SDG 12: Responsible Consumption & Production

The UNSW SMaRT Centre and not-for-profit partner TierraMar completed a study for the Australian Government on improved removal and processing of abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear (or ghost nets) from Australia’s northern waters.

"Degrowth is about that reduction in the use of resources, both on the production and the consumption side for the purpose of actually preserving the thing that is most foundational to our collective lives together." Bronwen Morgan

In 2023, we established a Modern Slavery Strategy to strengthen our approach and continue delivering positive human rights outcomes.

In 2023, UNSW and its partners launched the TRaCE program, which seeks to advance solar panels, sustainable fuels, recycling factories, energy storage and green steel technology over the next five years. 

Food packaging is mostly petroleum-based and cannot be recycled. UNSW is working with industry and the UNSW-based Future Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre to produce sustainable food and beverage packaging that can be recycled.

Australians generate around 20kg of e-waste per person every year, but many of the valuable minerals inside are difficult to recover. UNSW’s Professor Veena Sahajwalla called for Australians to reimagine waste as a valuable resource that can drive manufacturing, create jobs and support sustainability.

Using techniques Prof. Sahajwalla designed, those waste resources can be reused and turned into new and valuable products.

To support global efforts to improve plastic pollution management, UNSW’s Centre for Sustainable Development Reform launched two data tools at the UN’s global plastics treaty negotiations in South Korea. The Plastics Data Checklist helps a country understand what data is available on plastics across their lifecycle. The Global Plastics Data Tracker identifies global supply chain data to indicate where progress can be made.

An estimated 18,600 tonnes of batteries are discarded in landfills in Australia annually. The new UNSW-based Microrecycling Hub – a collaboration between six universities and industry – seeks to develop technologies to recover valuable materials from batteries and other complex wastes that are not currently being recycled.

Approximately 90% of solar panel systems end up in landfills, despite up to 95% of panel materials being recyclable. To improve recycling outcomes, UNSW researchers developed a patented sieving process that separates 99% of cell particles and recovers important materials, like silver.

UNSW students participated in TEDI’s course on reducing e-waste for an improved circular economy, creating a community repair initiative that could be run by TEDI-London and continually benefit its local Canada Water community. 

As part of its commitment to creating circular economies, UNSW offered a course to students on the social and environmental impact of circular economy models in Australia and India. 

The UNSW Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering Research Group was established in 1998 within the UNSW School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and partnered with ARC and Baxter Australia to investigate how energy and water flow in manufacturing environments in order to identify the hot spots for reduction or reclamation of energy and water usage.