Our seminar series aims to understand and improve UK consumers' decisions about nutrition, food safety, and food waste. Our goals align with DEFRA, the Food and Agricultural Organisation and others who use the modern view of 'food security' for developed countries, by defining it as access to food that is nutritious, affordable, safe, and sustainable, while producing minimum waste. Better food safety and reduced food waste are also high priority for the EU. Improvement is needed because (1) foodborne illnesses amount to 17 mln cases per year in the UK, including 20,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths; (2) warnings about food risks can cause undue alarm and increase food waste; (3) UK domestic food waste is 7 mln tonnes per year, of which 4.2 mln tonnes is deemed preventable; (4) Fresh food is more nutritious but also more perishable, potentially affecting food safety and food waste; (5) UK consumers are increasingly making unhealthy food choices, contributing to 62% of UK adults being overweight or obese, and leading to health problems that cost the NHS more than £5 billion per year. Our seminar series is timely and novel because it follows calls to better understand and inform the complex decisions consumers face about nutrition, food safety, and food waste. We aim to identify strategies that help consumers to achieve nutritious food choices that both improve food safety and reduce food waste. Our seminar series has been designed by our team of practitioners and academics, with the goal of achieving the best impact. Our practitioner team members come from the Food Standards Agency which aims to improve food safety and healthy eating, as well as at the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) which aims to reduce food waste. Our academic team members come from the University of Leeds Centre for Decision Research and the Human Appetite Research Unit who are experts in consumer food choice, domestic food waste, and risk communication, as well as from the NewCastle University Food and Society Group at the School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development who are experts in food safety and risk communication. Through 9 seminars to be held over 3 years, we will create a lasting network of users and academics who have mostly been working separately on these different topics to date. We have confirmed academic and practitioner speakers from across the UK and overseas who are key experts in the relevant domains. Seminars will be hosted at and promoted by participating universities and practitioner agencies, thus drawing diverse audiences. We will fund the travel of junior researchers and PhD students, for whom participation provides a unique opportunity for creating new networks and research ideas. Our project will identify strategies for helping consumers to improve food safety and reduce food waste. The PI and her team of users and academics will build on their international connections to share our findings at meetings with academics, users, consumers, and other interested parties worldwide. Our findings will be summarized in joint review papers that represent practitioner and academic experiences with developing effective strategies for helping consumers with food-related decisions. Our project website will provide public access to recordings and presentation slides from our seminar series, with information for academics, users and consumers about how to improve food safety and reduce food waste. Academics and users will work together to write joint grant proposals, with the goal of designing, implementing and testing the most promising strategies, thus identifying the best ways for helping consumers to make healthier, safer, and less wasteful food choices.

The value of remanufacturing is estimated at £2.4B to the UK economy, potentially increasing to £5.6B in the near future. The entire process relies upon the timing, quantity and quality of the returned items (cores), and yet there have been no studies to-date that look at returns forecasting and how such forecasts can be integrated in a systemic way with inventory and production optimisation (IPO) procedures. Such procedures are stepping-stones towards financial, environmental and societal sustainability. If supported, this is the first study to look at these issues and therefore would make a considerable contribution to the theory and practice of remanufacturing in the UK. Our vision is to create a sustainable and resilient world where remanufacturers and their closed-loop supply networks have 'visibility' of product returns and reflect such information into circular economy (CE) compatible IPO to improve sustainability and resilience. In a remanufacturing context, the bill of materials loses its original meaning, and greatly depends on the state of the returned-used items. This introduces a need to forecast not only the timing and volume of the returns, but also their quality, in order to decide: i) what parts need to be replaced for the item to be restored to the desired state? ii) which usable parts can be fed back into the manufacturing process when restoring the item is not economically or practically viable? Rate of returns is expected to strongly correlate to the number of items in use and the stage in the item's life cycle. In-use product data, service information and judgmental inputs should also have explanatory power while time series effects, e.g. seasonality, may also be present. The above make the utilisation of classic demand forecasting methods impossible, calling for novel estimation approaches. Despite the obvious importance of returns forecasting in a CE context, the relevant literature is extremely limited. Further, the uncertainty associated with returns does not imply that the classic demand uncertainty for (re)manufactured products is not present, leading to what may be termed a 'two-tailed uncertainty'! Critically, the foregoing forecasting problems translate into systemic IPO challenges. A growing body of literature looks at inventory and/or production problems in closed-loop supply chains. Interestingly though, all these works are conditioned to no uncertainty with regard to returns and thus no need to forecast them, obviously diminishing the practical utility of these solutions. Integrating returns and demand forecasting with IPO requires a holonic approach, not previously attempted. A holon is an element that is both a whole in its own right but also part of a wider system - for example, in any organisation each department may establish its own strategic priorities but potentially they could act in conflict with each other if there is no general higher level organisation strategic direction to optimise their interactions. Hence, each different forecasting protocol, inventory controller and production ordering rule has its own dynamic properties but which, when integrated in different combinations, creates a new whole that may not be the simple addition of the different parts. Therefore, we will develop appropriate forecasting protocols and integrate them into IPO through systems modelling. Inventory and production optimisation in the CE are stepping-stones towards: i) immense inventory reductions and space liberation, resulting in reduced supply chain costs and cheaper, more affordable products in the market (financial sustainability); ii) reduced obsolescence risk for materials, parts and finished items, with huge implications for environmental sustainability; iii) greater availability of remanufactured products, creating a more ethical marketing channel to consumers (societal sustainability).

