Bonus content: Panel discussion on 'The unmaking of everything'

In this bonus content to accompany Professor Mike Shaver’s live lecture: ‘The unmaking of everything’, you’ll hear the full panel discussion with him that followed Mike’s talk. 

If you haven’t seen the lecture yet, head to manchester.ac.uk/talk200 to hear from the Director of Sustainable Futures at The University of Manchester as he discusses sustainability challenges and the complex nature of our material world, with a particular focus on plastics. 

Listen from our panel experts, chaired by Colette Fagan, Vice-President for Research at Manchester, including Dr Helen Holmes, Deputy Director of Sustainable Futures; Dr Rosa Cuéllar-Franca, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering; and Dr Ciaran Lahive, a Research Fellow at the Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub.

Further information

Find out more about: 

• Sustainable Futures research platform
• Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub
• Sustainable Consumption Institute
• The Tyndall Centre, Manchester
• Recycling waste in the beer industry – explore how Manchester researchers at The University of Manchester are using innovative methods to analyze and remove plastic from the brewing process

What is Talk 200?

Talk 200 is a new lecture and podcast series from The University of Manchester, launching to mark our bicentenary: 200 years of making a difference.

This year we’re reflecting on our past, celebrating our present and looking to the future – and Talk 200 invites listeners to be part of the journey.

Our podcast host, Manchester aficionado, author, and University alumnus Andy Spinoza will be joined by a diverse line-up of guests from our community – pioneering academics and notable figures, inspiring staff, alumni and students – to discuss topics such as health, digital and AI, climate change, and equality and justice.

[Music] Hello and welcome to Talk 200, a lecture and podcast series to celebrate the University of Manchester's Bicentenary Year.

Our 200th anniversary is a time to celebrate 200 years of learning, innovation and research. 200 years of our incredible people and community, 200 years of global influence.

In this series, you'll be hearing from some of the nation's foremost scientists, thinkers and social commentators, plus many other voices from across our university community as we explore the big topics affecting us all.

In this bonus content to accompany Professor Mike Shaver's live lecture, The Unmaking of Everything, you'll hear the full panel discussion with him that followed Mike's talk.

If you haven't seen the lecture yet, head to Manchester.ac.uk/talk200 to hear from the Director of Sustainable Futures at the University of Manchester, as he discusses sustainability challenges and the complex nature of our material world, with a particular focus on plastic.

Listen on to hear from our panel of experts chaired by Collette Fagan, Vice President for Research at Manchester, including Dr Helen Holmes, Deputy Director of Sustainable Futures, Dr Rosa Cuella Franca, a senior lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Dr Kieran Lajev, a research fellow at the Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub.

As well as Mike, we have Dr Helen Holmes, we have Dr Kieran Lajev and we have Dr Rosa Cuella Franca.

So what we're going to do is I'm going to ask each other questions to warm us up, and we will then be coming to the floor, sorry, and also I will be signalled when there's online questions.

So we can really get under the skin of the debate here.

So Helen, where Mike left us, it really leads into the question I want to ask you, which is what are the social and behavioural changes and challenges that we must solve so that we can get the circular spiral economy really working over the coming period?

Thank you, thanks, great talk Mike as well.

So I'm a social scientist, so very much focused on social behaviours and practices.

And I really think that the challenges of circular economy and technological advancement need to pay attention to what people do with things, and I'd like to talk a bit about this in this presentation as well.

But if we don't, what we end up with are unintended consequences.

So my work focus is very much on the everyday, on the minutiae, on the weird and wonderful things that we all do with the objects that surround us, particularly those at home.

So let's give you a bit of an example of where a techno-centric solution for circular economy has gone wrong.

You may be aware that a lot of plastic bottles in particular are plastic waste in the past has been recycled into sportswear.

What was really taken into account when that was done is that people wash sportswear quite regularly and every time they wash it, thousands of micro and nanoparticles are released into the ecosystems.

So that's one example.

I know that I was thinking of when Mike was talking about credit cards, and I thought you might mention this, but you didn't, so I know something we talked about before.

It's obviously we're keen to recycle those, but what do most of you do at the end of life with a credit card?

You cut it up.

So these practices are really important, and they've got one further one, so I'm sort of going from the negative to the positive pair, hopefully.

The projects that I've been involved with Mike, which was mentioned in the talk, he's won't been to rule them all.

