Sustainable resources and zero waste

We need to manage our material, food, energy and water resources better and address the economic, environmental and health costs of wasted resources. Insufficient effort has been put on how we design, make and deploy products, and prevention of waste throughout the product life cycle, so we can better manage our stock of natural resources, and the amounts and types of wastes we create.

With our sustainable resources and zero waste theme we will be bringing together researchers at Imperial to work across disciplines and with external stakeholders to tackle key challenges such as environmentally and socially sustainable materials; nature inspired engineering; sustainable fuels and chemicals to decarbonise transport systems, reduce dependence on rare-earth elements and remove the dependence of the chemical industry on fossil fuels; the circular economy including targeting a circular carbon and nitrogen economy and valorisation of waste products; sustainable business; and sustainable healthcare systems.

Theme Champions

This theme is led by Professor Magda Titirici (Department of Chemical Engineering), Professor James Durrant (Department of Chemistry), Professor Nick Voulvoulis (Centre for Environmental Policy) and Dr Simone Cenci (Business School).

Highlights

Materials as a service

As shared goods and services become more common how can we extend the circular economy to the components and materials used by manufacturers? Dr Marco Aurisicchio and colleagues in Design Engineering are developing a new circular business model in which manufacturers pay for time-bound access to parts and raw materials instead of buying them – thereby incentivising sustainable business models and design choices.

Read more about materials as a service

Materials from biowaste

Professor Magda Titirici will lead a £6.1 million, five-year EPSRC-funded project collaboration between industrial and academics partners to develop functional materials from bio-based waste resources.

Find out more in the Imperial news article

The Imperial-Iota-Infrastructures Lab (I3 Lab)

The I3-Lab was founded in 2022 with a generous donation from the IOTA Foundation, and is a joint initiative between the Dyson School of Design Engineering, the IOTA Foundation, the Transition to Zero Pollution initiative, and industry partners. The lab will be a lighthouse for translational research activities in the area of the circular economy.

The UK's future energy mix

You can read about what Imperial experts think the UK's future energy mix will look like if we're to reach net zero in our long read on Imperial Stories

Read the story

Design for a circular economy

Researchers from the Dyson School of Design Engineering are investigating ways to design for a circular economy. Dr Marco Aurisicchio explores how designers can consider the entire lifecycle of products and configure the systems to produce closed loop material flows. Dr Elena Dieckmann has started a company, Aeropowder, to develop new ways to use waste chicken feathers in sustainable thermally insulating packaging and potentially insulation in construction. Dr Pelin Demirel works on aligning companies’ decision-making towards circular outcomes.

EPSRC Circular Economy Centres

Researchers from Imperial's  Department of Chemical Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering  and the Centre for Environmental Policy are involved with two of UKRI's Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centres, a £22.5m initiative announced by the Government in November 2020: The National Interdisciplinary Centre for Circular Chemical Economy led by Loughborough University and the UKRI Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centre For Mineral-based Construction Materials led by University College London. 

Making plastics more sustainable

Plastic pollution is causing problems across the world and solving this challenge requires researchers from many disciplines - engineers, chemists, environmental science and policy, social science, and business models. Researchers across Imperial are working on solutions to plastic pollution from developing roadmaps for how the UK can prevent waste plastics from entering the environment to working together in the cross-Faculty Ocean Plastic Solutions Network.  Imperial's Institute for Molecular Science and Engineering (IMSE) has produced a briefing paper on the importance of molecular science for more sustainable plastics entitled 'Enabling a greener plastic future through molecular science'. 

Centres and networks

Research centres and networks

Research centres and networks continued