Engagement & Outreach

Legacy and Outcomes

COMPASS combines academic excellence with strong and integrated dialogue with the widest range of external stakeholders in research, education and policy connected with ‘Engineering, Societal and Policy Approaches to Eliminating Waste Plastics’.
Trains post-doctoral scientists with cross-disciplinary training and experience in research, management and outreach relevant to all aspects of eliminating waste plastics
Forges strong links with other academic institutions, industrial concerns and NGOs active in the area as a step towards formation of a National Hub of excellence tackling this global challenge.
New multidisciplinary research programmes with evidence of some initial successful impact resulting from the sub-projects within this overall programme.
New schools/public education program specifically addressing the issues of waste plastics.

An Education and Outreach Group (lead McCoustra) and an Inclusivity Group (lead Sang), are fundamental to the remit of our programme. Together these groups have the role of both learning from the public as well as educating the public in relation to plastics waste. Proper dialogue and education with the public and wider society is important to the success of tackling challenges of waste plastics. Increasingly press reports document negative aspects of plastics, whereas their benefits are often ignored. It is therefore important to establish and promote the facts and engage with the public across all age groups. Critical to this will be a schools program so that the future generations are engaged and have a full understanding of the all of the issues. While the need to reduce plastic waste has become a priority, the needs of disabled people are often neglected in such discussions. An example is the need to retain disposable plastic straws for disabled people, despite efforts to eradicate their use. This project will embed disability into decision making processes and ensuring the diverse needs of disabled people are mainstreamed into decision making, for example, through impact assessments for each activity and project. Doing so ensures that efforts to reduce plastic waste do not create or increase discriminations experienced by disabled people.

A Government Engagement Group (lead Stone) is established with the remit to engage with local, regional, national and international governmental and non-governmental agencies. Co-investigators on this project already engage on aspects of policy with appropriate bodies including regional, national and European policy committees. We will attend and present at the Science and Parliament annual event linking the Scottish Parliament with academia and industry. Event organizer Matt Davies (DaviesM@rsc.org) has already been contacted.
With the involvement of colleagues from Malaysia extension to another Commonwealth country will provide an international dimension as we would hope to promote and attend parliamentary events in the UK and Malaysia will be attended.

Whilst consumers are influential in use and exploitation of plastics, ultimately the relevant industries make the decisions about which plastics are used (or not). Clearly whilst dialogue with the wider public is important, full integration of relevant industries are extremely important, A number of companies have already indicated their support and desire to be involved but further companies will be approached that include producers, processors and manufacturers.
The Industrial Engagement Group (lead David Flynn) will therefore engage with regional, national and international industrial and commercial partners in a hub-like manner. They will be engage in a range activities including consultancy, potential secondment and visitor programmes, suggesting and co-supervising of student projects, as well as involvement in a series of Action-Focused Workshops (to be organised by PM) connecting businesses and relevant trade associations, such as the British Plastics Federation whose recently published strategy document with academic experts to identify challenges and help overcome barriers faced by businesses wishing to address use of plastics.