Engineers Without Borders Australia

24/09/2026

Australia is decommissioning thousands of solar modules every week: 50,000 to 100,000 tonnes of solar waste a year. Many still produce over 90% of their original output. The hardware hasn't failed; the reuse pathway doesn't exist.

Circular Solar is EWB Australia and Raw Material building that pathway, with Timor-Leste's coffee sector as the productive-use context. The chain runs end to end: test-and-grade against criteria set for long-term redeployment in Australia, aggregation and logistics into Railaco, re-test on arrival, array design, installation, commissioning and operator training. Every stage is designed to be repeatable.

Two remote wet mills connected under the Australian Government's Business Partnerships Platform moved from diesel to solar, and generation cost fell from $1.06 to $0.15 per kWh. Improved processing efficiency allowed hundreds of new farming families to receive prices 80% higher than before. Those increased incomes now cover ongoing maintenance costs. The model sustains itself.

The program advances on three interdependent fronts. First, two further wet mills will be connected to solar arrays built entirely from decommissioned Australian modules, delivered through the complete chain of panel testing in Australia, logistics into Railaco, re-testing on arrival, array design, installation, commissioning and operator training.

Second, a prototyping workshop at Railaco will develop solar-powered drying boxes through iterative co-design, with growers participating in consecutive rounds of community consultation, testing and redesign rather than receiving a finished product.

Third, because the first two fronts depend on skills that must outlast the program, Circular Solar will establish a training pathway in design, installation and maintenance, developed with vocational training providers in Timor-Leste and university students in Australia, with Raw Material's Timorese staff upskilled throughout so that technical capability remains in-country.

Raw Material co-founder Matt Graylee walks through the model here: https://youtu.be/sUxPbWcc9Xg?si=Qj4-o0FtlkMkiYMX

Thank you to our friends at Raw Material, to the Australian Government's Business Partnerships Platform for backing the proof of concept, and to MIT Solve and Macquarie for backing the scale-up.

Circular Solar is a partnership between Engineers Without Borders A...

14/09/2026

Humanitarian Design Summits are back:
🇰🇭 Cambodia · November/December
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste · January/February

What will you be immersed in?
homestays. new language. real people with real needs. designs that hold up long after you've left. big trip. bigger perspective. best thing you'll do at uni.

03/09/2026

Clean water to drink. Safe toilets & Power from the sun.
Stuff most of us in Australia never think about. Turn a tap. Flick a switch. Done.

For a lot of families, it's not that simple. Their water can make them sick. Their toilets wash away in floods. The power cuts out: or was never there at all.
So our team works alongside them. Local engineers and Australian engineers. Side by side. Sharing what they know.

Here's what that looks like right now: Fixing a spring in Timor-Leste so a village keeps its water. Building toilets in Cambodia that stand above the floods. Helping a lagoon-side village in Vanuatu get ready for bigger storms. Bringing clean drinking water to First Nations communities, including on Cape York.

And there's more: Clean water at school means kids stay healthy. They stay in class. Girls stay safe. Sun-powered machines help small farmers get their coffee beans ready to sell, good enough to sell to the world. Young women engineers get trained and mentored. In places where engineering is still seen as a man's job. This September, we're raising money to do more of this.

It's called the SustainAbility Appeal.Small gift. Big gift. Whatever you've got. All of it builds something. You don't need to know us yet. You just need to know this: your money builds things that last. A tap. A toilet. A light.

Donate today. Link in bio.

27/08/2026

Third year. Six assignments deep. Wondering what any of it is actually for.

Here's what it's for: EWB Australia's Humanitarian Design Summit puts you in community for 28 days. In community: working on real projects with real complexity. Culture, environment, economics, engineering, all tangled together the way they are in the actual world.

You'll come back as a different engineer.

From uni to community. Design for impact. 🔗 Link in bio

21/08/2026

Give a room of kids some tape, pipes and sponge, and ask them to build a prosthetic leg. Here’s what happens.

First they ask questions. How does a human leg actually work? What does a prosthetic have to do? Why can’t everyone who needs one get one?

