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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.
Hello and welcome to Talk 200,
Manchester's Bicentenary Year.
lecture and podcast series to celebrate The University of
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,
In this series, you'll
social commentators,
hearing from some of the nation's foremost scientists, thinkers and
plus many other voices from across our university community as we explore the big topics
plus many other voices from across our university community as we explore the big topics
In this third, Talk 200 lecture, Mike Shaver, Professor of Polymer Science and Director of
Sustainable Futures at The University of Manchester,
discusses sustainability challenges and the complex nature of our material world with a
particular focus on plastics.
He explores how to recover value from plastic packaging waste and why unpicking the
complexity in these systems is essential for a more sustainable future.
I'm Professor Colette Fagan, I'm Vice President for Research at The University of
Manchester. Welcome to the special Talk 200 event,
At a splendid venue at RIBA.
I have two important housekeeping events before we start.
The first is, if there is a fire alarm, please make your way to this exit and RIBA security staff
will help you leave the building.
The second, which is more certain to happen, is there is a reception at the end, and I would
love it if you would find time to stay with us for discussions and meeting people after the
event.
This is the third of four major live events of Talk 200, the University's lecture and podcast
series running throughout 2024, our bicentenary year.
I'm delighted to be joined by those of you here in London and the many more joining us
online for this lecture and panel discussion.
The previous lectures and broadcasts, and you can pick up one of these outside, to get the
link, have covered debates including health equity, social justice, innovation, climate
change and energy,
and these can be all accessed through our University bicentenary webpage and the usual
podcast channels.
The University's 200th anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on our past, celebrate our
present and look to the future.
The Talk 200 series invites listeners to be part of this journey with us.
The series features some of the nation's foremost thinkers and commentators from health
and physical science, social science, history, the arts and many more voices from across
our community.
I am very proud of our University and to be part of our community of staff, students, alumni
and friends.
So let me just blow the trumpet a little bit.
Our University is globally recognised with the quality of our research and the impact that it
brings with the benefit of society and our planet.
To give you just a flavour, we are among the top 50 in the world for the quality and reach of
our research.
We are among the top 25 most international universities in the world in terms of our staff
and students.
We are second in the world for the impact and contribution that we make to the delivery of
the United Nations sustainable development goals.
And of particular relevance to this event, we are third globally in the Sustainability Index,
which measures University's ability to tackle the world's greatest environmental and social
challenges.
And this is all down to our staff and students.
We are very pleased to be joined this evening by one of them, Mike Shaver, Professor of
Polymer Science and Director of Sustainable Futures at the University of Manchester.
Mike's lecture, ‘The unmaking of everything’, asks, "How can we address the sustainability
challenges of our material world?".
Professor Shaver will explore the complex nature of our material world and challenge our
understanding of what sustainability means through a focus on plastics.
Mike will examine our presumptions around plastic packaging waste, the complexity of
these materials in essential objects from our credit cards to convey abouts to cars and the
interrelationship between these materials and our carbon footprint.
He will explore how to recover value by unmaking these systems at end of life and why
unpicking this complexity is essential to recover value by recycling, reusing and
deconstructing objects, components, materials or molecules, all essential for a more
sustainable future.
Following Mike's lecture, I will introduce an expert panel discussion, colleagues at
Manchester, who will delve into how our universities interdisciplinary research in our
material world can usher in a more sustainable future from design and development to
working with industry.
The panel includes Dr Helen Holmes, Deputy Director of Sustainable Futures, Dr Rosa
Cuellar-Franka, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Dr
Ciaran Lahive, a Research Fellow at the Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub.
Our online audience can join in with the Q&A by heading to www.slido.com and entering
the hashtag ‘unmaking’.
So Mike, please make your way to the stage. Thank you.
Hi everybody. Thanks so much for coming. And apologies for the slightly combative first
slide.
It's not the end, but it is an end. And when we think about the challenges that our world
faces, this is a lecture really about sustainability and its grandest sense.
We have to first understand that there is a deep interconnection between these different
challenges, because climate change is not just about carbon or just about fuel.
It's also about all of those other challenges that we face. So the challenges of pollution, the
challenges of the circular economy, the challenges of social justice, the challenges of war,
all of these things are interconnected with each other.
And so this may seem like a pretty bad picture, but really the question that we have at the
University of Manchester is what way do we want this earth to turn.
Do we want to turn towards our left side here and try and get the world which is genuinely,
authentically sustainable?
