Complex Value Optimisation for Resource Recovery from Waste (C-VORR)

我们的现代工业社会产生越来越多的废物。然而，这些废物中的许多可能含有有用的材料（可能是金属或营养物），或者它们本身可以用作另一过程的输入（可能作为燃料或原材料）。从废物中回收这些资源是废物管理的重要组成部分，通常涉及从工业过程、组织或社区收集废物，然后进行分类、再处理、回收或焚烧。所有这些活动都以许多不同的方式产生效益和影响，例如：*经济：效益来自销售回收材料，而影响是收集，加工等的成本；*我们的社会：提供再处理工作是有益的，但代价是垃圾收集的严格规定；*环境：防止有害物质的倾倒有助于环境，但再加工可能涉及碳排放或使用更多资源；我们的健康：保持街道清洁可以预防疾病，但是一些回收工作可能是危险的。在选择哪种资源回收系统是最好的时，很难权衡所有这些因素。通常，我们只是简单地把一项技术“拴在”这个过程的最后，主要担心的是它是否具有成本效益，并且经常假设，因为我们是在回收资源，所以对环境的影响自然是好的。但是许多回收系统有“隐藏”的影响，需要复杂的分析才能解开。研究表明，在某些情况下，收集和回收塑料瓶比简单地制造新瓶子产生更多的二氧化碳，使用更多的资源；隐藏的环境影响。事实上，我们的大部分塑料废物都出口到远东，在那里，工人们在不健康的条件下进行再加工，工资非常低；潜在的社会和健康影响。除非我们有一种方法来衡量所有这些因素，否则由“废物等级制度”等简单想法所驱动的糟糕决策将继续做出。在C-VORR项目中，我们将汇集科学家、工程师、数学家和经济学家来帮助建立这种方法。我们将与我们的行业伙伴和国际专家合作，研究产生废物的过程；不仅在“管道末端”，而且在整个系统的上游和下游。我们将研究通过这些系统的材料流动，看看它们的“复杂价值”——它们的经济、社会、环境和健康利益和影响的平衡——在我们调整系统时是如何变化的。这将使我们能够确定调整——也许是产品制造方式的改变，或者是新的回收过程，或者是将一个系统的废物作为另一个系统的输入——这将给我们带来最大的整体价值；不仅在金钱方面，而且在对我们的健康、幸福和环境的影响方面。要做到这一点，我们需要将测量流量的科学和工程方法与测量效益和影响的方法结合起来，检查它们如何随时间和空间变化。我们将不得不完全重新定义价值，用非正统的经济思维来帮助我们。如果我们做到了这一点，那么我们就可以完全改变我们看待从废物中回收资源的方式，而不是从一开始就谈论防止价值被浪费掉。我们将拥有一种工具，它不仅可以让我们决定哪种回收技术——或对过程进行改变——对社会和环境最有利，而且还可以识别商业机会，以恢复以前隐藏的价值。它将使我们摆脱关于回收和再加工的简单化想法，这些想法可能会产生意想不到的后果，并使我们所有人对如何最好地保护我们稀缺的资源、宝贵的环境以及不仅是我们自己的生活质量，而且是与我们有关的人的质量有更深入的了解；在这个全球化的世界里，每个人都是如此。

Our modern industrial society produces increasing amounts of waste. Yet many of these wastes might either contain useful materials (perhaps metals or nutrients) or could themselves be used as an input for another process (maybe as a fuel or raw material). Recovering these resources from wastes is an important part of waste management and normally involves collecting wastes from an industrial process, organisation or community and then carrying out sorting, reprocessing, recycling or incineration. All these activities have benefits and impacts in many different ways, for example: * the economy: benefits come from selling the recovered materials, while the impacts are the costs of collection, processing etc; * our society: providing reprocessing jobs is a benefit, at the cost of harsh rules on rubbish collection; * the environment: preventing harmful materials from being dumped helps the environment, but reprocessing may involve carbon emissions or use of more resources; * our health: keeping the streets clean prevents disease, but some recycling jobs may be dangerous.When choosing which resource recovery system is best, it is difficult to weigh up all these factors. Often, we simply 'bolt on' a piece of technology to the end of the process, worrying mainly whether it is cost-effective and often assuming that because we are recovering resources, the environmental impact is automatically good. But many recovery systems have 'hidden' impacts that require complex analysis to untangle. Studies have shown that in some cases, collection and recycling of plastic bottles produces more carbon dioxide and uses more resources than simply making new bottles; a hidden environmental impact. In fact, much of our plastic waste is exported to the Far East, where it is reprocessed by workers in unhealthy conditions paid very poor wages; a hidden social and health impact. Until we have a method for weighing up all these factors, poor decisions driven by faith in simplistic ideas such as 'the waste heirarchy' will continue to be made. In the C-VORR project, we will bring together scientists, engineers, mathematicians and economists to help build this method. Working with our industry partners and international experts, we will look at processes that produce waste; not just at the 'end of the pipe' , but upstream and downstream throughout the whole system. We will examine the flows of materials through these systems and see how their 'complex value' - the balance of their economic, social, environmental and health benefits and impacts - changes as we adjust the system. This will allow us to identify the adjustments - perhaps a change in the way a product is made, or a new recycling process, or using the waste from one system as the input to another - that give us the best value overall; not just in terms of money, but also in terms of the effect on our health, happiness and environment. To do this, we will need to combine scientific and engineering methods that measure flows with ways of measuring benefits and impacts, checking how these vary with time and space. We will have to completely redefine value, using unorthodox economic thinking to help us. If we get this right, then we can completely change the way that we look at recovering resource from waste, and instead talk about preventing value from being dissipated into waste in the first place. We will have a tool that will not only let us decide which recovery technology - or change to the process - is best for society and the environment, but that can also identify business opportunities to recover previous hidden value. It will allow us to move away from simplistic ideas about recycling and reprocessing that may have unintended consequences, and give us all a more sophisticated understanding of how to best preserve our scarce resources, our precious environment and the quality of not just our lives but those connected to us; in this globalised world, that's everyone.