Then they get a tight time limit and a single instruction: work together, and build the most stable leg you can.

The room gets loud. Teams argue about the joint. Someone reinforces the wrong part. Tape gets used with real enthusiasm.

Then they test them. Some hold. Some collapse the moment weight goes on. Now they have to work out why, rethink it and go again. That isn’t the lesson going wrong. That’s testing, learning and improving. That’s engineering.

This is one of the hands-on challenges in our STEM Pathways program.

This National Science Week, the theme is Seeds of Science: Nurturing knowledge for all. A future in STEM can start with something very small — a question, an experiment, an idea a young person wants to test.

Someone has to plan the session, pack the tape and pipes, and stand in the room while it folds. People do that across Australia every week. Thank you.

Photographed at the University of Melbourne, at a STEM Pathways session delivered by our EWB chapter there.

29/07/2026

Australia throws out working solar panels every day.
We're giving them a second life. ☀️

Circular Solar has just been named a recipient of the Macquarie Community Resilience Prize, powered by MIT Solve.

Here's what that looks like on the ground: Two refurbished solar systems now power coffee processing in Timor-Leste. Energy costs down 85%. Farmer incomes up by as much as 80%. Less diesel. More freedom.

Same panels. Whole new story.
"This recognition reflects what's possible when communities, partners and industry come together around a shared purpose. This prize will help us scale a model that turns Australia's renewable transition into lasting social, environmental and economic impact." — Russell Shewan, CEO, Engineers Without Borders Australia

Congratulations to our partner Raw Material, and to every other recipient.
Most of all, thank you to the communities leading this work. ❤️

27/07/2026

The next chapter on Lama Lama Country.

This month our team walked Yaakarru (Running Creek) and Rindoparr (Marina Plains) with the Lama Lama community, scoping new visitor facilities that will help Country and community thrive. Here's why it matters: better amenities mean more visitors welcomed safely and more support for Lama Lama Rangers caring for Country, plus economic opportunity for the next generation.

This one is community-led from day one. Elders set the priorities through the Healthy Country Plan, and the design work happens together, on Country. Watch this space!

21/07/2026

"It was my first time on Country. Sitting with community, listening, learning. It was really special, and it taught me things no textbook ever could." — Evelyn Todio, Education Program Coordinator and Environmental Engineer

Something worth celebrating: This month our team headed up to Lama Lama Country in Cape York to check in on the community's new rainwater harvesting tank. And guess what? It's holding its very first full load of wet season rain. We spent the trip listening with the community and making sure the whole system is set up to go the distance. Reliable water on Country is a big deal, and this is just the beginning of the story. Follow along for more on this.



Image descriptions: Aerial view over green bushland and winding waterways from a helicopter, with a text overlay of a quote and title. A person inside the helicopter looking out at the landscape below. Community members standing at the edge of a green waterway with water containers nearby. A wide golden savanna under a big sky with two four-wheel drives and people spread across the plain.

06/07/2026

hello from Vanuatu 👋

The Humanitarian Design Summit is happening right now, and we're taking you along for the ride. Here's the question Week One hands you: how might we design for a system we've never lived in?

Not a brief. Not a spec. Just a question big enough to sit with.
And before anyone reaches for a solution or a prototype, the crew on Engineering for Disaster Recovery & Resilience do the quiet work first — they arrive, they observe, they listen, and they meet the community as the client. That's where you start mapping a socio-technical system from the inside, instead of guessing at it from a lecture theatre back home.

Because Week One was never about answers. It's about learning to ask better questions and getting comfortable sitting in that space of not knowing yet.
28 days. Vanuatu. The questions start here.

Follow along as we take you through the latest summit, straight from the field.

04/07/2026

A toilet isn't just a toilet.

It's a kid back in class. A family that stops worrying. A community that built its own future and owns it.

Thanks to you, our end of financial year appeal raised over $81,000. That means more safe, clean toilets, built with communities across Vanuatu and the Pacific. In homes. In schools. Built together, owned by the community. Thank you to everyone who donated!