I was the person who was digging around in people's kitchens and asking them lots of questions about what they did with certain plastic items when it came to putting them in the bin.

And it was very clear that people are incredibly confused.

They're confused about what is plastic and they're confused about what bin it should go into.

So for me, I think it's really important that we have an understanding of how people make sense of materials, not just how they use them, but how they make sense of them.

So to give you an example, is that soo you're uniting?

Plastic?

Where would you put that?

General waste?

Plastic bin?

Obviously it depends on your local photo, but we won't get into that because that complicates matters.

We had other instances of, I won't say today about a very well-known crisp tube, where people were very unsure of what to do with that crisp tube.

And we actually had people a bit like the example there, where they'd be cutting, trying to cut the lid off the top of it, because that felt like metal, and they'd be trying to get the paper bit off.

So people were going to grate lettuce.

I sort of want to end my answer on a bit more of a positive, but we can learn an awful lot from what people are doing with these things, but we can also show how people really are trying their best in their caring about this stuff, and that really matters.

And that brings me back just to when you were talking at the end there.

In a way we used to have salvage yards, we used to have very horrific activities, but we've moved to a place where that isn't the case anymore, you know, in a fast-consumer society.

So I think it's really about getting back to grips with the materials, engaging with what people are already trying to do, where people storing up pots, tubs and trays to take to their neighbouring area, because they couldn't recycle them in their own neighbourhood.

Lots of things going on, so recognising these different practices are not just within the Global North either.

There are lots of socioeconomic practices, which are taking place in the Global South too, because I think that would be my positive to end on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Helen.

So let the hearing, we can follow on here in your career.

What's the most surprising insight you've gained about all these materials and life cycles, and how's it shaped your approach to developing more sustainable alternatives?

Thank you very much, that's a very interesting question, because I've worked at the intersection between reusing and recycling, and when to do that, and deconstruction.

So the breaking of a material down and the remaking of an original material once again.

And as Mike spoke about earlier, the complexity of the materials that exist in our modern world is extreme.

And I spend a lot of time engaging with all of our producers, but also the customer facing aspects of how polymers enter the world.

And I think one of the most fascinating things for me has always been trying to understand the decisions that led to the increase in complexity.

As a producer, you have all of these options, and you choose the various options that go into any given product, based on a myriad of different options.

You have a choice about how long-wearing you want to have a garment to be, how structurally sound you want a dashboard of a character to be.

There's so many different choices that get made, and these choices lead to the development of that complexity.

I think that trying to understand why those decisions were made, and how we as sustainably minded scientists can interact with how industry has become successful, and make it more sustainable without damaging that success.

I think that really sustains me.

Thank you.

I'm going to move to Rosa now.

Rosa, I know you were an expert on life-cycle assessment, and the methodology on July and that.

So in terms of identifying unintended consequences in this unmaking strategy, how is our pioneer work and Manchester helping to move us forward?

Thank you for the question, and just to give you a bit of a background, so life-cycle assessment is an environmental sustainability tool that allows us to quantify all different resources, and how we can get through the materials energy that goes into making a product, and translate that into an environmental impact.

So you're probably very familiar with carbon footprint or climate change.

So this is just one example of type of information that we can get through conducting a life-cycle assessment.

And something that is very important is that you have that conversation between the people that are making these materials, and understand all the different steps, all the different processes that went into designing that when we're applying this methodology, because we have to go into the detail of what goes in, what goes out, what happens with it afterwards.

And something that is very fascinating happening in Manchester is that access to multiple disciplinary resources in terms of the people working, because we can have conversations very early on about having an idea of designing this material, what do you think in terms of what are the consequences of changing this heat spot for these other ones.

So something that Mike mentioned in his talk is that sometimes the alternative is worse than what you're already doing, and life-cycle assessment allows us to take that step back to reflect on how can this change make a positive or a negative impact.

So having those conversations at Manchester with people in different disciplines involved in making up the material is very valuable.

Thank you.

I'm going to come back to you, Mike.

So you discussed and explained the complexity of the material world, and how unmaking as an approach can help us recover that value.

And I know you don't just want to study it, you want to change the world, you want to get some of the blues side of the image we were left to say vividly.

So what's the role of academics and their research in dialogue and working with industry to get to the root of the practices?

We really can change to make a difference.

Yeah, well, if I bring together the answers from my colleagues, the reality is that industry, actually just like the public, they want to change.