Or do we want to just give up? And actually really what we need to do is to work together to
collaborate and to build these relationships.
And today I'll talk a little bit about our work and our vision, but also how that connects so
many different things that are happening around the world.
So the unmaking of everything, that sounds equally bad at the end.
But really what we have to do is to think more critically about how complex these materials
are and how we can go and create value out of these systems.
So the first thing is that this is all unfortunately your fault because when you make
decisions, those decisions have consequences.
So you might need a beverage, right? Early in the day that might be coffee late in the
evening, it might be something else.
But you'll have a choice to make in the receptacle you're going to drink out of.
So you can choose this styrofoam cup here, or you could choose a ceramic mug.
So just checking with the in-personalities, how many people would choose the styrofoam
cup?
One, okay? That's good.
I mean who would choose the ceramic mug?
Lots of people. And by the way, the people that didn't raise their hand at either of those
times, those are the robots, right?
They don't drink at all.
[laughter]
When did I raise my hand, though?
I raised my hand for the styrofoam cup.
Well that seems illogical, right?
But when we actually think about the energy embedded in these materials, we realize that
we can make transport used and disposed of over 500 of these styrofoam cups for the
energetic cost of a single ceramic mug.
Right? And when we think about that, that's because we have to dig up some clay from the
ground.
We have to fire a kiln up to a high temperature. We have to make that mug.
We've got to transport it to, we're in London, so I'll say, "Waitrose." You're on "Waitrose
crowd."
And then you've got to pick it up from "Waitrose." You've got to then bring it back home,
right?
And all of those steps have an energetic cost.
Now you may be saying, "Well, but there's a difference here. I would throw away my
styrofoam cup and I would reuse my ceramic mug."
And the question really is, "Well, are you going to wash it afterwards?"
Because if we need to make some detergent, we need to heat some water up and we need
to clean the detergent under that water afterwards.
That's the energetic cost of two styrofoam cups.
And so what is the sustainable solution? Well, actually, if you were to go into any
professor's office at the University of Manchester,
you would see an unwashed, gross mug that has had about 500 coffees in it, right?
And that is because we really care about sustainability.
But the reality is that these materials are so important to minimizing our footprint.
When we think about packaging waste, packaging waste would quadruple if we don't have
plastics.
Foods to spoilage would double if we don't have plastics.
Vehicles would be heavier and our petrol consumption would double if we don't have
plastics light-mating these vehicles.
And of course, the insulation we used to previously keep our houses warm and now
increasingly keep our houses cool.
It would increase energy costs by 1.5 times.
So this has been estimated to be 583 million giga-joules of energy per year.
That's a relatively meaningless number. But if we convert that into the barrel of oil, which
we do have a concept of,
it's 100 million barrels of oil each year, which are saved by plastics.
So why do we have this dependency on plastics? Why is this addiction so clear?
Well, the first thing we have to do is to recognize that in any system these materials are
playing essential roles.
And so if we think about where plastics are most demonized, right, the grocery store, we go
in, we're like, oh my gosh, waste's conundrum.
But that material has absolutely transformed our system for food provision.
It increases food shelf life, therefore decreasing food waste, it improves food safety.
So anytime we think about an alternative material, we must ensure that whatever provision
we're doing, whatever we're packaging this in,
has to keep that same function.
So plastics are these diverse materials that have these important functions.
But of course, many of the things that we have done with plastic are milk food.
So we might want to keep all of those things recycling, right? So you're going to go home
and you're going to try and have a package which is recyclable.
But at some point in time, a marketing person, an apology says there is a marketing person,
I think, audience.
But that tray up at the bottom to top left, right, that meat is demonstrably sexier.
And a marketing person figured out that when you take meat and you put it on a black
background, well, you can actually sell it for more money.
But that has a consequence because that black package is less recyclable than the white
package, right?
And we have a consequence both in terms of sorting in the system and in terms of keeping
that material in its eyes, all you can do.
And so that's something we need to stop doing.
But the challenge with that is that these materials, which might look like a plastic package,
are exceptionally complex.
And we think of them as simple, but actually they're exceptionally well tuned.
Because this is not just one thing. This is a plastic tray, a plastic reinforced paper tray,
perhaps, if you're looking at a modern material.
A plastic laminated film, which looks like just a plastic sheet, but actually it's five microns
in layers of different materials with different functions.
We have adhesives and heat seals that are keeping that all together.
And then maybe that paper label, which actually to keep it waterproof, has a bit of plastic
on it as well.
And of course underneath that meat is that adsorbent plastic mesh, right?
And so what do we want?
Well we want these things to be kept in our highest value condition.
We want these materials to be recycled.
And of course we can get someone in their home to rinse out that tray and put it into the
recycling bin.
No one is rinsing meat juice.
That's about an adsorbent mesh.
And so when we as scientists, as academics, but also in industry, think about how these
materials need to be designed.
We have to design them around social papers, not around wishful thinking.
And that is the key to unlocking change within that system.
And so we might go and step back and say, well okay, sure, that's all fine and good.
Well why don't we just start using different materials.
And so maybe instead of that styrofoam cup, we wanted to use a paper cup instead.
And actually that paper cup has a higher carbon footprint than that styrofoam cup.
But when we think about carbon footprint, we actually have to think about the whole use
case scenario.
So let's say I wanted to run a lemonade stand.
And if you're at one of our events in Manchester, then you can actually maybe come to a
lemonade stand that we run.
You can see that we've got 100, 1.84 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of lemonade
compared to about 6.2 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of paper cups.
Which is about three times higher than the styrofoam cups.
Okay, so that all seems like we really have to get the packaging right.
But none of us drink lemonade.
I know what I'm addicted to and that's this.
And if I think about coffee instead, actually I have 17.5 kilograms of CO2 in a similar
espresso shop.
And I have 85.4 kilograms of CO2 in the latte.
If carbon is everything, then we really have to understand how that integrates with the
system that it exists in.
Integrate with those materials instead of treating those things in a solution.
And when we think beyond the grocery store, we suddenly realize that we have a huge
challenge in our hands.
So this is a group called Extinction Rebellion.
I talked to the Mavo plastic and not these guys, they were busy.
But one of the things of this group is that in the past they were sort of a zero plastic group.
An advocacy group that wanted us to have zero plastic in the world.
But of course what they didn't realize is that these plastics were in their textiles and their
PPE and their footwear and their electronics
and even in the adhesive that is attaching this gentleman's hand to the London Stock
Exchange.
And the complexity of our plastic world and these polymers that we depend upon go much
further than our addiction to plastic packaging.
So our integration of these and the things that we value, well that doesn't mean that these
are materials sent from heaven
and we need to keep this addiction.
I'm not an plastic apologist.
We actually have huge problems with this plastic system, but we have to equally recognize
the importance of it.
And so when we think about where these are really challenging, well we have large objects
which are littered.
We have the breakdown of these materials forming micro and nano plastics in our
environment.
We have plastic producers often deflecting criticism and not taking ownership of their part
of the problem.
All of these things coming together in a situation where we really have inadequate waste
management facilities for these materials.
And that's because we often have this priority of economy over environment.
And so what does this actually mean for the broader system?
Well the reality is that this view that we need a more sustainable material or we need
something which is going to be a penisé or a silver bullet.
Well that simply is not true. There is no such thing as a sustainable material.
When we think about the future, what we have to first recognize is that these plastics hold
massive societal benefit.
And if we don't recognize that societal benefit, we're going to have severe unintended
consequences.
We also have to recognize that alternatives often have a higher carbon footprint.
And we can't try and address a waste problem by introducing a problem in another bit of
our sustainable system.
We have to recognize that plastics are diverse and this problem goes well beyond grocery
stores.
And that we need solutions which are integrated together that are tuned towards those
different states of material.
So we need to reuse things, we need to recycle things, we need to deconstruct things.
And if we can't do anything else then we might be able to pyrolyse those things.
But the thing we must not do is to release that material into the environment.
And so when we think about our plastic free world, it's actually that there are grave
consequences about trying to imagine a future without this material.
But if we don't deal with the problems that we have with its environmental consequences,
we have equally grave consequences in terms of this extraction and pollution.
So what do we do?
Well the reality is what we need is some sort of a sustainable system.
So a sustainable material only exists in a sustainable system which can recover its value,
which can control its release and where we can recover that value from all plastic to go
through the system.
And of course our work, my research is focused on plastics, but the same concept could
be and should be applied to all materials with flow throughout lives.
And that is the concept of the unmaking of everything.
If you're going to remember one thing from this chat, it's this.
It does not matter if something is reusable or recyclable or compostable, if it is not reused,
recycled or composted.
