The "Level Up" with Duayne Pearce Podcast
I take on the role of an authoritative voice that fearlessly communicates truths drawn directly from my lived experiences. With a genuine sense of ownership, my insights are free from any hidden agendas – they truly belong to the audience. My stories and journey add remarkable value, the key now lies in harnessing its power effectively to help others.
My purpose is to create a new residential building industry. My mission is to inspire unshakable self-confidence in my colleagues in the industry, empowering them to orchestrate prosperous, enduring, and lucrative businesses that bring exceptional projects to fruition for our clients.
My goal is to foster a deeper comprehension among clients about the identity and functions of builders, redefining their perceptions.
The "Level Up" with Duayne Pearce Podcast
Turning Solar Waste into Sustainable Gold.
#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.
check out Lotus Energy here...
https://www.lotusenergy.io/
Check out Duayne's other projects here...
Live Life Build
livelifebuild.com
D Pearce Constructions
dpearceconstructions.com.au
QuoteEaze
quoteeaze.com/Free-Offer.html
Check out the Duayne Pearce website here...
https://duaynepearce.com/
Why is it you can get that incredible support from overseas, but you can't get support from Australia?
Speaker 2:Personally, I would love to see some industry standards where they force directors to make declarations around what recovery rates they're achieving, or something like that, where you actually have to stand behind the claims that we're making. How much of the panel is actually getting recycled Now we're making. How much of the panel is actually getting recycled Now? We're at 98% and the 2% is essentially the plastics from the solar panel. The waste that we produce is insane. It's only fair that we're transparent and open with how it all works and what happens and where does it go, etc.
Speaker 1:G'day guys. Welcome back to another episode of Level Up. We have another cracking podcast for you today. This one actually really excites me and I'm really keen to see where this conversation goes and what I learn from it, because this is a topic that has been on my radar for a long time. I'm very passionate about sustainability, the, the building waste from, uh, the environment and putting landfill in big holes in the ground and all that sort of stuff, and I actually come across our guest today. Uh, from some posts I always get his name right. I think it's yost backer. Um, antony might be able to correct me if I'm saying it wrong, but, um, oh, you've done well, mate. He, uh, he posted a post about the guests we have on today and I was all in and I've since been following them flat out and had a few conversations and I really love what they're doing. So big warm welcome to Anthony from Lotus Energy. How are you, mate?
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Thanks for having me on, Dwayne.
Speaker 1:So just to give the listeners a little bit of background, the reason I've reached out to Anthony is Anthony is doing incredible. Anthony, I think it's your old man. Is it your son as well? There's three generations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, granddad and different businesses over the journey, but all sparkies yeah.
Speaker 1:These guys are doing. You're going to learn a lot today from this podcast. These guys are doing world first things when it comes to solar panels and recycling them. So, anthony, can you give us a little bit of background, mate, how you got into what you're doing now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll try and give you the reasonably quick version, dwayne, to not bore the listeners, but essentially I started installing solar in 1991 with my dad. I was only like 17 years of age and from there we'll quickly fast forward. But essentially we installed a lot of solar panels over the journey and, uh, in around 2018, we were, you know, organizing to recycle some solar panels and we came across a company in South Australia who claimed to be recycling and, probably like a lot of us, you know, we take things on face value and we thought, all right, that sounds good. All the information on the website read really well Sustainability and responsible management of waste, and circular economy, and all the buzzwords were there. So we went ahead with that, but then we subsequently discovered that they weren't actually doing the things that they were claiming they were doing.
Speaker 1:How did you find out? Did you visit them?
Speaker 2:I have a tendency to be a bit of a serial pest Twain and running a big company, or if you want something done, you have to continually follow it up. I'd engage with them and they offered for us to visit in actual fact initially and uh, very coy about visiting, there's lots of excuses why we couldn't visit, etc. And uh, we ended up finding out, they ended up admitting that they weren't doing what they were claiming to be doing and I actually offered to potentially even invest in them. And I flew over to South Australia and the gentleman who headed up the that business was literally a no-show. So I'd flown from Melbourne to Adelaide, turned up at his office and he wasn't even there. You know, couldn't even give the courtesy of turning up. So that was, it was fair to say it was a bit of a red rag to a bull. And uh, not only did we take him to court over his situation, but uh also, uh, we went and developed the entire process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, um, I guess to to jump in a little bit deeper, the um like, so you're like, 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 finished our first completely hand demolished full home. All the concrete went to the concrete recyclers, All the bricks went to the concrete recyclers. We ended up getting over 12 ton of hardwood out that is going to be reused in other projects. We recycled all the glass and aluminium hardwood out that is going to be reused.
