Waste winners: Women in Industry Awards

Two trail-blazing women from the waste and resource recovery sector were recognised at last night’s Women in Industry Awards in Sydney.

The Women in Industry Awards celebrate the achievements of Australian women across a range of traditionally male-dominated industries such as mining, transport, manufacturing, engineering, logistics, infrastructure, and waste management.

The awards aim to recognise and raise the profile of the exceptional women who have achieved success through leadership, innovation, and commitment to their sector.

Twelve awards were presented at last night’s event, held at Sydney’s Doltone House in Jones Bay Wharf.

Civil infrastructure company Fulton Hogan was well represented among the winners, with General Manager Sarah Marshall taking out both the Woman of the Year and Excellence in Construction awards.

Joanne Jeffs (Social Leader of the Year), Nina McHardy (Industry Advocacy Award), and Barbara Pitsos (Safety Advocacy Award) rounded out the company’s list of winners.

This year, two trail-blazing women from the waste and resource recovery sector claimed victory in their respective categories.

Sage Hahn of Bio Gro was awarded the Business Development Success of the Year award, from a group of finalists including Jacky Magid (Uncle Charlies), Jane La Nauze (Stantec Australia), and Saasha Callaghan (OLEOLOGY).

Meanwhile, Rebecca Healy of Boxhead Plastics collected the Excellence in Manufacturing award. Other finalists included Jessica Ansell (Close the Loop Group) and Julie Piccinin (BAE Systems Australia).

Waste Management Review caught up with both Sage and Rebecca earlier this month to learn how their passion for resource recovery keeps them driven.

Sage Hahn, Bio Gro

Sage is the Victorian State Manager at Bio Gro, a family-owned business that has been involved in organics recycling for more than 45 years.

“I’m extremely passionate about the organics industry,” she says. “The way that Bio Gro operates – thinking of and using organics as a resource, rather than seeing it as waste – is really important to me.”

Sage has been with Bio Gro for 10 years, starting in operations as a weighbridge operator and progressing through various roles in the company. She is now a key part of the Executive Leadership Team and the current Chairperson of the Victorian branch of the Australian Organics Recycling Association (AORA).

“I’ve had some really good mentors at Bio Gro, and I’ve learned something from each of them,” Sage says. “Because it’s a smaller family-owned business, you can always talk to the owners, which is important. It allows you to be flexible and agile as a business as well, and I think that’s been a part of our success.”

Leigh Barry, Bio Gro Chief Operating Officer, says Sage’s enthusiasm and initiative has been invaluable to the business.

“Over the past three years in particular, Sage’s passion for organics recycling has been instrumental in significantly growing this division of the business,” he says.

Following her promotion in June 2020 from Victorian Sales Manager to Victorian State Manager, Sage began exploring options for increasing the volume of organics received at Bio Gro.

She identified three main steams of opportunity for new business, including additional metropolitan council kerbside waste collection, commercial green waste from landscapers, and commercial timber waste from construction and demolition.

Sage reached out to each of these sectors, establishing connections and boosting visibility for the business and its capabilities. By the end of the 2020-21 financial year, the business registered a 50 per cent increase in the volume of product taken in.

Going into the 2021-22 financial year, Sage was confident she could bring in additional volumes of material through metropolitan council contracts.

“These sorts of contracts can take a long time to establish,” Leigh says. “We were thinking we wouldn’t get an outcome until 2023-24. But Sage was adamant we could bring this in earlier and devoted a lot of her time to it.”

By July 2022, Bio Gro’s Dandenong South facility had processed 112,000 tonnes of product, an 85 per cent increase over the previous year.

Sage also spearheaded an operation to deal with the logistical challenges this presented, seeking a material handling solution to enable Bio Gro’s continued growth. This resulted in the implementation of a new multi-million-dollar organics processing line in Dandenong South, improving capacity, productivity, and safety.

For any woman considering a career in the waste industry, Sage has some powerful advice:

“Listen and learn to the people around you, but don’t be afraid to have a voice,” she says. “You might be surprised how much you know. People do value different perspectives and different ideas, so don’t be silent – just put your case forward.”

Rebecca Healy, Boxhead Plastics

Rebecca is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Boxhead Plastics, a not-for-profit social enterprise targeting the diversion of landfill-bound plastic waste from the automotive industry.

From her early experiments in 2017 recycling plastic bottles into filament for 3D printers, Rebecca has steadily grown Boxhead Plastics into a unique remanufacturing operation.

In that time, Boxhead Plastics has pioneered a process that repurposes polypropylene car bumpers into durable, high-performance products.

Boxhead Plastics launched its first product, the Naiteev Golf Tee, in 2021. Since then, the manufacturer has sold more than 30,000 of them to local and international customers.

“Golf courses are often criticised for their negative impact on their surroundings, from high water usage to pollution caused by fertilisers and the loss of natural habitats,” Rebecca says. “The Naiteev Golf Tee offers the golf industry a way to offset some of its environmental impact.”

In the years before Boxhead Plastics was born, Rebecca studied part-time to become a polymer technician while working a full-time administration job in the power industry.

She left that career after 15 years to commit full-time to a dream of positive environmental change, combining her leadership, customer relations, and administrative skills with her newly obtained qualification as an injection mould operator.

With the Boxhead Plastics operation now off the ground, she is continuing her studies, working towards a Diploma of Sustainable Practices.

“I think anybody can give it a go if you have a passion,” Rebecca says. “I had no prior qualifications, no prior training or history in the industry. With the help of some good support and education, I just gave it a crack.”

Boxhead Plastics is expanding its product range to include coasters and dog ball throwers, both also manufactured from recovered car bumpers. Meanwhile, Rebecca continues to develop relationships with local smash repairers to provide feedstock and divert more waste from landfill.

Rebecca credits the support of the people around her as a big part of her success so far. TAFE NSW Lidcombe, which helped her to develop the original Naiteev Golf Tee idea, also played a key role.

“I was the only woman in my TAFE class, but I found everybody really supportive,” Rebecca says. “I wasn’t singled out at all, I was asked the same questions as everybody else in the class, I was asked to lift what everybody else was asked to lift.

“If I could say anything to anybody, it’s that being a woman in industry is not as much of a barrier as it was once perceived to be. I think just give it a go – you might be surprised.”

The full list of 2022 award winners includes: