We challenged visitors at Resource 2015 to play the Game of Circularity. Setting out to manufacture a consumer product, they had to make decisions at a series of design junctions: Virgin or recycled material? Global or Local manufacture? Design for longevity or for disposal? These choices sent their trains off on different tracks and to different destinations, would they reach circular enlightenment or head straight to landfill?

Read more about our stand at Resource 2015 here

Film: Paul Wyatt (http://www.paulwyatt.co.uk)

When I tell people that I am trying to promote the circular economy, I am often met with a blank stare. But when I explain the drivers for moving away from our current model (we have a finite amount of resources, increasing demand for those resources and an environment which is burdened by our current ‘take, make, throw away’ thinking), then they are pretty well understood. Everyone has experienced the frustration of having to chuck away a kettle because of a broken lid, or the guilt of throwing plastic into a waste bin. At the basic level, people get it: it is common sense to design products and systems so that they can be reused, recycled, leased or repaired and remanufactured.

But if the need to change from a linear view to a cyclical one is not hard to grasp, ask people to explain what this means in practice and we’re back to the blank faces. Hiding beneath the surface of this simple and beautiful concept is a tangle of mind-blowingly complexity.

So, to change our route, we need people to be engaged and empowered enough to really start to unpick, tackle and implement the changes needed. We need to prototype new types of products, but above all we need to communicate a systemic picture of the circular economy.

Engaging the Engine of Design

At the recent Resource show 2015, we created a stand reflecting circularity in action: from design, through manufacturing, to waste, with loops for redesign and repair.

Centre stage rolled the Circular Economy Train…nostalgic, engaging and fun; this enormous Brio set certainly drew the crowds. Players were tasked with manufacturing a household product by making real design decisions, about material type, business model and supply chain, at a series of ‘design junctions’ as their engine traversed the route. From first year students through to the entire sustainability team from Marks & Spencer, there was stiff competition to design the best way through the game, and prevent the little engines toppling straight into the landfill (a bucket at the end of the table!)

But it wasn’t simple. In making a product you are connected, by default, with much wider systems than may be represented by your own business plan. And so, in our game, you could make great choices of your own but still be knocked out of line by external forces: global competition for land and resources, fickle trends, costs of transportation. All these are challenges facing the designers of a new circular economy and were represented by our ‘tunnel of conflict’, ‘resource randomiser’ (spin to determine your fate) and a pack of action cards – just like Chance in Monopoly. The genius of the game was that it enabled us to show, at a glance, not only the complexity of circularity but also the deterministic nature of design in deciding the fate of products.

The rest of the stand was zoned to take you through the stages of a circular economy: Design, Making and Use or Waste.

We showcased designers whose work is already nudging us towards circular thinking: Rob Maslin from We All Design who is developing service design for a circular economy; Rich Gilbert from the Agency of Design who is working with clients on products for return and circularity; and the Restart Project who, as skilled repairers, are enabling us to extend the lifetimes of our everyday electronics.

In the manufacturing zone we hosted a pop-up makespace with our partners at Fab Lab London, complete with 3D printers and laser cutters, and demonstrating the potential for new technologies to help innovate and prototype new design practices. Fab Lab were also on hand to help us put repair into action, printing a replacement handle for a toaster and thus helping to extend its life. Along with Restart this represented the opportunity for not only experts but also citizens and communities to get involved in design.

The use and waste phase of the economy was represented by our recent Bulky Waste Design Residency with SITA, and highlighted the challenges and the potential in dealing with large household items and furniture at end of life. Our Kitchen Table hosted pop-up workshops with the design residents themselves, and also saw serendipitous meetings between mattress entrepreneurs, behaviour change students and business leaders.

Over the three days we played games, we shared stories, and we found fascinating and enlightening insights.

And the final destination for circular economy? Not the end of the track but, according to our game, circular enlightenment and product heaven! Most importantly, an alignment of economic, social and environmental objectives. And who wouldn’t want to get there?

With special thanks for PwC for sponsoring the prizes for the Circular Train game. Two delighted top scorers of the game each won a beautiful Elvis & Kresse bag, made from decomissioned fire hoses.