Speaker 1:In other projects we recycle all the glass and aluminium. So when I saw that what you guys are doing with the solar panels, it really sparked an interest, because solar panels are something that I've over a long period of time. I've almost got to a point where I was talking clients out of having them because I didn't like the materials that were getting used to make them and but my biggest concern was how they were getting recycled at their end use. But you guys have now solved that and correct me if I'm wrong, but you're leading the world in this technology, aren't you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We started with a very what I'd say which you know wasn't exactly cutting edge. I called it the T-model Ford production line. You know where we managed to recover the glass and the aluminium and the copper, which by weight is quite a bit. But you're right in saying you know solar panels. Have you know a number of things 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 leaching problems. But yeah, now we've got it really at a quite high level from a science and chemistry point of view, where we're recovering the nanosilicon and the silver out of the solar panels and we're currently moving to a new facility which has got a 700 square meter laboratory which is managed quite literally by scientists.
Speaker 1:That's unbelievable, mate. Before we started recording, you were saying what's the percentage of silver that solar uses, according you were saying what's the percentage of silver that solar uses?
Speaker 2:Oh well, globally the solar industry uses about 40% of the mining production and for the last three years running there's been a massive shortfall of silver, and that's purely because of the solar industry itself. So sure it's been fantastic for renewable energy and everything like that. That solar panel pays for itself in energy terms and carbon footprint in about two years. But its unintended consequences are there's certain commodities in that are now, you know, facing a massive shortfall, and you only have to look at the charts of silver in the last few years to see it. But essentially, a solar panel has about 0.2% or even less by weight, of silver, but that silver makes up 50% of the manufacturing costs just under, actually.
Speaker 1:So really important piece to the story is we had to get that silver out and get it back to the solar industry yeah, so like what sparked your interest to do, like basically set up a whole new business around recycling this, like you're you're, I'm assuming your your your installation business was quite large.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we worked all over the world, I guess for many years.
Speaker 2:I got the same objection from perhaps the concerns you had around well, they can't really be recycled and are they all that environmentally friendly.
Speaker 2:And I regularly had a throwaway line about, well, we could send a man to the moon but so surely we can recycle a solar panel and nowadays it's probably not the best reference because there's some questions around that as well, but that was the throwaway line as well.
Speaker 2:But but that was, that was the throwaway line and I guess you know, once I discovered that this other company was doing the wrong thing, I you know it dawned on me how important it was for the industry and and how damaging it could be if that information came out publicly. That you know the only purported recycler around was basically, you know, fair to say, scamming their customers. So you know we took to developing it and you know if there was one good thing out of COVID, for us at least, was we were in lockdown in Melbourne and we managed to buy a bunch of machinery from some companies that I guess, guess, maybe panicked a little bit for business reasons around you know that time and we bought up that machinery and did all the testing, and we're quite fortunate to get it up and running quite quickly that's awesome so.
Speaker 1:But people like, as you see it all the time now, like we uh, we even do it on renovations There'll be solar on the existing roof and it'll be worn out and old. So the spark will say, hey look, this system's garbage. It's not up to new code, it needs to go. And so I've asked the question before. They always tell me they're taking it to a recycling plant. Where is it going?
Speaker 2:recycling plant. Where is it going? Well, depending on where you're talking about, in in australia, most probably. Uh, it's been sent off to a yard, bundled into a shipping container with a second-hand car. Uh, falsely purported as just second-hand vehicles in the in the container it's's shipped to Nigeria, in Africa, where they either sell them in markets or, if they can't recover or get them working, still they're burnt in fields. What? Yeah? So it's actually an environmental disaster. It's listed as one of the top 10 environmental disasters in the world and sadly, our industry turns a blind eye to it or pretends it's. You know it's actually a good thing because it's solar, for you know communities and people who can't afford it. They're literally sending it off. It's not tested, it's not safe or we couldn't certify that it's safe. We're not happy to have it on our own roof, but we'll send it to someone else in africa for ten dollars, you know, yeah it's something that I'm really passionate about.
Speaker 1:Look, I guess it's it's hard like you, can't you? We all try and do our best, but like, like, sustainability is obviously thrown around a lot now, especially in the building industry, and there's a lot of builders out there that are trying to do the right thing and wanting to do the right thing, but, like, I'm just, I'm always that person that, like wants to look into it further, like all right, oh well, where's it going? Like you did with the, with the plant that you're sending to, but I've never done it with the solar. Like I've done it a lot with the timber and the concrete. Like I know how that gets managed.
Speaker 1:But, to be honest, I just thought, electrical waste like you send it to, you put it in the e-bens and you, like we take it to our scrappies and they separate it, and I thought, oh, it's, it's got to be getting dealt with correctly. But, um, after hearing your, your stats and some of the conversations we've had about how you're leading the way in the world, and it's obviously not happening the way we think it's happening, you know solar's not alone, and e-waste for that matter as well that, uh, there's so many things that are just completely wrong.
