Q&A: Peter Barrow

In Bombay, a small company is working to create a durable, eco-friendly alternative to traditional stone aggregate from plastic waste. Helena O’Neill talks with Peter Barrow, of Environmental Aggregates and Concrete, about how plastic is turned into Plazrok.

What is Plazrok?

A lightweight concrete aggregate made using waste plastic and minerals. We take plastic here at our Bombay site, chip it into tiny pieces with machinery we’ve developed, and turn it into our Plazrok aggregate. Plazrok is a mixed-plastic aggregate engineered to mimic stone to meet standard compressive strengths and provide good tensile strengths.
Our concrete pavers are made with a mix of Plazrok, sand and cement.

There are many types of plastic, what kinds do you recycle?

It doesn’t matter what type of plastic it is, as long as it’s not contaminated, we can recycle it. You don’t need to take lids or labels off, as long as it’s empty, then we can process it. There is a fee to bring plastic to us — we do charge people to deal with their plastic problem. We need to in order to allow us to be competitive with the other aggregates that are out there.

How long has Plazrok been around?

I’ve been developing this product for 30 years, about 10 years in this current iteration. I’ve had the same board of directors for the past 15 years, who believe in the product and what we’re doing, and we now have plants operating in other countries.

Ele Collection is a Zimbabwean company based in Victoria Falls and now successfully operating a Plazrok plant under licence, similar to what we are doing here in New Zealand.

Plastic waste is collected from across the North Island, has Plazrok been used anywhere where you’ve collected plastic from?

Working with Interwaste, for example, they collect waste from Auckland Airport and product from hospitals. They want to promote Plazrok and see it go full circle and be used back in the places where the plastic came from.

We’re doing that with some of the schools. We’ve sold pavers to Ararimu School, and they’re participating in our recycling in schools programme. Other schools are pledging to do the same.

A lot of schools are part of the national Enviroschools programme, and this fits really well within that.

What does the recycling programme do?

EACL runs the programme which turns unsorted, unwashed, and mixed plastic waste (grades 1-7), including soft plastics, into a high-quality, lightweight aggregate for concrete.
My whole idea around the recycling in schools programme was to get children educated and then the parents educated through the kids. They’re now asking their parents why they can’t turn their milk bottles into pavers.

Why did you decide to turn plastic into aggregate?

One thing I make quite clear is that I’m not a greenie; I’m far from it. I’m a fisherman, I’m a hunter. First and foremost, I hate seeing plastic when I’m walking the Urewaras (Te Urewera National Park) or when I’m out on the Manukau Harbour catching fish and seeing bottles and bags floating past me. It’s a human condition, and it’s something the human condition can fix. I don’t want to see that floating up on my beach or ruining our pristine environments.

A new partnership

In January, Environmental Aggregates and Concrete entered into a partnership with BJ Ball (parent company of Ecollec), appointing them as the distributor for Plazrok products across New Zealand and Australia.

Ecollec general manager Natalie Jeans describes the partnership as a powerful example of circular innovation in action.

“It’s a compelling story – taking New Zealand waste and transforming it into a locally manufactured building product,” she says.

“EACL are diverting plastic from landfill and repurposing it into a durable, long-lasting material with real-world application.”

Through the partnership, BJ Ball provides the infrastructure and scale needed to help accelerate Plazrok’s growth. With a nationwide footprint of 160+ staff, extensive warehousing capabilities, and a freight and logistics network built over more than 100 years, the business is well-positioned to support distribution at scale. This is further strengthened by in-house marketing and sales expertise.

“Adoption of new materials can often be slowed by concerns around long-term availability,” Jeans says.

“Architects, builders, councils, and public organisations need confidence that the products they specify will be supported into the future. Having BJ Ball behind Plazrok provides that assurance — we’ve been operating for over a century, and we’re committed to backing this product and supporting its growth.”