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Hackathon a hit

By
Catherine Taiapa
A 24-hour Circular Economy Hackathon with 10 teams tackling a single design challenge proved a hit, emerging as an effective way to engage the public, industry, academics, and people of all ages in conversations about composite materials — with a fibreglass factory tour a standout.
image of production line in a manufacturing plant

The Circular Economy Hackathon over 24 hours with 10 teams and one design challenge was huge success. We have stumbled on the Hackathon event as being a very effective way to engage the wider public, industry professionals, academics and young and old in talking about
composites materials.

the winning team with the narcelle that was on site at the Feilding library for the Hackathon

Visiting a fibreglass factory was a highlight for many participants and many questions were asked about the material qualities, lifespan and design considerations. Read more about it on the new website! The cross-sector working group established in November 2025 is meeting regularly. It is now officially named UnWaste because the "cross-sector working group for reuse and recycling of glass and carbon fibre composites" was a bit of a mouth full!

The Fibreglass Development team opened up for a workshop tour and lamination demo - a participant highlight

We have now developed objectives and have initiated the first trial of using FRP waste as fuel for cement kiln with Central Environmental. We need one tonne of the same materials to commence, so collaboration is critical. Interested? See the advert and email contact at the bottom
of this page. Meetings are monthly at 10am on the second Thursday.

CANZ president Catherine Taiapa providing global examples of FRP and the "why" behind reuse

Our CANZ Reuse & Recycling sub-committee continues to meet quarterly for oversight and is now doing the background work to understand product stewardship entity requirements. We will then turn our focus to ensuring the new CANZ website has resources to help the public and other industries to identify composites materials "in the wild".

As always, all are welcome, get in contact!

Hackathon "swag" t-shirts for participants were kindly sponsored by Gurit

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The Armatec Environmental team inspect the inside of the narcelle. They later shared their design insights with participants