Part 2 of Summary:- The development of the UK's first Circular Economy Observatory to provide a digital systems view of national resource flows as a foundation for modelling and quantifying potential benefits, opportunities and interventions to inform and influence national leadership and industrial decision-making, - An inclusive and diverse multidisciplinary community of academics, industrialists, government, policymakers and end-users. The CE-HUB will foster a safe environment to inspire and support new collaborations, mentorship, early-career research and feasibility testing across disciplines and resource flows. - The co-creation of a National Repository of Knowledge and shared understanding. We will draw together our extensive community to develop novel methods, tools, approaches and metrics that can overcome barriers to progress. We will use our informed position to influence and accelerate future research directions and create a long-term vision and road map for an inclusive, competitive and circular industrial strategy. The CE-HUB will house a unique national online repository of knowledge, tools, expertise, and initiatives. - The formation of the first National Circular Skills and Training Platform through which students, early career researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and employers will be able to match requirements in skills to existing and emerging educational offerings. - The co-creation of the first National Circular Economy brand to forge the way in the global advocacy of the Circular Economy. We will develop a recognised, distinctive standard or charter for those who lead the way in its delivery; changing the future of organisational values and behaviours. The CE-HUB will provide stakeholders nationally and internationally with a central point of reference for Circular Economy research and practise. It will be the first national research hub of its kind to lead support for Circular Economy practices, track materials and waste, develop novel and innovative approaches to feed legacy materials, by-products and waste into value-creating activities and engage stakeholder communities though compelling narratives for improved understanding of the principles of circular economy.

When devices such as computers, smart phones and batteries are sent for recycling not all of the materials are captured for use in new devices. The metals are most likely to be recycled because they are easy to separate and their methods of recycling are well established. Specialist coatings often made with rare and expensive materials enable our modern electronics to work. However these coatings often cause problems when it comes to recycling, they can mean that the metals are more contaminated and so these coatings are often burnt off, causing pollution and adding cost to the recycling process. It also means that the expensive cleverly engineered coating has been lost and its value not realised. TReFCo aims to develop a low cost method for removing these coatings so that they can be reused to make new devices. This will have multiple benefits; it will mean that valuable raw materials are kept within the supply chain, supporting the UK economy. It will also mean that the materials that they were coated on are cleaner prior to their recycling process ensuring a purer recycled product at a lower cost. The method employed by TReFCo will be to subject the coatings to near infrared radiation to burn the binder (glue) that holds the coating in place without damaging the coating material or the substrate material. TReFCo will also develop new adhesives that will 'unglue' when exposed to near infrared radiation, making it easier (and cheaper) to take devices apart before they are recycled. This could also be used within a repair process. In addition to the technical developments during the project a lifecycle analysis will be undertaken - this will ensure that researchers fully understand the environmental costs of producing materials and recycling them. Identifying any areas that are environmentally damaging in order that they can be avoided by material design or by changing the processing methods. In all the aim of the project is to make the possibility of a truly circular economy one step closer to being a reality.

Humankind is on the brink of significant climate change and material resource shortages. We have reached the limits of our traditional 'take-make-dispose' linear economic models in which materials are extracted from the earth to create products which are discarded at the end of their useful lives. To achieve sustainability with our planet we must rethink the way we consume and use resources and seek to decouple economic growth from primary resource consumption and the associated environmental emissions. Circular economy and the widespread deployment of green energy technologies are essential to achieve this. Even renewable energy technologies have an environmental impact associated with production and disposal at end-of-life, and we must seek to minimise these impacts and maximise product take back for reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling once these technologies have ceased to be of use. To achieve this requires lifecycle optimisation, which takes account of product design and development of end-of-life processes. Printable photovoltaics (PPV) are a promising green energy technology in their infancy, which makes this the perfect time to carry out this research. Now is the time to develop processes and product designs which enable effective end-of-life treatment for efficient recovery of materials and components with which to manufacture new products, to drive down cost and environmental impacts of these emerging technologies, increasing the productivity of finite resources available to us. This project develops the eco-design of PPV informed by advanced characterisation and engagement with industrial partners and stakeholders at all stages of PV product lifecycles. This combined novel multidisciplinary approach to technical development of emerging technologies, which engages key industry partners and stakeholders in the value chain; and the development of methods, tools and knowledge required for lifecycle optimisation, can hasten commercialisation of PPV technology and accelerate transition towards circular economy for the greater benefit of the economy, environment and society.