Sometimes they want to change because they want to influence consumer practices and they want to get more brand recognition.

Sometimes they want to change because they actually do want to have a lower impact on the environment, or they want to meet as stated climate targets.

But they struggle to understand these complex systems because they lack the social understanding to understand how those materials are used.

They lack the material understanding of what happens when you make things simpler and less complex, and they definitely don't understand life cycle assessment.

And the complexity of things beyond carbon, which are going to be potential deleterious impacts.

And so academia is essential to those organizations because it helps them reframe what they think the challenges, and it helps them actually get authentic answers.

And so instead of trying to get the answer that they think they want, they're able to work with us and actually know what they should do.

And that confidence is actually really powerful because it allows them to then change.

And that confidence can only happen when you have interdisciplinary thinking at the core of how you're in the graph.

Thank you.

So I think you can see why I love working at Manchester because we've got brilliant people here really getting to groups of important questions.

And this is just a sample of our community of colleagues at Sustainable Futures working on these challenges and more.

So I'm going to answer them, work the question we ask in all our talk 200 by Centenary Lecture and Podcast series, and then I'm going to come to you.

So final question.

What do you hope our third century at Manchester will bring to the area with their own sustainability?

I'm going to start with Rosa.

I think having end of life present when you're designing a material that becomes the norm, you're designing a material, but you're thinking what's going to happen to that material at the end of life.

And that becomes a crucial part of the design.

And another point to make is that sustainability should go beyond a nice thing to add.

And the mandatory metric that you need to provide alongside the design specification.

Thank you.

My answer is actually very, very similar to Rosa.

In reality, I think that in the next 100 years, I would like to see a world in which we're not making things without having that initial thought.

New materials being invented by material scientists all over the world.

It happens every single day, but these materials are being produced without that thought.

So prior to how they end up in products on the market, it's in that initial invention phase.

I want a world, or I hope to see a world in the next 100 years where the materials innovation space is directly plugged into sustainability, and that it's thinking about those things in the invention process, not at the end of the invention process.

Thank you.

And Helen, as a sociologist like you, what's your vision and how are we going to work with these materials scientists?

I think for me over the next 100 years, I'd really like to see an accelerated focus on intersphere research where it becomes the norm.

But when I say that as well, I think it's important to say this is just working with different disciplines, which I think is vital, and we have to do that to tackle these wicked problems as they're currently facing.

But also, as Mike has mentioned, with experts beyond the university, so with policy, with industry, with the third sector, and importantly with publics as well, that's got to be co-productive, it's got to be collaborative, it currently is bringing people in at the end to say what you think of this now, we've done it, it's got to be right for this.

That's what I really like to say.

Thank you.

Me too.

And Mike, the last word at this stage.

I mean, they've already stolen our bike.

Well, no, and so I'll pick up on one thing, which I think is going to be really important to unlocking the change that we've been talking about this evening.

And that is openness.

And so, oftentimes, across these supply chains or across these materials, we don't know what we're dealing with, because the material complexity is locked behind trade secrets and locked behind closed doors.

And actually, having systems which are empowered by open data takes the power and shares it.

And so it's not to say that, you know, your hind sketch up is not still your hind sketch up, but it actually is going to be really open in terms of being able to share the data that we need to share to unlock those sustainable faiths.

And that, I think, will be transformative to actually making better decisions across the board.

Thank you.

So now we're going to open for discussion.

We've got two colleagues with Mike's in the room.

Thank you.

I've got one colleague track or two colleagues tracking online who will signal to me when there's a question there.

And if you have a question to a particular member of the panel, please signal.

We'll try and avoid the four people providing answer to every question so that we can move things along and give them a little bit of a break as well.

So, ah, great.

Sorry, the gentleman behind you's hand went up first and then you're second.

Thank you very much.

Question to you.

I have much do you think the mobility is important after this, because looking back at this, I find that usually we don't handle it.

Usually we don't manage to measure the damage that the new product is causing until some decades, centuries afterwards.

Another example I worked 50 years ago on looking at the possible fact that mercury would run out in 10 years time, which is the consensus of the time MIT, the club of Rome.

And we looked at these recycling things, but what you found when mercury was that it took a time before there were measuring tools that could detect the parts of the million of mercury in the environment.

And some of you may recall minimat of A when many people were dying or going mad because of mercury in the environment there.

And you only have to think, sorry, just one more example, which is a funny one really from Ann and Alice in Wonderland.