So the first thing we have to do is think about that system using past tense terminology and
stop wishfully thinking about what might happen to a material and assuring that that faith
is realized.
So what are we going to do about this? It's a really hard problem.
But luckily, you know, six years ago I joined the University of Manchester and that lots of
brilliant colleagues and together we're trying to address some of these challenges.
And so I'm going to pick up just a few of the things that we're doing to try and pick up
solutions to subsets of these challenges just to give you a bit of a story about how we're
working on this.
So the first project of I just go back. So this is this central thing, which is a project which we
started four years ago called one bid to rule them all.
And so this started as a word of the rings joke is now is going to be something which ends
up on my grave stuff.
But really what this is is an integration of social science and economics and material
science is looking at what happens in household waste management.
During the pandemic, we got the fun task of actually getting outside our homes and going
to sort through other people's waste.
So when I say our team is garbage, this is actually a positive view.
But really this is a remarkable community of people who are working together to try and
solve these challenges.
And what's great about the people we get to work with, the students at the University of
Manchester, is they literally fight with each other for the privilege to go to advance to sort
through other people's waste.
It's quite a remarkable thing.
But what was really important about this is the ability to integrate on understanding of
material flows.
So quantify all of the different materials which were in the homes of the bins in the homes
of the people who were part of this trial.
But also the fascinating decisions which were being made about these materials, right?
This picture in the bottom right here where someone has chopped off the top of a tetra-
pack curtain because obviously that bit is plastic for the rest of the time.
And what we have is a deep and detailed map on both social practice and material flow.
So what does that actually allow us to do?
Well, it actually allows us to look at the supply chain at these materials in a very different
way.
And so in the past when we think about plastic waste management, we demonize three
groups, right?
We say, okay, I put this in my bin, it goes to a waste management company, and that waste
management company probably does something dumb with it.
And they send it to landfill, they send it to a recycler, and that's the bit of the system.
But actually the things that are happening are a result of decisions which are made across
the supply chain.
And so by looking across the supply chain, we suddenly see lots of different opportunities
to make design decisions which are improving sustainability.
And one of the simplest that I just walked through this is in the bottom right-hand corner
here.
So what if you don't mandate sort of all of these systems being the same, but you mandate
material segregation?
And so one of the thought experiments I guess we did was on looking at segregating food
grade bottles to being either made of PET or HDPE.
So that's C or no.
Non-food bottles are only PP or other, but we don't put PET or HDPE in those systems.
Food grade pots, tubs, and trays are only PET or PP, and the non-food pots, tubs, and trays
are only HDPE.
The decisions that a waste management company can now make increases that value
dramatically.
So the waste management company instead of losing money by recycling can make money
by recycling.
You tie an environmental outcome to an economic outcome, and then you incite change
across the system.
The second thing that I wanted to look at was instead of thinking about those packages to
think about another material flow.
So some years ago now we were approached by MasterCard, and their CEO had got up on
stage and announced the world's first biodegradable credit card.
When it biodegraded it released the barium from the magnetic strip and the 18 metals in
the chip set into the environment causing grave toxicological damage.
It was an atrocious idea.
They figured this out after the CEO had got up on stage and then approached us to say,
"Well, what would a sustainable card actually look like?"
And actually the key is they were degrading something and they were releasing metals into
the environment.
Because if we switch the resin from something which is called PVCs, since it's the same
material that would be in your windows at home,
and switch it to a material which is called TechGee, well that's actually unlocks and new
fate.
We can now do a deconstruction of that card. We call that process depolymerization.
And that depolymerization actually allows us to create a circular card.
And so this is just an example of one of our scale up processes.
So we did about 300 credit cards in a single batch here.
And you get all of these different materials.
And what's really interesting is I can go and create a bunch of monomers and these are
materials which I can use to make a brand new credit card that has the exact same
properties as the first credit card.
But this is not driven by the economics of doing that polymer recycling.
It's actually all the bits on the right.
So if we don't actually do anything in that reactor, we can recover a full chip.
We can actually reuse that chip, or if we want to just do that really quickly, we can recover
all of those different materials and reuse those materials.
And by thinking about that card as a system, we suddenly can unlock economic value
which goes well beyond the plastic recycling.
And so by considering not only just the plastic recycling system and extending that to a
multi-material, we unlock economic value and we drive that forward.
So what's next? Well, next really, we have to go to an even more complex system.
And by a more complex system, we're really looking at a sense of scale.
And so in terms of bottles, there's 580 billion plastic bottles which are put on the market
each year.
That's about 8.2 million tons.
And each one of those is going through tiny roots.
So if you put your, if you want some good news, right, if you put your bottle in the recycling
bin in the UK, it will be recycling.
Have confidence in it.
Okay?
If we look at the credit cards, well, we actually have 6 billion credit cards, not just credit
cards, but also hotel cards or any of those limited cards put on the market each year.
That's 30,000 tons.
So actually, even though that's a more complex material flow, it's actually not that much
material compared to the box.
And then we look at cards.
Cars have 92 million vehicles put on the market each year.
That's 173 million tons of material, and that's 15% polymers by weight.
So we actually have more plastic material in the cars than we do with the bottles.
And so I was fortunate enough to get awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair to
work with an ambitious electric vehicle company called PULSE there.
And if we think about, you know, I pitched to them, oh, okay, we can do this for a credit
card.
Oh, cars are really hard, right?
So if we think about this car as a multi-material, we suddenly realize that we have a huge
range of different materials.
We need to be able to separate those out.
Each of them is going to have a different fate.
And I have co-mingled with that glass and metal and so many different components that it
becomes exceptionally difficult to recover value.
Not only that, this is a company because, you know, if we want to go on recycle a milk
bottle and put it into a milk bottle, well, that's a technical challenge, but to recycle a milk
bottle and to put it into a car, well, I have a higher spec.
I need to mature that that is safe. I need to ensure that that still maintains the integrity of
that car and that's still going to be good to use for the entire lifetime of that vehicle.
And so this is an exceptional challenge that we're working on now to try and make this as
low-carbon footprint and as circular a vehicle as possible.
Now, I presented this as we are developing solutions. But what's really important to
remember is that we are constrained by the laws of physics.
And the laws of physics say that we all wings will have laws.
And so the reduction of consumption is still going to be very important for a sustainable
future. But we have to recognize that the limitation in infinite recycling, infinite reuse,
infinite composting, and those things which simply will not happen, that breaks the laws of
physics.
And so we have to have a solution where we think about those transitions in as sustainable
a way possible.
So I talked about that sustainable system. But in fact, what we need to unmake everything
is interconnected systems which work together with each other.
And so we imagine this circular economy as an ideal. We want to be able to take that bottle
and turn it into another bottle.
But actually what we need to be thinking about is what we're calling a spiral economy.
And so how does that bottle turn into our car? And how does that car turn into a chair? And
how does that chair turn into, let's say, ID Manchester?
So if we want to go to that point, we basically can have different intersectional transitions
which allow us to keep those materials in their highest value condition.
And when we get to the built environment, when we go and sequester that carbon in
something like ID Manchester, which is going to be a harboring error for innovation for the
next 200 years, we can then take those materials and deep memorize those, take those
back to a molecular form so that we can go and put those back into new systems.
That spiral economy is about transitioning in the most sustainable way possible. Those
materials flows across those systems.
Now, that means we have new words, right? And so I talked about the importance of past
tense terminology.
And so what do we need? Well, we need to ensure that all materials which come through
our lives are valued.
We need to ensure that all materials that come through our lives can be unmade. And
that's so important from a design perspective.
And the key out of both of those is we reduce, if not remove, our addiction to extracting
urgent resources from our planet. And that is the key.
And that's the key to unmaking of everything is when walking that economic value and
preventing extraction.
So the next 200 years, where are we going? Well, so many of you in the audience will have
come and travelled here today.
You probably were like, this is going to be a cool lecture, so I want to wear my best jeans. I
did that.
And then you're looking for your best jeans and you realize that they're dirty, right? And so
you've got to put them in the washing machine and then maybe the dryer or maybe coming
outside.
And you realize that you don't even know where this place is. So you grab your phone and
you're saying, well, I need to look on Google Maps where I'm going.
And so you contact the server farm where the information is stored and you connect and
try and figure out what's going to go on at the server farm so you know where you're going.
And of course, because it's a sustainability event, you're taking public transportation.
Yeah, maybe.
And so you're taking that public transportation all to come to this place here that we're
sitting in.
If we think about the complexity of the car and that we look at the complexity of the multi
materials which are on the screen here, we realize how grand a challenge that we have.
But that is the vision for the next 200 years. We remove our addiction to extraction. We
recover value from all of these material flows.