Speaker 2:And you, coming from the building industry, obviously duane, you've got a whole heap of local, state, federal building codes and laws and safety requirements that you have to adhere to. The safety requirements still exist for the recycling industry, but there are no standards, and I mean none. There's things that they purport that they're going to crack down on, you know if it's classified as a hazardous waste. I've seen it firsthand. I've reported things to EPAs around the country or named particular states or anything, but no one seems to care. The more interested in you know winning a grant from the government than they are about you know calling out the truth of what's really going on.
Speaker 2:And uh, hey, you know, recently up in queensland, only a week or two ago, there was an article in the you know from the abc uh online and I think it was jasmine hines uh published the article about a company, solar recovery corporation. They're now saying that they're going to be up and running in, I think, march or may 2026. They they did a press release in, I'll say, february 22, 2022 saying they'll be up and running in a month or two. They've been bundling up solar panels and sending them offshore for years and industry bodies are holding conferences and getting these people to talk about recycling and the wonderful things they're doing.
Speaker 1:It's quite a farce man, it seems to me it happens a lot, especially in the building industry, and, like you say, there's so many companies out there just doing ticking boxes to get these grants. But if people actually dig deeper, they're, they're not following through on things, but like I don't, I imagine, mate with what you're doing. You're you're getting support from the government?
Speaker 2:not at all it's not not one little bit, mate. We, we um, look, we, we had a. We did win one grant from Sustainability Victoria which actually, ironically, related to avoiding solar panels going to recycling. So, and that was around developing a testing procedure for, you know, reuse and repurpose of solar panels, which we still think is a great idea, and we developed that in collaboration with Victoria University and Torres Group Electrical. And there was a second part to it which was a safe handling and decommissioning of solar panels, which we developed a training course with the Solar training center. So we got support from sustainability Vic for that. But, as I say, the irony was that was to avoid recycling. Clearly, we've got too many solar panels, you know if we want to avoid it.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, like, in reality, the best support we've had thus far is actually from international government. So we've been recognized for you know the world-leading standards that we've achieved and we've got a facility that we've got in planning and we've already signed off an agreement for Germany and I head off this weekend back to Germany, germany and I head off this weekend back to Germany and we've already signed off on the first of three sites for India as well, and, like, both countries have given amazing support financially and other ways in terms of, you know, setting up and you know setting up and you know employment and HR and uh, training and planning and all the different aspects.
Speaker 1:Why isn't it that incredible support from overseas but you can't get support from Australia?
Speaker 2:No, well it's. You know there. You know there's there's a big difference. You know there's a big difference, as we know there's a big difference between what politicians say on television or radio or any form of media versus the reality, and you know, it's fair to say, I'm fairly disgruntled with it all.
Speaker 2:We're in Victoria, in Thomastown, we sit in the electorate of the Minister of Environment, lily D'Ambrosio. We've invited her out numerous times. Zero interest in coming. She did a public announcement how the state government was investing $10 million into, I think, what they called the circular PV challenge for anyone that could recycle solar panels. Now, bear in mind we're probably less than five kilometers from her office. They made that statement about what they were doing. They never gave out any money to anyone, us included in that story. And the day before the election we were asked to put on a display for her and Daniel Andrews and despite my feelings in regards to that, we did it because I thought it could be positive, create some awareness and everything that was on the Friday before the election. We did all that and they made all these amazing statements about how they were supporting us and what they were going to do and everything, and we never heard from them again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's terrible, it's absolutely terrible and mainly.
Speaker 1:I guess that's another reason I wanted to get you on the podcast, because my belief is that unless there's individuals out there that are spreading their passion about what they do and highlighting what actually happens in real life, especially in the construction industry, like politicians have no idea whatsoever about how our industry works. We've got to share our stories and tell what happens on a day-to-day basis in this industry. I guess it's hats off to you, mate, for continually pushing forward and getting it to where you have now. That's a massive undertaking, I'm sure, for you, financially bloody in all ways, to get it to the point where it's at now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, thanks, dwayne. I'd say it's probably easier than what you've done, though dismantling an entire house and trying to find a home for all of the various components, that's a super challenge. Like a lot of respect, you know, hearing that you'd done that because, uh, I wouldn't know where to start with half of those products that come through. We, we uh recently dismantled a, you know, a small solar farm in terms of, you know, today's standards, but of course you know it was old, it was at end of life and everything. So it was, uh, 600 kilowatts, about two and a half thousand solar panels, and we, uh, we organized for all the concrete pads to be recycled, so they were all moved out.
