This month's green tech must-know: the company turning Canberra's office waste into modular wall panels

Canberra-based ReForm Materials began shipping its first commercial order of compressed-waste wall panels last week to a mixed-use development in Braddon. The panels are made entirely from discarded gypsum board, glass and timber salvaged from office fit-outs in the city centre.

The company, founded in 2023 by two former ANU engineering researchers, is the green technology player local property developers and sustainability officers should be tracking this month. In a market where embodied carbon, the emissions locked into building materials, is becoming as scrutinised as operational energy use, ReForm’s approach addresses a simple but stubborn problem: where does all the demolition waste from Canberra’s revolving office interiors actually go?

Why now? Three converging pressures

The timing matters because three forces are colliding. First, the ACT Government’s updated Waste Management Strategy, released in March, set a target to divert 90 per cent of construction and demolition waste from landfill by 2028. Second, the city’s commercial vacancy rate, at roughly 11 per cent according to Property Council of Australia data, has landlords refitting older buildings in Civic and Woden rather than building new. Every one of those fit-outs produces tonnes of waste. Third, Australia’s National Construction Code now requires all new commercial buildings to report their embodied carbon. Developers who cannot show they used low-carbon materials may face higher financing costs from banks that have signed up to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.

ReForm’s factory, located in Fyshwick, takes in mixed waste streams that a traditional recycler would reject because separating them is too expensive. Instead of sorting, the company shreds and compresses the material under high heat and pressure, binding it with a non-toxic resin to produce structural panels that meet Australian fire-rating and load-bearing standards.

The evidence: from prototype to paying customers

In testing submitted to the ACT Planning and Land Authority, ReForm’s panels demonstrated a compressive strength of 8.2 megapascals, comparable to medium-density fibreboard, and an embodied carbon value of 12 kilograms of CO₂ equivalent per square metre. By contrast, a standard plasterboard wall assembly typically sits at roughly 22 kilograms per square metre, according to lifecycle data published by thinkstep-anz. The company’s first commercial customer, the developer behind the Braddon project, has ordered enough panels to clad the internal walls of a 12-unit apartment building.

The economics are still early. ReForm charges about $48 per square metre for a finished panel, slightly more than standard plasterboard. But the developer saves on waste skip-hire fees, running around $400 per bin in Canberra, and avoids the ACT’s landfill levy on construction waste, which rose to $167 per tonne in July 2025.

What comes next

ReForm is in discussions with two major Canberra construction firms about supply agreements for 2027. It is also working on a process to incorporate discarded solar panels, a fast-growing waste stream as rooftop systems installed during the 2010s reach end-of-life. For anyone in Canberra’s property, architecture or sustainability sectors, the lesson this month is straightforward: the company making wall panels out of office rubbish is no longer a pilot. It is taking orders.