Who will win the biggest and most promising disruptor at Circular Disruption’s Spanish Inquisition? Here’s a sneak peek at the five big contestants and what they will talk about.
Buildonix
Maurice Lake is a builder, entrepreneur, and innovator with more than 30 years’ experience across the full spectrum of construction trades. He developed Buildonix after the kind of frustration many people feel about the time and quality it takes to get things built. It’s taken more than 14 years, but finally Maurice has a building system that he says is smarter, safer, and more sustainable than traditional building methods.
Buildonix can be used for any purpose you might want – whether it’s forever homes, granny flats or just a new bathroom. It offers a modular, components-based rapid assembly system and completion in as little as four to six weeks.
Maurice will tell our Spanish Inquisition (or shark tank!) that the system removes permanent fixing and that, instead, components can be locked in place or unlocked and reused with no damage to infrastructure.
Everything is built in a factory, on-site and by hand, eliminating on-site construction waste and significantly improving efficiency and speed. The product also claims better productivity, lower energy consumption, and skills easy to pick up. Meaning thousands of new jobs might be possible.
What will the judges think?
Reynard Wood
Reynard Wood offers timber made from waste and other more regenerative composite materials. Its latest timber product, the hybrid sleeper, is a “timber” that looks just like wood but is made from industrial waste, including hemp fibres and iron ore tailings (waste from steel processing). It even claims to outperform real timber. It is plastic free, fireproof and non-toxic.
Founder George Reinke says it’s “as strong as concrete but 60 per cent lighter, and 100 per cent recyclable.”
He adds that the waste used to produce his timber range was abundant and practised circular economy principles and reduced the approximately 80,000 tonnes of waste going to landfill. And it could be hitting the shelves at Bunnings as early as 2026.
Zeoform
Designers are clamouring to get a hold of Zeoform’s products – a material made only from wastepaper and water. It produces no downstream contaminants, no rare earths, no modern slavery risk and no long haul transport carbon emissions. Products made from it are both lightweight and strong, and it is self binding, meaning no toxic glues. Once you are done with it, you can put it in the compost.
Founder Alf Wheeler says the secret is that the raw material is “milled to a nano level”. And the concept has exploded in popularity, with well known designers offering to make products in collaboration with the company since it could unlock high end design that are fully sustainable and “no greenwash.”
Australian Hemp Masonry Company
Klara Marosszeky comes from a big family of academics, architects and engineers, so when it came time to test her hemp masonry panels, it was no problem getting a university research partner under her belt. As an emerging product, it’s necessary for it to prove its claims, including that it’s very fire resistant, thermally and acoustically insulating and pretty well carbon neutral.
Marosszeky has even more upbeat claims: it takes just four months and a single hectare to grow enough of the crop to build an entire house.
Among projects so far are nearly 300 houses and major commercial buildings in Hobart and Powerhouse Place, Mildura, on the Murray River in Victoria.
Closed Loop Environmental Solutions
Closed Loop Environmental Solutions (or just Closed Loop) is a circular economy consultancy with multiple hats, including creating recycled products, waste and resource assessment and food and sustainable waste management.
Most well known is its Simply Cups program, a paper cup recycling program, likely seen around near coffee shops and petrol stations – which is then used to create things such as car wheel stops, concrete products, saveBOARD building materials, aircon mounting blocks, garden beds and edgings, fence posts and, ironically, reusable coffee cups.
Up for interrogation at the event will be its PAK-PAVE fibre, made from the collected recycled coffee cups to replace the fibre products used as an asphalt additive in stone mastic asphalt (SMA). The company suggests SMA is 40 per cent more expensive but also 40 per cent thinner, which means it also reduces other ingredients required by 40 per cent. The net effect promises carbon savings from reduced extractions and truck movements. And using the coffee cup fibre increases durability.
Circular economy manager Brendan Lee said SMAs have been met with relative resistance from the industry and require assistance to scale up efforts to educate engineers and infrastructure professionals.
Join the judges and pitch in for our Spanish Inquisition with our venture capitalists: Jonathan Hannam, co-founder of Taronga Ventures, Claudia Kwan, managing partner at Northstar Impact and Mick Liubinskas, director of Climate Salad, in interrogating these businesses. The session will be moderated by Maria Atkinson, a scientist, venture capitalist, NSW Net Zero Commissioner, and board member.