Speaker 2:I think it was like 600 ton of concrete. It was about 60 ton of steel from all the structural frames and everything, about six ton of aluminum, about four ton of copper cable, which is very nice. Of course You're not in the construction industry if you don't know the value of copper and of course all the e-waste from it had what they call string inverters, so smaller inverters you're breaking the system up into. I think there were 60, 10 kilowatt systems, effectively, and then, of course, all the solar panels. So we managed to organize for every single piece of that to be recycled, and obviously there's different recovery rates in all the different pieces there, but we were really proud of how we managed that and there was a lot of learning for us as well of how we manage that and there was a lot of learning for us as well. Dealing with the client was the first time we'd dismantled a solar farm, but, yeah, it's fantastic that it's happening now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's awesome. So can we talk about some numbers? So, on average, what's the lifespan of a solar panel?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a broad question. If know, if I, if I said the solar panels that I started installing as a, as a young bloke, they were bp solar panels. We get those coming in and they're 30, you know, 25 to say 35 years old. They're still working like the day that I made. They've hardly had any degradation at all, which is quite incredible. Obviously, you know, as we mass produce things and we try and refine it and, of course, push costs down as well, substantially now, depending on brands, as short as seven years, you know, and you know pretty regularly, I would say 10 to 25 years is probably the more realistic band where they would sit.
Speaker 2:There is still a lot that get decommissioned prematurely though. You know, like what you were saying, you're doing a, an extension, or you know, say, knocking over a building and a rebuild or something, that the solar system's fine, but you know if you're going to remove it the moment you remove it, then you have to meet the current standards and you can't reinstall it anyhow. So, uh, there's a lot of that happening. There's a lot of the electric, electric vehicle and battery. You know, combination or even singular, that people get an electric vehicle.
Speaker 2:They, you know, of course, want to charge their, their car, you know off their own solar asset. They realize that it's probably too small what they installed several years ago to service their house and the car, so so they then install a battery, make the solar system a lot larger, probably max out their roof, and for aesthetic reasons. Us Aussies, we act like we're really laid back, but we're still a bit superficial. So we have a tendency to not want two different looking systems on the roof, so we remove 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 a school day.
Speaker 1:And we, um, we've got a huge refurb job we're doing at the moment and the clients actually only put the um, the existing system, on the house. Uh, they tell us about four to five years ago that, because of the refurb and extension work we're doing, um, that section of roof has to be replaced so that we had to remove the solar system. And so, honestly, I just thought 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 to reinstall. And so that's what I put in my proposal.
Speaker 1:And then we've got the job, we're underway, and they've come out to remove the panels and they're like oh shit, duane, there's going to be extra costs here. We can put these back on, but the fixing clips need to be upgraded. They don't make code anymore. The electrical fixings don't make code anymore. Code anymore. The electrical fixings don't meet code anymore. And yeah, I'm like well, mate, like it's got to be up to code, so give me a price to reinstall it the way it has to be, and the cost to reinstall it the way it has to be is half the cost of a new system. So we've then we've then gone to the client and explained to them what's happened and they're like, oh well, shit, like, for that amount of money again, we would 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 Exactly like you said. Us Aussies, as much as we say we're laid back, we want everything looking nice and shiny and matching and new.
Speaker 1:And this is on a roof, that it's on a three-story house that no one can see it from any direction, but like with the back to the numbers, like out of a solar panel, like what's the actual data, like what are you getting out of a panel, Like how much of the panel is actually getting recycled.
Speaker 2:Sure. So now we're at 98% and the 2% is essentially the plastics from the solar panel. There's a back sheet and a plastic junction box and a bit of cable sheath and an encapsulate which is a piece that the cells themselves sit in. The heavy piece to the whole story 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 off the back and get the copper out.
Speaker 2:Um, probably the, the real, I guess, intriguing piece and the. You know, the part of the puzzle that we'd always had our, our mindset on achieving was getting the solar cells out of the solar panel themselves. And so when you, when you look at a solar panel, you'll see, you know they're normally blue or black, typically, and as a general rule, it's your means that they're polycrystalline or monocrystalline. There's there's lots of other sorts as well, but they're the most common. And those solar cells, they sometimes call them a wafer. It's incredibly thin silicon metal, and this is why you should never walk on a solar panel, whereas if you ever see someone walk on them Dwayne, on one of the sites they're not doing a good thing. They're definitely damaging the solar panel. They get what they call micro cracks. So they're incredibly fragile. They have very low tolerance to any like flexation and they will shatter. They will shatter. So, if you can imagine, we've got to somehow manage that solar panel.
Speaker 2:Work out how to get this big, call it sticker, the EVA back sheet off then it's in it and encapsulate and get the cell out and try and maintain that piece with. You know it's fine to break it, but minimally, uh. And and then from that piece of Silicon metal it's got a whole bunch of other uh, typically metals that they've uh layered on it. Well, they call it doping to uh create the positive or negative charge to, you know, get the electricity to flow through. And then the really fine looking tiny little lines on it not the bigger ones there are, they're silver. Tiny little lines on it, not the bigger ones, they're silver.
