Waste and pollution

Food Organic and Green Organic (FOGO) Waste Management

Project size (& length): 12.5, 25 or 50

Aim: To develop pathways to reduce the amount of organic waste disposed in landfill.

Methods: Literature review of the current practices and potential pathways. A system dynamic approach is proposed to evaluate potential pathways considering the environment and socio-economic issues. System dynamic (SD) approach has been widely applied to investigate complex systems involving feedbacks and delays. The approach includes developments of causal loop diagrams or stock flow diagrams and applying computer simulations. It is a system thinking tool that helps in deeper understanding of the problems in various aspects including business, socio-economic, political and environment. In waste management systems, SD have been applied in various studies on solid waste separation effectiveness and municipal waste management policies analysis.

Expected deliverables:

1. Potential pathways to address organic waste at household and city council levels,
2. Life cycle costs,
3. Implications to the householders and city councils,
4. Greenhouse gas emissions,
5. Potential policy interventions

Professor Lu Aye, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
lua@unimelb.edu.au

PFAS: Understanding soil to plant transfer factors and risks for fruit and vegetable consumption

Project size (& length): 50

Soil-to-plant transfer factors (TFs) for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) vary by several orders of magnitude. The drivers of variability are poorly understood and as such conservative TFs are adopted for criteria development and risk assessment. Another important consideration for criteria derivation and risk assessment is how much of the contaminated food is actually consumed. The frequency, type and amount of homegrown produce consumed is poorly understood which tends to result in the adoption of conservative assumptions. The primary aims of this project are:

1. To develop a database of TFs and associated meta-data and use a data science approach to investigate the drivers of variability and produce predictive plant uptake models.
2. To undertake a survey of homegrown food production and consumption to understand what, how much and how often homegrown produce is consumed. This project is in collaboration with the Environment protection Authority Victoria and includes a $5000 stipend. It will suit someone who likes data analysis, particularly if you have a working knowledge of coding in R or python.

A/Prof Suzie Reichman, School of Biosciences
suzie.reichman@unimelb.edu.au

Fate and transport of microplastics generated by tyres on roads

Project size (& length): 50

This project is in collaboration with Geosyntec. There is some scope for the student to develop a project related to microplastics from tyres that they are interested in, in collaboration with Geosyntec.

A/Prof Suzie Reichman, School of Biosciences
suzie.reichman@unimelb.edu.au