You may all wondered where the mad had to date from.

And it came from Luther, I can tell you that, because I come from the beginning of the year, and I think it's a very important thing to think about.

And I think it's a very important thing to think about.

I think it's a very important thing to think about.

I think it's a very important thing to think about.

I think it's a very important thing to think about.

Is it good enough to then go back into a problem?

We can pick it up later, but it is essential that not only that we have good measurement techniques, but that those measurement techniques are open as well.

And you might pick up on LCA.

So we have tools, methodologies that will allow us to do certain quantification of impacts, but with the development of new materials, like nano materials, for example, we have a lot of catching up to do because our current methods don't capture those impacts.

So there needs to be a bridge between what are going to be the consequences of these materials and how are we going to measure something that we don't know.

How are they going to affect?

So yes, and it's going back to your example.

So there's some catching up to do, but it's being aware of that and working in parallel with the development of those materials and how are we going to provide.

So we provide useful measurements, not just numbers for the sake of it, but yes, definitely measurement is very important.

Thank you.

I have a gentleman here with a question.

Oh, I can see the hands going up now.

So, oh, goodness, right.

Yeah, let's start with you and I'll come to you and try to give a list of other questions.

At my age, I think global warming will probably bust me out.

So if I didn't have any spark of public spirit in this area, put everything into waste.

But I'm nerdy enough to actually pick up what mostly counts in the street and put them into resubtrant.

But I've got 320 euros in my house, who would put everything into waste because they feel they're well-known because of the difference.

And what it seems, getting back to your real thing about the Pringles, the Pringles, John Taylor.

What happens if I've got something the wrong thing?

I mean, we're all troubled, if you put, I've got to be into the recycling and see, of course, the out-popping.

Everything goes to London.

Is that correct?

It just seems to me that the information is lacking.

Even in London, many of the birds, they've got different rules.

And I read somewhere.

They've got a landy, different recycling goods.

So can you help us out on this?

We certainly didn't clap this question, but I'm going to pass immediately to Helen on this one.

Thank you.

I could give a day-long presentation on bins.

The work that we've done.

I am known as bin lady.

The cop current work at work.

So yeah, and totally echo the confusion.

And that's something that we've tried something quite a lot.

There are so many different rules, some different things.

We've actually written a policy report on this, which you can give you the QR code for if you want places to have a read of.

In terms of what happens to your waste, and correct me if I'm wrong here, I can keep them fairly.

So it would vary which local authority it was, then which waste facility it went to, whether the ummoschpake being contaminated, or not.

And I sure might be able to tell you why the ummoschpake being contaminated in a moment, for some and not for others.

So there will be instances where, unfortunately, a load might be contaminated and it may then not be dealt with in the way.

So the way it should have intended to.

So when you put something in you hope it goes to recycling.

When it then gets to that point, we also hope it goes to recycling, but it cannot always be guaranteed.

But I just want to add one small thing about the 20 year olds of a disillusionment, which is something that we've talked about quite a lot.

That a lot of people are sort of thinking, is it worth it?

Perhaps not helped by our previous government saying that recycling isn't worth it and that ended up all over the day with mail.

I would always advocate that all of your local authority rules they were probably very complicated, but hoping things are going to become simpler moving forward.

And if you can recycle, do recycle and hopefully that message will get to younger generations as time goes on.

I'll let you put up with him that they've been.

So technically, I guess it's recyclable, but if your local authority is too lazy to wash anything, then it won't be.

But that's the decision.

That's the difference between recyclable and recycled.

So the local authority rules differentiate that, not the potential.

Easily recyclable.

Thank you.

So I've got a cluster of hands here, as I'm going to do a few here, and then come to just the gentlemen, four rows back.

Thank you.

And then I'll take the gentleman behind as well.

And then we're going to have to fight with your hands.

I'm trying to make some sense.

I'm very glad that the social scientist is part of the group.

One thing I don't think mentioned is the role of politicians in rewarding manufacturers and retailers who are going in the right direction.

An example might be what's really known as the sugar taps, and look how controversial that was.

But I'm just wondering what thoughts, how did the change decide who answered that?

What role do you think politics and politicians should play?

Massively.

So when we finished the projects, as I said, we've got this policy report, which we then fired out to do as many different peoples we could.

We do think that's influenced the last government policy, whether that gets put through, it's called simply recycling.

