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.
Designing out hazardous chemicals
Providing innovative, tailored and nuanced strategies to address the tensions between circularity and pollution.
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.
Research news and projects
More than 60% of home battery installations inspected in Australia are ‘substandard’
More than 60% of battery system installation work inspected under a federal government green energy program is substandard and 1.2% unsafe, according to a...
Toxic-free childcare guide
Childcare centres and preschools have been identified as significant places where children might be exposed to potentially hazardous substances. However, there...
Wealth from waste
Electronic waste (e-waste) is a global problem that shadows the rapid evolution of technology. Vast amounts of frequently replaced consumer goods such as...
Australia and Japan share their perceptions responsible raw material supply and trade
In November, ISF researchers Stephen Northey, Elsa Dominish and Bernardo Mendonca Severiano organised and delivered a series of workshops in Sendai and Kyoto,...
ISF research on packaging is something out of the box
In Australia, packaging waste is growing twice as fast as our population. The harmful effects of consumer packaging on our oceans, waterways and land are well...
Our team
Simran Talwar
Program Lead - Resource Stewardship
DVC (Research)
Monique Retamal
Research Director
DVC (Research)
Elsa Dominish
Research Director
DVC (Research)
Nick Florin
Research Director
DVC (Research)
Rachael Wakefield-Rann
Research Principal
DVC (Research)
Stephen Northey
Research Director
DVC (Research)
Samantha Sharpe
Program Lead - Transformative Learning
DVC (Research)
Melita Jazbec
Research Director
DVC (Research)
Rusty Langdon
Senior Research Consultant
DVC (Research)
Andrea Turner
Program Lead - Water Futures
DVC (Research)
Helen Lewis
Adjunct Professor
DVC (Research)
John Gertsakis
Adjunct Professor
DVC (Research)
Rose Read
Adjunct Professor
DVC (Research)
Jordan Roods
Research Consultant
DVC (Research)
Saori Miyake
Senior Research Consultant
DVC (Research)
Jamie Chen
Research Consultant
DVC (Research)