenslandbut that someone up there would
do the same thing for him.
Speaker 1 (53:11):
Mate.
That's bloody awesome.
Honestly, it's been anincredible conversation.
I know the listeners would havegot a lot out of it.
I've definitely got a lot outof it.
It's really intrigued myinterest even more into solar
panels.
But keep doing what you're doing.
I love it.
I love your passion and lookfor the guys and girls that are
listening.
Reach out to the guys at LatestEnergy on Instagram.
(53:33):
Their page is great.
You can check out everythingthey're doing there and you've
got some really good content onthere.
Look, as always, if you lovethe podcast, make sure you like,
share, subscribe, all thosetypes of things.
Go to the dwaynepearscomwebsite if you want some merch
and look, depending on when thispodcast comes out.
If you can attend my event thatwe are having on Friday, the
(53:55):
30th of May, I'd love to see youthere.
It's going to be the greatestevent the construction industry
has ever seen.
If I had to know more about you, anthony, I would have had you
there so you could be talkingabout what you're doing.
But, as always, guys, lookforward to seeing you on the
next podcast.
Take it easy.
Speaker 3 (54:10):
Hope you enjoyed.
Are you ready to build smarter,live better and enjoy life?
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Then head over to livelikebuildcom forward slash
elevate to get started.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
Everything discussed during the Level Up podcast with
me, dwayne Pearce, is basedsolely on my own personal
experiences and thoseexperiences of my guests.
The information, opinions andrecommendations presented in
this podcast are for generalinformation only, and any
reliance on and recommendationspresented in this podcast are
for general information only andany reliance on the information
provided in this podcast isdone at your own risk.
We recommend that you obtainyour own professional advice in
(54:51):
respect to the topics discussedduring this podcast.
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