We're not sure whether that will happen or not.

We've been in conversations with Deafra and other other agencies.

But yeah, it's huge because actually they've got the power to be able to facilitate change to where it matters to.

And for us, I think the argument would be that the whole of that supply chain is looking at.

So it's right down to what happens at the local authority level, what happens to the waste processes and the waste treatment and the recyclers, but also right at the front end as well from raw materials and design manufacturers retailers right the way across.

So there's a massive part to play, and we can only hope that our voices are heard in that sense.

And just to follow up on that, this is not just in the UK, right?

So both Helen and I were part of policy briefs that went to the UN plastic screening negotiations as well.

So you have the influence at the local council level, but you also have to influence nationally and internationally.

And it's almost validating to have to buy it and have those politicians sort of at least acknowledge or listen to a little bit of what we're trying to say, but it's exceptionally.

Thank you.

The gentleman immediately behind had his hand up and nanosecond after first off the book.

So we'll take you please.

Thank you very much.

I've recently become a granddad.

I have a one year old grandson.

And it's years since my wife and I have had to buy toys, but when you come out, it's just a space for me to be plastic.

Now, you've looked at packaging, you've looked at cars, but it's always got to be a massive problem.

And when you look at them, there's a mix of metal and all different types of plastic in there.

So my wife and I, we try and look towards wooden toys if we can, but maybe that's not sustainable.

Maybe that, you know, from what you were saying, like about transportation and the other costs.

But we look for those because at least we think it might degenerate.

So what work are you doing on toys?

And am I right of thinking, well, do this better?

Thank you.

You have probably, do you want to take?

Yes, sir.

I'm personally currently not doing anything on toys, but it's definitely something that I think would intersect very heavily with a lot of the work we are encouraging.

I would say this, the material that's used to make Lego is one of a very commonly used material in the automotive sector also.

And I think that in that sort of a sense, I think every sector that we investigate allows sort of the generation of knowledge that can be then transitioned into other sectors.

So packaging influences learnings that can be utilized in looking at the automotive sector and then back and then need to further sectors.

I think that was in the sort of concept of toys.

I think the decision making processes are the ones that need to be investigated.

It's like what kinds of toys and then what kinds of materials are necessary for those toys.

Because if a child wants to play with a water gun, I don't know if that exists and made out of wood.

So it's a sort of a challenge where it's like what exactly is the toys purpose versus what materials are would be the best choices for that.

But unfortunately, I'm going to have to throw it back to Mike as to whether plastic toys are wooden toys.

Wooden toys have a higher footprint and a higher water impact than plastic toys.

But I would actually step back from that and say, well, what toys are you buying?

Because if you buy Lego, well, the whole experience around Lego is build and rebuild.

And that actually is ensuring reuse of that toy.

And so where are you buying it from?

Are you buying it from a charity shop?

And you're actually reusing that toy as your grandchildren age.

Or are you buying toys which encourage active play?

And I think that actually the process of thinking about what play you want, that is tied to then, then really getting those early experiences about what sustainability means.

So buy more like that.

Thank you.

I've noted you at the back, but I'm going to come to a question from our online and I will come to you next.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So a question to ask too, that's okay.

We've got quite a few questions that come through.

The first is a question for Dr.

Rosa.

So one major challenge in developing new techniques is scale.

What are some of the challenges in scaling up proposed technologies for industrial use?

And then the second question is from other people who are online on this board.

And he's asked how large countries like China are managing their recycling processes.

I'll take the first question.

Okay.

The second is...

Cool.

Mike.

Thank you, Mike.

The main challenge with scaling something that is not conceivable or known is data.

So how are you going to generate the data that you need to make those projections of something that what would it look like?

But it's a very important exercise, especially at the early stages of designing a new technology to have a feel of how this looked like if I translate my bench scale experiment to an actual industrial process.

And even though the technologies that might be associated with that process are not there yet, we can get a good idea of how many steps would it take to go from A to B and have a feel of the intensiveness of the resources and the energy that is going to go with it.

And at the same time, keep an eye on the economics as well of that process.

So it's a good exercise to think about what would this idea look like, but it's the reliability of the data that you use to make those assessments.

So it's very important to keep that in mind and make sure that the data that is used to inform those assessments are as robust as possible, considering that it's something that we don't really know much about.

So there is a big challenge there in that sense, but it's a good thing to consider.

I would also love to add on that that lifecycle assessment as a tool is becoming more widespread, and it's therefore being integrated into the technological development process so that people can identify hotspots, problems that are areas of technology in its own infancy and develop work around, solving those problems early on so that you don't get to the end point and then have to figure out that it's a big problem.

That's a really nice thing that's evolving at the moment.

Thank you.

And like China or other major economies?

So if we think of other countries, each country has its existing waste management infrastructure.

Sometimes that waste management infrastructure is informal and they don't have set up facilities like we do, and so we want ours to be better.

So we're 20-year-olds, we're not being jerks, but in older countries it's so informal that we actually have to think about the consequences of any one of those changes.

One of the things that is true about other countries, and this does include China, is that there is a greater focus on pyrolysis.

Sometimes in our lab we call this posh burning, but sort of breaking things down either for energy or not keeping them in their highest value condition.

And I think that's very challenging because you're not necessarily retaining the value and there's going to be an environmental consequence to that.

One of the things that we've talked a lot about is data, and one of the things that's a big unknown is the quality of the data that's coming out of those other countries.

And so when we look at this on making of everything on a global scale, we'll really have to be able to do projects all over the world to have a global responsibility about how the technologies that are imagined will ensure fate as those countries change.

From China to India to wherever.

Thanks Mike.

So, personally it's quite dim and new I can't see, but I'm going to come to this side room who are feeling neglected.

I can see.

So I've got two questions there.

Thank you.

Hello.

This is that interdisciplinarity, so it's probably for Helen and Mike.

But you talked a lot about trying to contact people in industry, which is great.

But many of them may not be receptive or you may never be able to contact them.

Wouldn't it be well?

I don't know.

I'm asking whether there's any focus on teaching children about the secular economy.

And teaching them is interdisciplinary thinking way before they even go to secondary school, way before they decide what subject they want to do, way before they decide they want to be a product designer or a CEO of a company or whatever.

So that we all in the future have this thinking and we all start from this level essentially.

And is there anything happening or do we need to talk to the Department for Education about that?

Before I hand to Mike it's also the university curriculum where I know colleagues needing some fantastic things.

So Mike, I'll give us one to you.

It's essential.

And effectively the earlier the better when thinking about sustainability interdisciplinarity is hard for adults because we often use different words for different things.

And so part of the journey to enable interdisciplinarity is to actually take the time to talk through the messiness of those problems.

And I think one of the challenges is the constraints that we have on time, right?

Where we need the teachers to be able to engage with that messiness to then be able to really get kids talking about that messiness in the right way.

So it's essential.

The Department of Education has not invested, I don't think enough in the integration of sustainability education in the UK.

We have some exceptional people at the University of Manchester who are working on this.

And really it's about ensuring that access to information.

And one of the things we want to do is to sort of develop a series of primers where it becomes accessible, where we have this sort of open access training where anybody can go and do that.

The key is again that challenge of time, right?

So having the time and capacity to go and create that is going to be essential to enabling that, not just in schools, but in all environments.

Thank you.

So if you're a gentleman at the back, then the fifth row gentleman is so, thank you.

Anyone on the panel think that in the next 200 years we'll stop using crude oil, stop recycling, use oil.

Will we have high power machinery that doesn't include nuclear or petroleum fuels?

I would answer that by saying, I don't think we will ever, never extract a little bit of oil.

Maybe we will, maybe we won't.

I would say that we will over time get better at making the use of those materials more limited.

That would be the only thing I can...

I'm not the most confused.

I'm looking over here for Hans.

I'm going to take one more hand from the side.

Yes, I can see you.

Just to comment on that last one, I think you can actually synthesize a lot of products as well, from hydrogen and carbon dioxide and make products.

My question is really looking at internationally.

Mike, you talked about openness and you said we need to get openness.

You talked to a company like Polskar who are making cars and they want to be open.

But how are we going to succeed internationally when you look at, say, China, other countries on the far east, we get so many products made in those countries.

They're not manufactured here anymore, they're manufactured somewhere else, and we don't have any oversight into their production methodologies.

I think that if we tether that question back to the question about measurement, when we are importing materials, how do we have an assurance that the material is what it says it is?

This is becoming not just important for us as consumers, but also for companies who are really struggling with the complexity of their supply chain.

So, international companies who are trying to make those sustainability decisions are desperate for good quality information.

That means we need to improve our analytical methodologies to be able to understand the differences between what is being marketed and what is actually showing up.

That actually then allows you to know how to use the materials correctly so that you get the desired quality of product and you stop having waste.

In terms of your follow-on comment, I absolutely agree that the first thing that is going to be a transition is moving away from our use of oil for fuels.

And so synthesizing fuels will stop our addiction to burning stuff which is actually really quite valuable in making some of those more challenging products.

We have to also think about the footprint of a CO2 methodology and whether or not it's higher than what we'd be doing.

Thank you.

So, I've got a question over here.

I've got one question on Slido and I'm sorry two people whose hands up were one behind you did come up before.

And we will have time and reception for you to nap people.

So, please.

This follows on the previous questions and comments.

I was wondering if you're doing or thinking about doing any work with environmental charities because I've been concerned sometimes that some of the advice they're getting and indeed some of the campaigns they've run are not scientifically based and are actually taking us in the wrong direction.

Yeah, so I think there are just like the academics up here.

There are a hugely diverse range of environmental charities.

Some of them have super sensible initiatives.

So, rap in the UK does a lot of really, really good work influencing policy in this space.

And then there are some environmental organizations that haven't been following the science.

It is.

It just shows how important it is for universities to exist, not just as an excess point between academic knowledge and industry, but also policy and NGOs and all of those groups.

So we've done a little bit in that space that there's always an appetite for.

Thank you.

It's a really important question as a few of the others.

Olympia for the questions on Slido.

And then it's a gentleman on the back.

Now I'm sorry it's the one behind you, but the two guys who've been putting up their hands, please come and find the panel afterwards.

So, Olympia.

Thank you.

So, a question from Diego in our online audience who's asked, "As President Mike illustrated, what appears sustainable is always so, and it's not just about choosing the most sustainable option for finding out what's truly viable.

And in exploring sustainable choices, we see that some products are made more sustainably broad, even considering transportation impacts.

The question is, how do you integrate research and academic insights into real life economic decisions to choose a sustainable path without becoming only dependent on another economy and how you address the associated political challenges?

Oh, it's legal.

So I think some of that has been demonstrated actually in the lecture this evening.

Yeah, I think one of the really important things to realize is that we put the planet up for a reason.

Yes, we are in the United Kingdom, right?

And as a proud Commonwealth, escapee from Canada, we have lots of global influence as the United Kingdom, but we exist in a world with really complex supply chains.

So we have to recognize that that world in itself is the largest system which we are trying to optimize.

And that means we have to build international collaborations, right?

The University has exceptional collaborations.

We were just talking earlier about a new project with Melbourne that we're going to be kicking off.

And actually, it's about using that international reputation and network to be able to go and understand the systems in those other countries, but also that in sight check.

I may perhaps go into this venture into a huge complex system, rather stepping back and saying we can't do anything, it's too complicated.

So the last question to you, thank you, I was in the room, I'm really sorry, it's lovely to see so much interest in the questions.

Please do bring them into the reception because I'm going to get the wave in the moment of our ability on time.

So, A to you please.

There's carrot and stink, carrot is the economic value, the stink could be the regulation.

How much are you doing to influence regulators?

Lots.

So, we have very strong connections into government and all kinds of bits of that.

We have submitted way too many reports into different consultations.

We interact a lot with the emergence, what's called extended producer responsibility steps, which are going to be coming in to play as Helen had mentioned earlier.

A lot of the language that we wrote was then lifted into the simple recycling policy.

It's essential for us to work with those regulators to make sure that the right decisions are made.

The challenge is, is that all of these things require nuance and nuance in policy don't always go well together.

And so the key is to make sure that the right nuances make it in to the policies which are emerging and that the regulators are going to be looking at.

We know also from other work at the university through our policy Manchester and other outreach activities.

Shaping policy can be a long haul if you've got to keep getting the message out there and you've got to keep coming back to it.

So, it is part of the solution as part of the system, regulation in centres, practical solutions and driving forward.

I now need to draw a guillotine under this and we've had a really, really helpful and stimulating discussion on this.

To stay up to date with everything Talk 200 be sure to follow and subscribe to the series on the podcasting platform of your choice.

Head to Manchester.ac.uk/200 to find out more about this series and all the activity taking place across our Bicentenary year.

Use the hashtag UOM200 to engage with Talk 200 and our wider Bicentenary celebrations on social media.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Talk 200, a University of Manchester series.

[Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]