Challenges and discovery were key ingredients for a young Dr Linda Mitchell growing up in Parramatta, Sydney. As the aspiring scientist explains it, she was into “a little bit of everything”. This included chemistry, physics, agriculture and creative subjects. But it was the sciences that really held her interest and why she studied maths, physics and chemistry at university.
After gaining a Bachelor of Science at the University of Sydney, Mitchell went on to get her PhD in Chemistry with a thesis titled Fluorescent Sensor Arrays to Monitor Heavy Metals and Therapeutic Drugs in Biological Systems.
Soon after getting her doctorate in 2021, Mitchell landed a position with Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) as its Science and Innovation Advisor. She moved to the role of Science, Research and Innovation Manager in 2023.
Mitchell knows there is a lot of work to do in the tyre reuse/recycling space, and her interest in doing the right thing by the environment was piqued at a young age.
“I’ve always been a bit of an environmentalist – I’ve always had an inherent value in not wasting things and making sure I’m doing the right thing by the planet,” she said. “I belonged to the Scouts when I was growing up. One of the things that was instilled in me throughout my time there was that when you go camping you leave no trace behind in the place you have been camping and hiking. You don’t damage the world around you. You want to protect it as much as possible. I’ve always been passionate about it.”
Mitchell’s PhD tended towards research, and analytical chemistry around detection of contaminants and heavy metals. She said it bounced and danced around the edges of the waste sector without being embedded in the industry.
“And then, at the end of my PhD, COVID struck. I was seeking out internships, and I saw this one at TSA pop up,” she said. “The internship was about understanding chemicals of concern and microplastics of tyre recovery. It loosely linked with some stuff that I’d already been thinking about and doing. I was like, ‘well, I don’t know a lot about tyres, but I do know a lot about chemistry’, and I was curious to find the overlap.”
What does a typical week/month look like for Mitchell in her roles as science, research and innovation manager?
“I’m the lead scientist at TSA,” she said. “Some of my day would be taken up with anything from a super technical inquiry through to a general science question. Other people in the team will come to me and see whether I know the answer. And if I don’t, then maybe I can find the answer, or talk to the right people who might know the answer. It’s emails and engagement and meetings.”
Mitchell also does a lot of research around tyre materials and how impactful they are on the environment.
“Whether it’s their chemistry, a lifecycle assessment, or new and emerging ways to process tyres, they are some of the projects that I’ve been working on,” she said. “It could also be writing reports, working with consultants to develop reports, or working with researchers to conduct cutting-edge research relating to tyres. We’re all about supporting and educating the industry.”
And what does Mitchell like about the job? One of her biggest loves is when she shares a scientific fact or piece of information with somebody, and they get it.
“I like that I’m helping people to understand the value of tyres and the value of this material,” she said. “It’s an interesting, complex material. We all use tyres, but nobody really understands them. I like that I can help that understanding. And that’s what we’re trying to do in a circular economy – to increase value and create value from these materials.”
One of the challenging aspects of her job is trying to develop information for different audiences, but bring everybody along the same journey. It can be a hard task because there will be people with different values, opinions and prior knowledge on any number of topics. For example?
“Information can be taken in different ways and shapes that you don’t expect.” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard when you have the right information, but then it is misinterpreted, which is definitely a challenge for any scientist with an academic background to translate research to industry.
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“It’s about always working towards communicating factual information, in the right context, and considering your audience and how they will engage with the research.”
As for the future, one of the issues facing the industry is getting institutions, people and some parts of the industry on board.
“We’ve been working on this challenge around creating value in new tyre materials for a long time,” she said. “Tyres are collected, processed and then turned into new materials. There’s a valuable product that comes out the end of that. What’s challenging is getting research in that process implemented. There’s a long pathway and a long roadmap to implementing and seeing that circular economy in action.”
Mitchell said that tyres are a heavily engineered, valuable and strong material, so the opportunities to get this valuable resource back into the circular economy should be plentiful.
“The markets and the opportunities that we are looking to take these products made from tyres are infrastructure, roads and pavements, and back into rubber products,” she said.
“And these are really tight, established industries that have technical expectations for their products. Yes, we do this research and development, but there are still many steps to get those materials embedded in those applications.
“I’d like tyres not to be seen as a waste material. I think the materials in them are so valuable. I’d love to see more collected and recovered, and not end up anywhere else.”
And what about outside the purview of her job? What else does Mitchell like to get up to? As mentioned, communicating around trying to share the story of tyres and their place in the resource recovery landscape is key for her. So much so, she instigated a couple of interesting ways of spreading the word.
“I did some stand-up comedy around tyres and rubber,” she said. “And that led to doing a podcast with Dr Karl (Kruszelnicki), around tyre chemistry. Just talking about this topic led to a lot of people reaching out to me and asking questions about tyre science and resource recovery. There’s so much reach that we can achieve by building a rapport with people outside the industry – we can really connect with people in all different walks of life. It’s really what I love doing.”
Does Mitchell have any more plans to do stand-up comedy in the future, spruiking the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to tyres and their place in the resource recovery landscape?
“If I could spend one day of my week writing comedy, then I would, but I have a lot of work cut out for me at TSA,” she said. “It takes a lot of time to do that sort of engagement and that’s why people do it full-time. That was last year’s big project. This year, there’s a lot going on at TSA, and I’m excited to continue using my skills and passions as a scientist for better outcomes for used tyres.”