Speaker 2:And so from that point where we worked out how to get the cells out, we then worked out how to clean the silicon cell down and get all the other different pieces off silicon nitride and chromium and boron and a bit of lead 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 a process on how to break down that silicon metal down into what's called a nano-silicon. And nano-silicon is like the holy grail of electric vehicle and all sorts of batteries, for that matter. It's also used in military applications, in biomedicines, in agriculture and in the silicon chip. So nano silicon is incredibly important from a national security perspective and we're now producing that, which is just awesome.
Speaker 1:Mate, I just learned a hell of a lot in my last five minutes. I never thought a solar panel could be so interesting, but is the process itself safe? Do you have to introduce more chemicals that make all this happen, or is it a safe process?
Speaker 2:Well, we would have done it a lot quicker had we have used chemicals and just skipped a whole heap of R&D that we've been doing. So we managed to do it with naturally occurring acids, which means that our waste quite literally being alkal, being a you know, alkaline or acid based, we can actually neutralize it and it can be washed down the drain legally and everything from an epa perspective, and I'm happy for you to publish this, this part, uh, the. We could have used the hydrofluoric, uh acid or hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric's like really nasty, really dangerous stuff, and it would have quite simply cleaned down. But then we would have created a whole heap of other byproducts, like chemicals, that we would have had to deal, dealt with. And you know, for us, being a renewable energy related business, it was just counterintuitive to say, oh great, we fix one problem and create another yeah yeah like what?
Speaker 1:what's the outcome of this? Like, obviously it's incredible that you're doing this and it's happening and they're getting recycled. What's the, I guess what happens with all the materials that you're getting out of this?
Speaker 2:so at the moment uh, see the nano silicon we've got a company overseas that's been utilizing it from us. So they're a publicly listed company, neo Battery Materials. So it's getting used to make battery anodes and like to put it in perspective we're making that nano silicon at 50 nanometers, which is 51 millionths of a millimeter, so the particles are incredibly small and those particles enhance batteries Unbelievably. So we've already done several trials ourselves and we've produced batteries that are working at 10 to 12 times density. And what that means is that you're, say, the electric vehicle world, because where a lot of people talk about drive range stress and they don't drive far enough just yet for them to, perhaps, you know, purchase one. It will take a, you know, typical 500 kilometer drive range vehicle and make it somewhere between five and six thousand kilometers. Yeah, yeah, and this, this tech'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 the marketplace. This thing actually is already working.
Speaker 1:It's the sort of stuff. Look, I'm definitely not a fan of the electric vehicles, but that again that's something that would change my mind, because if you're getting that sort of range out of the vehicle, it completely changes all the environmental stuff that comes with that vehicle.
Speaker 2: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 less copper um, because obviously we don't need a five, six thousand kilometer drive range, so only heavy transport would perhaps be interested in that. But you know, two, three thousand kilometers, like if you could drive, say, from you know, sydney to Melbourne or Sydney to Brisbane or something like that. That's substantial, it's uh. Maybe do 4,000 Ks and drive Melbourne to Perth, yeah, it's uh. That's definitely a game changer for the industry. And of course, that same battery could be applied to a power network, or a laptop for that matter as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting, but you guys are doing. I saw on your like I've seen on your site shows you're, you're, you're coming up with some pretty creative ways, aren't you Like you're making? Actually, I saw one of your things that I was really interested in some of the Biproc product you're using to go into render or something, aren't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that one's sort of a funny story because we're getting all this glass coming out of the solar panels and we're trying to come up with lots of different applications for it because the volumes are just ridiculous to manage and the perfect world. The glass goes back to making more glass for solar panels. And it's a high purity glass. For obvious reasons it has to be nice and clear and, you know, for the light to go through and not diffract, and but you know some of it, you know through the process, are already broken so they may already have some sort of level of contamination in them. So we're looking at you know, we made fire rated tiles for it to go behind batteries and tabletops and tilt mount ballast systems for solar and, yeah, this render product. So we had this glass you're like so it's silicon dioxide glass and so it's essentially a sand and but it was coming out really fine like around 20 microns, which is like talcum powder, just for the listeners, you can literally rub this stuff on your face and your skin will feel smoother, not cut you like you imagine with glass.
Speaker 2:And I had a guy that told us he was doing some teaching around rendering products and could he perhaps take some just some samples and do some trials, et cetera. And he was teaching at a TAFE out of Melbourne and, of course, we're quite happy to find another home for the products and send it off to him. In actual fact, I followed him up and he said you know how is it going? And I thought you know he was going to explain to me how he'd done. You know some walls at the tafe and the students were, you know, playing around with it and doing different.