And we retain value in some of these objects, some of them as components, some of them
as materials, and some of them as molecules, but I'm making the things that create our
world.
Thank you.
[Applause]
Thank you, Mike, for really explaining the science, for having that vision of a spiral economy
and linking that through to an understanding of systems, the work that's needed between
scientists, economists, social scientists, and the practical challenges of tracing it through
some of our everyday products.
And our role as citizens here, and I use a clean ceramic cup, so we've all got a little bit of
guilt in the rim.
Let me invite the panel, but first let's have a round for Mike.
[Applause]
So as well as Mike, we have Dr. Helen Holmes, we have Dr. Ciaran Lahive, and we have Dr.
Rosa Cuellar-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.
So thanks to the 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 surfing economy and technological advancement
need to pay attention to what people do with things, like to talk to a bit about this in this
presentation as well.
So we don't, but we end up with our unintended consequences. So my work focuses 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 or
plastic waste in the past has been recycled into sportswear.
What was really taking 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. Another I was thinking of when Mike was talking about credit cards,
and I thought you might mention this, but you didn't know something you 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 one of
them 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 put 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 so you're unnetting? Plastic? Where would you put that?
General waste? Plastic bin?
Obviously, it depends on your local photo rules, 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 and 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 350 activities, but we've
moved to a place where that isn't the case anymore, 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.
We had 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 grassroots, which are taking place in
the Global South too, because I think that would be my positive to end on.
Thank you. Thank you, Hello. 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 I need 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 fastens
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 revus 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 the
different resources, 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, designing these materials,
so we can 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 each look 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 of 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 with so 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 going to work with those companies.
Thank you.
So I think you can see why I love working at Manchester because we've got brilliant people
here really get into 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 end with 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 real
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 have.
And the mandatory metric that you need to provide alongside the design specification.
Thank you.
My answer is actually very, very similar to Rosa's. In reality, I think that in the next hundred
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 hundred 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 hundred years, I'd really like to see an accelerated focus on
interdisciplinary 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 do you think of this now?
We've done it, it's got to be right for us. So 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 all my answers. Well, no, 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 point.
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. I'm going to
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. Well, sorry, the gentleman behind you's hand went up first and then your
second. Thank you very much.
Question to you. I have much do you think the major ability is important after this because
looking back in the time that usually we don't manage to measure the damage that the new
product is causing until some decades centuries afterwards.
A lovely 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 at time MIT, the club of Rome.
And we looked at these recycling things, but what you found with 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 Mercury in the environment there.
And you only have to think, sorry, just one more example, which is a funny one really from
Alice in Wonderland.
You may all wondered where the mad had to be from. And it came from Luther, and I can
tell you that because I come from Benford.
And this was because to make hats which you'd be either used to Mercury and therefore
the people in Lucian were suffering from curilism, and that's why they were mad.
But we didn't have tools to measure that, no one realized that the time. Sorry, the question
is, do we need more measurements at the time we produce more materials?
Thank you. Who wants to?
I think that's definitely. So I mean, I think Rosa and I would definitely argue for
measurement.
But measurement can mean two different things, right? So we can measure the impact of a
process, or we can measure the quality of a material.
So one of the challenges with recycling is is it good enough to then go back into a product?
That is an area of research which we're working on. Actively, I could give another one a
minute talk just on that.
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 have a couple of different types of materials that we have to 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 the question.
Oh, I can see the hands going up now. So, oh goodness, right.
My age, I think global warming will probably last me out. So if I didn't have any spark of
public spirit in this, I'd put everything into waste.
But I'm nerdy enough to actually pick up what mostly counts in the street, but I've got 320
euros in my house, who would put everything into waste because they feel they want to
know because they make a difference.
And what it seems, getting back to your thing about the Pringles Chantella.
What happens if I've got something in the wrong bin? I mean, we're all told that people
don't be into the recycling and it's the other question.
I mean, 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, there's some birds somewhere, they've got a landing, different
recycling things. So can you help us out of this?
I certainly didn't plant 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 car current one at work. So yeah, and totally echo the confusion. And that's something
that we've tried to predict quite a lot.
There's over different rules, some different bin colours. We've actually written a policy
report on this which you can give you the QR code for if you want laces to have a read of.
In terms of what happens to your waste, correct me if I 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 umash fake bin can make a difference or not.
