C-VORR: Complex-Value Optimisation for Resource Recovery

Traditionally, we think of industrial manufacturing processes as producing useful output that have economic value - products - and unwanted outputs with disposal costs - wastes. It is often more useful to think in terms of the 'total value' of the process and its products and co-products, for two reasons. First, adjusting the manufacturing process can often make the 'waste' material into a something useful for another product (e.g. iron and steel manufacture can be adapted so that the main waste, blast-furnace slag, can be added to concrete to make it cheaper and more resistant to corrosion). This can increase the total value of the process. Secondly, if we only take in to account the economic value of the products and coproducts, we overlook other important aspects of the total value. For example, adding economic value to the blast-furnace slag has the added benefit of diverting it from landfill; thus, the evnvironmental damage is reduced, or, put another way, the environmental value is also increased. Iron and steel manufacture may also have a social value, by providing jobs for a region. By looking at how all three aspects of total value - economic, environmental and social - vary as the manufacturing process is adjusted, we can move away from a 'product + waste' model to one where we can optimise the total value to society of the whole manufacturing process.

To do this, we need to build a completely new model for analysing manufacturing processes. This will combine a number of modelling approaches used in environmental science (life cycle assessment), environmental economics (materials flow analysis), social science (social cost/benefit analysis) and mathematical modelling (stochastic multi-criteria decision analysis). It wil also create a new concept of 'value' - total complex value - that considers and combines the economic, social and environmental impacts of industrial processes. It will strive to optimise value from 'cradle to cradle' and allow us to measure the true value of e.g. designing for dismantling, upstream de-pollution, optimising closed-loop recycling and upvs. down-cycling. Because it will allow us to analyse the effect of interventions in the process on total value, we can then use it to adjust existing processes or design new processes, ensuring they are installed in the right place at the right time to maximise the benefit to society. Ultimately, we want the new model to move us away from old thinking about waste, and help us build a sustainable society with circular materials flow.

A very broad range of expertise is required to develop the model. We can bring together experts from the necessary fields (e.g. civil engineering, environmental engineering, economics, mathematics, industrial ecology, social science, materials science, product design, geography, water management, process engineering) because Leeds University is unique in that several interdisciplinary consortia with a range of the necessary expertise already exist (e.g. water@leeds, EPSRC Undermining Infrastructure, FP7 FESSUD - see Track Record). This grant will help these consortia collaborate across projects through research challenge workshops. Initially, we will concentrate within the University of Leeds, leveraging our enormous range of disciplines to extract maximum value from the NERC resource by minimising transport expenditure, communication barriers and lag time. Later, where external expertise is identified as essential, collaborators from outside Leeds or academia will be sought; again, via extensive existing networks.

The aim is to develop a novel valuation framework which will draw on LCA, material flow analysis, social cost-benefit analysis and multi-criteria decision analysis in order to create a greater understanding of the feedbacks to the environment, society and economy that result from resource recovery.

The Catalyst Grant project, C-VORR, has been designed to encourage research end-user and wider stakeholder engagement from the start of the project, albeit focused more on the former than the latter beneficiary. This engagement exercise will be crucial to the development of a Research Grant that will result in medium and long-term impacts for the commercial private sector and policy-makers. It is also essential to ensure that the framework developed will be functional - the focus of the project is to develop a tool that has a wide application beyond an academic audience. Companies from the water, manufacturing industries and waste management sectors, plus consultancies and other companies/industries as applicable, have been approached to participate in the project through involvement in the steering group and by attending the workshop and sandpit. Similarly, waste regulators and policy-makers have been approached to provide a full perspective of the issues to be examined in the review. The range of experience and expertise that these organisations will bring to the framework will ensure that all criteria, from process and waste factors to environmental, social, economic and health parameters, will be appropriately integrated into the development of the prototype framework; the data they can bring to the project will be essential to ensure real-world application. It will also allow case studies to be identified to further test and develop the framework in a Research Grant setting. Letters of Support have already been obtained from a number of organisations (e.g. Yorkshire Water, Viridor) but the Catalyst project will allow further development of the consortium with many more organisations approached for involvement.

All research end-users who engage with C-VORR will benefit from access to the prototype framework: the full framework will only be available through the Research Grant. The framework will ultimately help industry to better anticipate and hence take advantage of changing attitudes to and markets for "waste", helping to grow the UK resource and manufacturing base whilst also considering the costs and benefits to the environment and health. Utilising an ecosystem services approach, materials currently considered to be wastes can be more fully evaluated as resources with environmental, economic and social value. Training materials will be prepared on optimal utilisation of the framework and training workshops offered to all end-users. The greater connectivity that will be created across the life cycles of products will also help regulators and policy-makers to better understand the issues that will arise as wastes begin to gain greater recognition as resources. Involvement in the Catalyst project will begin this process and allow end-users to better engage with one another to fully realise the benefits from this step-change approach.

A key strength of the Catalyst project is its commitment to KE activity and the need to embed the needs of end-users at the centre of the framework development, and for users to help develop the framework through data and case study provision. A varied programme of activities will involve all research end-users with more activity planned in the Research Grant which will expand the project to a wider audience of stakeholders. Events planned include seminars, webinars, training workshops and materials, informative website, conference attendance and publications in varied media.