Speaker 2:You know trials with it. Uh, he sends me some photos of some heritage buildings that they've been repairing with it and he, he repairs buildings for various national trusts around the country and he told me it's the best render product he's ever ever experienced. And, uh, he's now teaching everyone to to use this product, which at the time was hilarious because we didn't even have it commercially available. It was just uh, uh, you know something we, something we kept gifting to him for the purpose of the trials and doing the R&D. Those photos are literally heritage buildings in Melbourne that I think you've seen on our socials.
Speaker 1:Oh mate, they're the sort of little things that catch my eye. Not only are you recycling the product, but it's getting repurposed in heritage buildings, which is saving. Saving like, saving history, really like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the most important things for us was to not just recycle it but make sure that the products get utilized locally where we can like and so we can't for everything, uh but that we're not a company that will give up because we've had one or two no's. We keep looking for other solutions. But the glass locally, we've been able to get a home for all of it. The big challenge has been the metals. So Australia has lost a lot of its manufacturing capabilities, of course, to China, as we know, and other countries.
Speaker 2:But the metal industry is a really odd one, because Australia is the home to what I believe to be the greatest resources on earth. I think we've got every single commodity known to man. We dig it up out of the ground in, you know, bauxite or ores or whatever, and very little processing happens here. We send it offshore and we buy it back in the form of a manufactured product. We're we're encouraging businesses to engage with us and, uh, look to find ways to utilize the products here. But, yeah, at, the metals end up in offshore India, china, singapore, japan, south Korea.
Speaker 1:It's unbelievable, isn't it? Australia really needs to wake up to itself. With all that stuff, there's going to come a point in history where we're going to need the resources we've had and there won't be enough left to do what we need to do absolutely like casing point.
Speaker 2:As I was saying earlier, silver like there's there's a global shortage of it. So the best thing we can do is mine the resources we've already got at hand, which is our waste. So you know, heard this reference, urban mining, which I think is really cool of of mining the materials that we've got at hand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Back to the Render product. Is that a product that you're potentially going to be releasing or selling, or is it just something that's a bit of a trial and error type thing?
Speaker 2:Well, it's something that we're keen on, actually engaging with a company that perhaps already makes Render. We don't want to be everything to everyone and we're quite happily to find a home for it. At present, we've been producing it ourselves and we would love to see it off with a company locally in Australia using that as a manufactured product.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, like I said at the beginning, mate, like I, I um first saw you on a post that um, yos Baca did and uh, so that I'm assuming that was a pretty good experience to like. I love what he's doing and how he's thinking outside the box and just coming up with some incredible ways to to change the building industry. So I imagine for you that would have been pretty exciting to get him involved oh, absolutely, mate, he's.
Speaker 2:He's quite an inspiration and you know, for full disclosure, he's a good friend as well and uh, uh. But what I love about yost is he will only promote something that he truly believes in, he's's passionate about. He doesn't do it because he's getting paid by those people or anything like that. He does it because, you know, it's what he believes in and everything comes from the heart. Yeah, some of the things he's done is incredible. I went out to the school that he did out at Dramana in Woodley in Victoria where they built the green roof and it's hard to comprehend I've also got a background in construction but a dead flat roof that holds six inches of water and that's part of the engineering design and that's how they hold these rooftop gardens, essentially, and grasses and everything that they're putting on.
Speaker 2:It goes against all the principles of construction and how we'd normally do it, of course. We're trying to get rid of the water and we're definitely not making it dead flat.
Speaker 1:So where to for Lotus Energy? What's the plan?
Speaker 2:Well, we've got the sites that we're developing offshore. Now we want to expand into quite literally every state. But we're realistic. We've got to manage that process and you can't do it overnight for these things. For us, plus, one of the big strategies, which is more medium to longer term, is developing and manufacturing batteries in Australia from the recycled products, and that's something that we're working on right now, and I would love to see Australia manufacturing semiconductors and silicon chips as well and somehow be a part of that. I don't expect we'll be making silicon chips, but I'd love to be the supplier of some of the commodities to produce it.
Speaker 2:It's not something that we all sit back and ponder on, maybe on a Friday Arvo or something, having a beer or wine, but the reason Taiwan is so important globally has nothing to do with it's just sitting off the coast of China or America and China suddenly decided that they're an important little country in the world. It's more to do with a company called 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 Microsoft and all these giant corporations that are household names. These guys are the biggest silicon chip manufacturers in the world and they are incredibly important because everything nowadays pretty much has a silicon chip in it and, if it's not already a iot ai sort of base device, someone's probably making one. That is so, uh, for, for national security reasons, for any country controlling, you know, critical minerals and some of these key core products to technology is really important, and australia has every opportunity to bring it back on shore.
Speaker 2:You know we we're no longer manufacturing things with. You know, people sitting with a soldering iron and smoking a cigarette, like the old images we saw of the 80s and maybe early 90s of China. Everything today is fully automated. The picture that we've still got in our head is completely outdated. China currently has battery manufacturing plants that they call dark factories. These things are incredible, and the reason they call them dark is there's no lights on in the building until a human walks in there, because they're completely run by robots, including the repairs and maintenance, and it's just incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it absolutely blows my mind the way that things are going and it seems to be speeding up at a rapid pace now, mate. So just for our listeners, like what else does Lotus Energy do? Like what's we sort of got like this is. It's actually been a really, really interesting and educating conversation. I've taken away a lot already. We sort of we did jump forward quite a bit like where's your passion? Like what, what, what made you get to do what you do now?
Speaker 2:yeah, I I love the the renewables side of things.
Speaker 2:Like we, you know, build big commercial, industrial, uh, solar pv assets and we were doing that under what they call a power purchase agreement, and I would say we were delivering the only power purchase agreement, so it was we'll put a big solar asset, let's say, on a manufacturing plant or something, and they pay for the energy that they use and that's it.
Speaker 2:They don't pay anything else and they get cheaper energy, and so we were doing a lot of that and we still do that. But, uh, you know, we were creating this way, so we're part of the problem, of course, and I guess now the passion really sits in the recycling space and, uh, you know, personally I would love to see, uh, some industry standards where they force directors to make declarations around what recovery rates are achieving, or something like that, where you actually have to stand behind. You know the claims that we're making, but, you know, for now we just keep working on our innovation and, you know, hopefully one day you'll see a Lotus battery out there, which is, you know, a world-leading battery made in Australia. Yeah, and you know, that said, if we were, you know or not, if once we're up and running in Germany and India. We'd have the same intent keep it local there as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's bloody awesome, man. Look, I definitely agree with what you just said. Like I think the whole building industry um needs a shake-up when it comes to sustainability and recycling. I think, like personally, as owning a building business, I take it very seriously about the products we can salvage out of homes, and like the building industry contributes so much waste to landfill and yet we have all these housing affordability problems, we have shortage problems, like there's like timber there's a lot of problems with timber at the moment, like all those types of things and yet we're we're demolishing timber. That is the best timber in the world because it it's been around 40, 50, 70 years, and yet you just bring a machine in and munch it up and throw it back in the Old hardwoods and everything and yeah, yeah, across the board.
Speaker 1:There are so many things, and I actually think you raised a really good point about Aussies just wanting all the good-looking flash stuff, because I talk about this a lot. Everyone expects perfection and so, like we see it a lot in our buildings, like people buy the beautiful tapware or the the light fittings and like, especially, taps. Like you buy a good quality tap these days and you open the cardboard box and inside the cardboard box it's inside a bag, and then inside the bag it's all molded foam and then, and then you then the tap itself is inside another soft bag and like the waste is unbelievable and and I get it like no one wants to have a, a new tap in their home. It's got a scratch on it. But I really do think we've gone too far.
Speaker 1:Like the waste that we produce is insane and that's why, again, that's why I reached out to you and I wanted to know more about what you're doing, because I just I love seeing and talking to people that are passionate and that, like you said yourself, like you were part of the problem, like I believe that with my building business, I'm part of the problem, like I believe that with my building business. I'm part of the problem. I'm building homes that are producing lots of waste, so I need to come up with solutions to reduce that waste, and I, just again, I take my hat off to you, mate, for doing what you do.
Speaker 2:Have you seen the Rhino recycling facility in Pinkenba?
Speaker 3:Pinkenba yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mate, I actually caught up with those guys a few weeks ago. That facility up there is just incredible. You're doing 450 ton just on the construction waste piece 450 ton per hour.
Speaker 1:Holy doly. Yes, I haven't seen it. A guy told me about it a few months ago and said it's something you'd really need to check out. Is that the one that they've built to deal with a lot of the Olympic, because there's going to be a lot of waste when they start doing the Olympic work?
Speaker 2: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 just incredible, it's unbelievably impressive and it's great to see. Like you know, sometimes the best you can do is create a low value product coming back out. You know a cement or bitumen based, you know additive or something like that, and to me, anything's better than nothing, whereas people are very quick to dismiss things oh, they're only achieving X. Well, it's better than achieving nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's better. Well, and it's better than it going back in the hole in the ground.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because, well, the other thing to that is the alternative is we dig it up somewhere and we send it off and it gets processed and then it gets transported to where we want it delivered for the construction. And if we're talking like cement-based products, then there's a whole nother thing around the you know the carbon footprint from the heating process of making the cement and everything, and so just reducing that is an awesome thing, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Mate, look, I really appreciate your time this afternoon. Thanks for jumping on. So where can our listeners find you? What's your best contact?