And I'll show you why the umash fake bin can is in a moment for some and not for others.
So there are 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 and when it then gets to that point, we also hope it goes to recycling, but it cannot
always be guaranteed.
I just want to add one small thing about the 20 year olds and the 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, 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 a time for
example.
I'll let you talk about the things 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 a decision.
That's the difference between recyclable and recycled. So the local authority rules
differentiate that, not the potential for it.
So I've got a cluster of hands here, as I'm going to do a few here and then come to know just
the gentlemen, four rows back.
Thank you. And then I'll take the gentleman behind as well.
The rest are going to have to fight with your hands. I'm trying to make a very glad that a
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 could have been known as a sugar tax and look how
controversial that was. But I'm just wondering what thoughts are like the change of the size
of your answers, but what role you think politics and politicians should play.
So when we finished the projects, I said we've got this policy report, which we then fired
out as many different peoples we could. We do think that's influenced the last
government's 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
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
the private robot tools and design manufacturers retailers right the way across. So there's
a massive part of the way 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 street negotiations as well.
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. Gentlemen, immediately behind, had his hand up a nanosecond after personal
for the work. 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 he, now he's just faced malaria plastic.
Now, you've looked at packaging, you've looked at cars, but toys 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're 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, what is 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 that the material that's used to make Lego is this 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 that can then lead 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 in made out of
wood.
So it's a sort of a challenge for it's like what exactly is the toys purpose versus what
materials are would be the best choices for that.
But unfortunately I've been able to throw it back to my kids 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 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 really getting those early experiences
of what sustainability means.
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 a member of our online office Warren.
And he's asked how large countries like China are managing their recycling processes.
I'll take the first question. Okay.
Thank you.
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 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, you know, areas of
technology in its infancy
and develop, you know, 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.
I think that's a really, really nice thing that's evolving at the moment.
Thank you. And like China or other major economies?
So I think so if we think of other countries, right? So each country has its existing waste
management infrastructure.
Sometimes that waste management infrastructure is informal and they don't have sort of
set up facilities like we do.
And so we want ours to be better, right? So our 20 year olds stop 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.
So this is 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.
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, well really we 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 in here, I can't see that. I'm going to come to this
side of the 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.
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 anyone, 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,
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 of 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, right?
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 the gentleman at the back and then the fifth row gentleman is so, thank
you.
Do 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.
The gentleman at the front. I'm looking over here for Hans. Can you take one more hand
from the side?
Yes, I can see you.
Just to add comments on that last one, I think you can actually synthesize a lot of products
as well.
So from hydrogen and you from carbon dioxide and make products.
My question is really looking at internationally.
Mike, you talked about openness and you said that we need to get openness.
You talked to a company like Polestar 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 and the Far East.
We get so many products made in those countries.
They're not manufactured here anymore. They're manufactured somewhere else.
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're 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.
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 some of 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 wrap 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. I was a limpier for the questions in 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.
And 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 overly dependent on
another economy, and how you address the associated political challenges?
Oh, it's a little bit.
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.
And we were just talking earlier about a new project with Melbourne that we're going to be
taking 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 insight chain.
I've made practical inventions into a huge complex system, rather stepping back and
saying we can't do anything, it's too complicated.
So, last question to you. Yeah, 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. 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 working with.
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. We've had a really, really helpful and stimulating
discussion and I know that people feeling, "Oh, who I wasn't my question answered,
hopefully we can get to some of those in the reception.
Thank you to my colleagues who've been filtering from our slide-out colleagues, often the
air somewhere around pleased you could join us.
But let me just make a few closing remarks. Thanks Mike, Helen, Ciaran, and Rosa.
[Applause]
Thank you to the audience, your patience with my youth and I trying to find you.
[Applause]
Do you take a look at our final lectures? Some of you may know we've got our new
President, Professor Duncan Iverson, and he will be doing his first talk 200 in November.
Details on the leaflets out there. I will be at the events. It will be lovely to see some of you
join us as well.
And beyond that, please join us outside for drinks and canapés. I'd like to stay there going
to be on the start of the phone, but probably not.
That's okay, because nobody likes to drink wine. That's my refund, do they?
So thank you again for joining us, for your ideas, your contributions, your continual support
and engagement with our university. Thank you very much.
[Applause]
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Head to manchester.ac.uk/200 to find out more about this series and all the activity taking
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Thank you for joining us for this episode of Talk 200, a University of Manchester Series.
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