Rethinking Plastics Pollution Post-Pandemic
Start date
01 August 2020End date
31 July 2021Overview
This project brings together an interdisciplinary team from the Universities of Surrey (UK), Wollongong (Australia), and São Paulo (Brazil) to form the UGPN Rethinking Plastics Network.
Our understanding of how waste plastics impact the environment, health and marine life has dramatically shifted over recent years, with growing appreciation of the scale of damage inflicted on our planet. Efforts to translate this into law and policy to optimise waste-management and minimise detrimental impacts are recent and piecemeal. At the same time, Covid-19 is impacting legislative and policy agendas, delaying progress on tackling plastics waste pollution and the shifts towards a Circular Economy. The network uses its diverse collective, expertise to explore these problems with particular reference to Australia, Brazil and the UK, in the context of progress towards the SDGs.
Funder
Team
The project is a collaboration between the Universities of Surrey, São Paulo (USP) and Wollongong (UOW).
Our network creates a global research-group from disciplines spanning law, business, public policy (Surrey/Wollongong), chemistry, bio-sciences, environmental engineering (Wollongong), business, environmental sciences and environmental policy (USP) creating a platform for sharing expertise and optimising our research potential tackling plastics pollution.
University of Surrey team
Co-Principal Investigator
Dr Noreen O'Meara
Associate Professor (Reader), Human Rights, European and Environmental Law. Co-director: Surrey Centre for International and Environmental Law (SCIEL).
See profile
Co-Principal Investigator
Professor Rosalind Malcolm
Professor of Law, Director of Environmental Regulatory Research Group (ERRG)
Biography
I am an environmental lawyer and I specialise in looking at the ways law can be used to protect the environment. Recently I have been working on the 'wicked problem' of the polluting waste from plastics and how a circular economy might help to stop the problem of waste. So I look at laws around the ecodesign of products and how they can be implemented to stop the production of waste and pollution. I look at the whole governance frameworks for environmental law including not just the legislation but policy, implementation, enforcement and compliance as well as the impact of property rights. I have been working on the rights to water and sanitation and how they can be used to ensure a decent standard of living for people especially in developing countries. I believe that we will not solve the problem of the degradation of the earth unless we work across disciplines seeking solutions together so I specialise in multidisciplinary research working with social and natural scientists and engineers.
I am the Director of the Environmental Regulatory Research Group (http://www.surrey.ac.uk/errg/) which is a research grouping of individuals and organisations engaged in research, teaching and consultancy into environmental regulation, compliance and enforcement and is part of the Surrey Centre for International and Environmental Law.
I am an associate member of the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey and I also practice as a barrister from Guildford Chambers.
University of Wollongong team
Co-Principal Investigator
Dr Hugh Forehead
Research Fellow, SMART Infrastructure Facility
Co-Investigator
Dr Marcella Bernardo
Associate Research Fellow, SMART Infrastructure Facility
Co-Investigator
Dr Karen Raubenheimber
Lecturer, Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources & Security (ANCORS)
Research team member
Nuwanthi Kanchana
PhD candidate, SMART Infrastructure Facility
University of São Paulo team
Professor Sylmara Lopes Francelino Gonçalves Dias
University of São Paulo
Co-Investigator
Isabela Ribeiro Borges de Carvalho
PhD student in Environmental Sciences in IEE-USP
Research team member
Andrés Felipe Torres
Doctoral student in Sustainability
Research team member
Isabela de Carvalho Vallin
PhD student in Environmental Sciences in IEE-USP