Speaker 2:Probably easiest just going to our website like lotusrecyclingcomau, or our phone number is 1300-0-LOTUS, so pretty easy, hopefully. And yeah, look, we're happy to engage with people and, like we get, we're in melbourne so it's not always practical for logistics, you know from all over the country, but uh, we're really collaborative as well, so we're open to sharing ideas with people. People just want to come and visit and see how it, how it all happens. We're we're very transparent because we've you know me in particular I've been very critical of some. You know let's call them bad actors out in the out in the industry. So you know, it's only fair that we're transparent and open with you know how it all works and what happens and where does it go, etc. So, yeah, we doesn't have to be that someone just wants to send us, you know, some e-waste or cable or solar panels or whatever. We're open to anything and we happily support community things as well, yeah, and go and check out your Instagram.
Speaker 1:You've got a lot of good stuff on your Instagram. But just before we go, how does it actually work, like if someone brings a solar panel to you? I'm assuming there's a fee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there there is. So at present it's a flat fee of 12 dollars uh per panel. Yeah, uh, gate fee. If they bring cable and mounting gear, we uh, you know obviously credit them money back. So it typically offsets it anyhow, uh, you know, from from the other scrap. If you like, I'll share with you just quickly the process.
Speaker 2:We've got a couple of different parts to the process. One's a thermal process that we use to get the solar cells out. Once those cells are out, that's when it goes into the laboratory and that's a bit we've got heavily under wraps in terms of the IP. But essentially that's how we're getting the silicon and the nano silicon and then the silver, the recycling plant itself, depending on the state of the solar panel, because they can come in all states, of course.
Speaker 2:But the brutal version is so if they're like heavily damaged or something, that goes through a mechanical process. So it basically shreds them up, sends it down some conveyors and there's some overbelt magnets to pull out any steel, any ferrous metal, and then it goes into a mill. Basically it pulverizes it and makes it into small pieces down to like five, 10 mil sort of size. At that stage the glass actually, through that process becomes powder and then it uses pneumatic air and gravity and so it actually transports the material up to the roof and goes through a cyclone and zigzag which is pretty common from the mining industry and so the heavy material will fall out at that point and that's where the aluminium falls out in, almost like the old slug gun pallets it looks like. And then there's air suction and the air it sucks away the glass and the plastic and then, because of the size differentiator, we can sieve them out and actually separate and have them all separated yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd love to next time I'm with Danaly, mate, I'm going to try and pop in and bloody see what you're doing there. Seriously 12 bucks a day seems pretty bloody reasonable to considering all the advantages of what you're doing.
Speaker 2:I just find the whole thing exciting. It's something. Yeah, look, and I'd love to have you visit. We're in the process of moving, so we'll have the new site up and running in 12 weeks, so you can come and see it. Sitting there dormant at the moment, unfortunately, because we're decommissioning, but at the new location, and with good reason, we're increasing our capacity. We're more than doubling our capacity to where we're going to Awesome, yeah, also improving the efficiency. Of course, we're doing some really cool stuff. We're putting in a NDIS workers line, so we're supporting our social impact and giving jobs for some disability workers and adjusting our process to accommodate that, and I could quite easily automate it. But the reality is, sometimes you do something and treat people how you'd like to be treated, and I've got a little cousin that was mentally handicapped and I like to think that he lives up in Queensland but that someone up there would do the same thing for him.
Speaker 1:Mate. That's bloody awesome. Honestly, it's been an incredible conversation. I know the listeners would have got a lot out of it. I've definitely got a lot out of it. It's really intrigued my interest even more into solar panels.
Speaker 1:But keep doing what you're doing. I love it. I love your passion and look for the guys and girls that are listening. Reach out to the guys at Latest Energy on Instagram. Their page is great. You can check out everything they're doing there and you've got some really good content on there. Look, as always, if you love the podcast, make sure you like, share, subscribe, all those types of things. Go to the dwaynepearscom website if you want some merch and look, depending on when this podcast comes out. If you can attend my event that we are having on Friday, the 30th of May, I'd love to see you there. It's going to be the greatest event 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 talking about what you're doing. But, as always, guys, look forward to seeing you on the next podcast. Take it easy.
Speaker 3:Hope you enjoyed. Are you ready to build smarter, live better and enjoy life?
Speaker 2:Then head over to livelikebuildcom forward slash elevate to get started.
Speaker 3:Everything discussed during the Level Up podcast with me, dwayne Pearce, is based solely on my own personal experiences and those experiences of my guests. The information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only, and any reliance on and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. We recommend that you obtain your own professional advice in respect to the topics discussed during this podcast.