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.

Context - Leakage of plastic waste into the environment in Indonesia is amongst the highest in the world. Only 39% of all waste is collected and 6 million tons of waste per annum is either burnt or dumped into the environment where it contaminates the air, soil, ground water, rivers and oceans damaging ecosystems and their services. In 2017, the Indonesian government introduced an ambitious target to reduce marine plastic debris by 70% by 2025. Yet social, behavioral, economic, political and infrastructural challenges hamper progress across the country's 17,000 islands. Production and consumption of plastic and plastic leakage are driven by multiple linked human decisions and practices that are not easily disentangled into specific, manageable problems. We need a better understanding of the nature of these individual aspects and that of the relationships that link them together. Aims - To address this challenge, we will conduct a scientific research programme that brings political, environmental, economic, technical and social disciplines together to understand and address the causes of failures, rather than treating the symptoms. Objectives - 1) We will research sources, pathways and fate of plastic waste in the environment, using state of the art modelling of plastic use, waste generation and littering to estimate the volumes of plastic flows reaching the land, rivers and seas around Indonesia. We will do this at national scale and in more detail at two case study sites in Pasuran, East Java and Jembrana, Bali. We will use this data to identify hotspots to prioritize sites for calibration and validation of the model and to inform government intervention programmes 2) We will calibrate and validate the models by doing litter surveys at a range of hotspot locations to count and categorize different items of waste and litter from the point of release into the environment and at increasing distances from the source to the sea. 3) We will examine impacts of plastic waste leakage on ecosystem services, ecosystem functions and social and economic structures. 4) We will use focus groups and surveys to increase our understanding of human behavioural and cultural factors associated with the consumption, use and disposal of plastic products 5) We will harmonise the collection of various mass and monetary data types under an analytical framework that seeks to assess the complex value of plastic flows positive (profit, benefit) or negative (cost, impact). Considering all environmental, economic, social, technical and political domains the framework allows for a whole-system assessment to support informed decision-making. Optimisation of the system not only facilitates the recovery of plastic resources but also ensures that impacts on society and the environment are fully considered. Using advanced modelling approaches within this framework, we will identify the most effective points to intervene, in order to create value from plastic waste and maximise the efficiency of identified solutions. 6). We will involve users and multiple stakeholders in "living laboratory experiments" co-creating, testing and observing new solutions and organizational structures. We will examine integrated sets of design interventions (at product, business model, behavior change, waste management levels), pproviding guidance as to where successful interventions can be made, and indicating how changes in the political and legal framework can be instrumental in the better management of resources at different levels of the economy. Benefits - Our multi-stakeholder team includes action delivery partners who are designing and implementing change programmes on the ground and local and national governments. Our research is designed to inform and add value to these programmes, driving inter-connectivity between academia and government, established public-private partnerships, implementation programmes.