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We work with organisations to identify and evaluate opportunities to avoid, reuse and recover waste and adopt new circular economy business models.

Resources are fundamental to our society and wellbeing, yet increasing demand places huge pressure on our natural resources, degrading fragile ecosystems, and adversely affecting human health. At the same time, societies are becoming increasingly wasteful, pollution from plastic waste is a pressing global environmental problem and our resource recovery systems for discarded packaging, organics, textiles and e-waste are failing.

At ISF, we don’t see this as a simple waste-management problem. Our research takes a ‘circular economy’ approach that creates a new vision for sustainable economies, where products, processes and systems are redesigned to avoid waste and to maximise the value of resources through actions to: reduce, repurpose, reuse, remanufacture and recycle.

Expertise areas

  • Circular economy

    Investigating strategies, policies, business models, and social and technical solutions to drive a circular economy.

  • Resource recovery

    Promoting smarter and more productive use of resources through efficient resource recovery including reuse and recycling.

  • Sustainability of supply chains

    Identifying opportunities to improve the environmental and social impacts of resource use and supply chains.

  • Plastics and packaging

    Helping reduce the harmful social and environmental impacts of plastics and packaging through better approaches to design, reuse and recycling. 

     

  • Metals, electronics and e-waste

    Finding opportunities to ‘mine’ above-ground metal resources in a future circular economy for metals.

  • Textiles and garments

    Enhancing environmental and social sustainability of global production and consumption of textiles and garments.

  • Organic resources in the circular economy

    Using innovative approaches, management and partnerships to transform food waste and other organic resources into closed-loop value chains.

  • Designing out hazardous chemicals

    Providing innovative, tailored and nuanced strategies to address the tensions between circularity and pollution.

Research news and projects

Team

  • Program lead - Resource stewardship

    Sustainable consumption, circular economy policy and supply chains.

  • Research Principal

    Social and environmental impacts of resources and supply chains.

  • Associate Professor & Research Director

    Applied research supporting product stewardship and circular supply chains.

  • Senior Research Consultant

    Systemic approaches to circular supply chains, stewardship and pollution.

  • Research Principal

    Circular economy, resource efficiency in manufacturing, industrial symbiosis.

  • Senior Research Consultant

    Quantitative modelling and assessment of sustainable waste management systems.

  • Research Principal

    Metal supply chains, resource depletion and life cycle assessment

  • Associate Director Research, ISF Professor

    Product Stewardship; Decarbonisation; Circular Economy for resources, water, energy.

  • Program lead - Course development

    Employment, enterprise and policy setting for green and just transition.

  • Research Principal

    Transition to circular economy for resource, water and energy systems.

  • Senior Research Consultant

    Supply chain footprinting and life cycle assessment.

  • Research Principal

    Sustainable production and consumption, circular economy, and the fashion industry.

  • Research Director

    Applied research on food waste and transition of the urban organic waste industry.

  • Adjunct Professor
  • Adjunct Professor
  • Adjunct Professor
  • Research Assistant

    Law reform, policy development and environmental & social justice initiatives.

  • Senior Research Consultant

    Environmental Scientist, policy and research on land, energy, water and biodiversity through geospatial analysis.

Let's collaborate

Whether you have a problem that needs support or an idea for change, our innovative and solutions-focused approach can help you achieve your goals.

Contact Monique Retamal on Monique.Retamal@uts.edu.au for more information.

Monique Retamal

Contact us

t: +61 2 9514 4950
e: isf@uts.edu.au

Level 10, UTS Building 10
235 Jones Street
Ultimo NSW 2007, Australia
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Contact us for media requests and other enquiries

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