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Fellowship project aims to explore approaches to reducing organic waste to landfill

A new fellowship project which aims to explore ways to address the UK and global challenge of reducing organic waste to landfill held its inaugural meeting recently at the Department.

Industrial Innovation Fellowship project, “A systems approach to synergistic utilisation of secondary organic streams” team members

The meeting was hosted by Industrial Innovation (Rutherford) Research Fellow Dr Kok Siew Ng, who joined the Department’s Systems Engineering group in January this year. It aimed to enhance cross-fertilisation of ideas from various disciplines and promote long-term collaboration between the UK and developing countries.

The NERC-funded Industrial Innovation Fellowship project, “A systems approach to synergistic utilisation of secondary organic streams”, also aims to increase resource recovery by creating bio-renewable products to meet future market needs.

Dr Ng says, “The outcome from the meeting was truly promising, with a coherent vision of adopting an innovative and collaborative approach agreed by all delegates. The meeting was highly interactive and insightful, thanks to delegate presentations and discussions from different perspectives”.

The objectives of the project are well aligned with the UK Industrial Strategy in enhancing resource efficiency while achieving a sustainable industrial growth and a more resilient economy. The project has received support from a number of UK and international organisations (academia, industry and government), providing multi-disciplinary expertise to address the global challenges in waste management.

Project partners

UK: The University of Manchester; Aston University; University of Surrey; University of Leeds; Newcastle University London; Newcastle University; Aqua Enviro; Anaero Technology; the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Ireland: Celignis Ltd.

Mexico: Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo (IMP)

Malaysia: University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus; Universiti Putra Malaysia

Brazil: Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA)

Acknowledgement

Dr Ng would like to express his gratitude to the National Environment Research Council (now part of UK Research and Innovation) for their invaluable support for this initiative. The British Council is also acknowledged as initial collaborations between the UK and Mexico, Malaysia and Brazil were first established through Newton Fund Researcher Links Workshops. The current fellowship project funded by NERC has enabled further collaboration to be sustained for the next few years.

Further information

Please contact Dr Kok Siew Ng if you are interested in learning more about the project.