When Tanya Cross moved to Christmas Island in 2014, a remote territory in the Indian Ocean, there were no recycling options.
- Tonnes of rubbish washes up on Christmas Island shores each year from Asia
- Tanya Cross created Eco Crab Industries, the island’s first recycling option
- The recycling company is shredding, melting and moulding plastic items to create new items
“In terms of just simple products like your food packaging, drink bottles, your bathroom or laundry products, things that you buy day to day, there was absolutely nothing, so it goes into the bin,” she said.
Christmas Island is 360 kilometres south of Jakarta and 1,400km north-west of Australia.
The coastline is made up of jagged cliffs arising from the tropical waters, with some bays woven in between.
Due to the island’s location, the surrounding currents and winds these beaches are often awash with masses of marine debris from Asia.
The community also relies on freight shipments, either by sea or air, for just about everything necause of its remoteness.
The high phosphorus content in the soil has made it difficult to grow vegetables and fruit on the island, meaning most fresh food comes from offshore, leading to more packaging waste.
The conundrum inspired Ms Cross to create Eco Crab Industries in 2019.
The company not only collects rubbish on the island but looks to repurpose plastic and turn it into everyday products.
Masses of marine debris
On Greta Beach on Christmas Island, it is not uncommon to see the turtle nesting habitat completely covered in rubbish.
Island Care and local school students carry out regular clean-ups around the island.
Last month students from Christmas Island District High School collected almost half a tonne of marine debris from Greta Beach.
This included 501 water bottles, 1,555 thongs, and 11,310 polystyrene items.
Chief executive and co-founder of Tangaroa Blue Foundation Heidi Tait said more than 90 per cent of the rubbish was plastic.
“The problem with plastic is that it never biodegrades,” she said.
“It just degrades into smaller and smaller pieces so unless you remove it while it’s big it can be almost next to impossible to remove it when it’s a piece of microplastic.”
Ms Tait said it was inspiring to see the community work underway to remove the rubbish from the island.
Ms Tait said governments needed to look at ways to support third-world countries in proper waste management infrastructure and create a holistic approach to reducing marine debris.
“We need to go right back to the manufacture and design of products [and] we need to stop using so many single-use plastic products,” she said.
“If we can stop using and disposing of so much stuff then that will slowly trickle down into a reduction of what’s ending up in our environment.”
Eco Crab Industries’ workshop on Christmas Island is abuzz with noise.
Ms Cross and the team are turning island trash into treasure.
Inspired by the Precious Plastic project, the brainchild of Dutch Industrial design student Dave Hakkens, the team has built several plastic shredding and melting machines.
Eco Crab Industries provides bins for the local community to drop off their recyclable plastic, as well as collecting waste from the environment.
The waste is separated, washed, and sorted before being shredded, melted and moulded.
The plastic is turned into things such as building blocks, bowls, coasters, and other artisan items.
The plastic that Eco Crab Industries uses to melt into items is at the lower end of the toxic levels.
“Every level of plastic has a different level of toxicity, which I think really should be talked about a bit more,” Ms Cross said.
“I think a lot of people don’t know there is any toxic level but it’s not a natural item so of course there’s going to be something in there.”
Eco Crab Industries has a shop in its workshop where the community can buy the items.
Parks Australia also ordered a picnic bench for the island.
“I just want to encourage people now,” Ms Cross said.
“You can do it, you don’t need special connections, you don’t need huge amounts of money, you can start from anywhere.