We were thrilled by the reception we received at the Resource show last month. Having managed to bag ourselves a front-of-house space, an incredible number of visitors came by to tell us how much they loved the stand, how useful they found our colourful diagrams, and how much they were looking forward to the next phase of the project!

The network

Using low-tech colourful string and paper tags, we collected information about the sector each visitor worked in, the sectors they wanted to link up with in order to pursue more circular practices, and the major challenges they experienced in trying to implement a circular economy model within their own workplace. At the end of the three days, we had a pretty spider’s web of string (see pic) that demonstrated simply but effectively the new connections that people wanted to make. Interestingly perhaps, there weren’t any blindingly obvious trends, and it became very apparent that everyone was eager to connect with everyone else! If we had to pick out a few tendencies, however, it seemed that designers were keen to join up with materials experts, manufacturers and policymakers, and that manufacturers were more than a little enthusiastic about some investment. Resource managers wanted to be linked up with designers and materials experts (makes sense if they are to know what to do with all that waste), whilst the nest of twine around the left hand side of the wheel indicated that consumers, brands and manufacturers were all keen to cosy up with each other.

We have been busy recording all of this information so that we can create some really practical networking events, workshops and design residencies. Watch this space for circular economy speed dating and more!

The materials library

Also on The Great Recovery’s stand at Resource was our new materials library, which gathered together more than fifty different materials – all of which presented either a challenge or an opportunity (or both) for the circular economy.  Most of these had at one time or another been classified as ‘waste’, and came from industries as diverse as construction, fashion, furniture, chemicals and food. We even had discarded items from film sets, kindly donated by a company called dresd which ensures that these are reused, repurposed and end up in loving homes!

The library is being carefully stored until the opening of our permanent central London Hub space, where it will be on display for everyone attending our workshops and events. We will also be adding to it as we come across more materials that fit the circular economy ‘challenge/opportunity’ bill. If you have something you’d like to donate, please get in touch with lucy.c@greatrecovery.uk.org.

The Big Brainstorm

On the Tuesday afternoon, The Great Recovery ran a big brainstorm session based around three specific challenges: retail fit-outs, washing machines and fashion. Many stores are kitted out with interiors that would last more than 30 years, and yet are ripped out and replaced after only 3 – along with changing trends. According to research by WRAP, washing machines often fail to meet customers’ expectations for the product’s lifetime, whilst fashion, as we all know, is an industry of fast consumption, waste and obsolescence. We grouped the audience up to discuss these challenges and pitch their solutions back to the others.

In 20 years or so there will be less space for growing urban populations and their ‘stuff’, so perhaps washing machines will be obsolete anyway. How about if we just put our clothes away in a ‘cleaning cupboard’, which denatures smelly bacteria and leaves them fresh the next morning? Or what about a service model for washing, where you hand over dirty clothes to the local centre and tell them whether you’d like the clothes to be cleaned and returned – or whether you’d like some new clothes instead!

How would you fancy a ‘Chameleon shopping experience’? Rather than just warehousing a load of duplicate clothes that are time consuming to sort through, shops would be designed more like exhibition galleries, where you could view and try on a whole range of items before ordering at leisure. The debates around fashion were many and varied, with the evils of fast fashion being exonerated through new business models, and new materials being envisaged which could cycle at high value almost indefinitely.

The workshops

We also held two ‘tear-down’ workshops that engaged visitors with the challenges of electronics and textiles design by actually taking products apart. After mapping out the complex supply chains of some of the materials and chemicals included in shoes, clothes, kitchen appliances and mobile devices, we got our heads round the ludicrous journeys that some of these items take on their way to – and from – the customer.

And then we got our hands dirty!

It’s incredible how hard it is to get inside a rubber-soled shoe, or a phone, when the manufacturer has stuck everything together with industrial strength glue. In fact, it’s often not possible at all without cutting, breaking – or at least bending – a part of it. So, is this down to cold-blooded, intentional obsolescence on the part of the manufacturer, or is it just a blind focus on cost reduction at the expense of all other considerations? The answer is never straightforward; most likely it’s a mixture of both.

Participants were by turns amazed at the compound variety of materials contained in one product, horrified by the incredible amounts of labour and energy involved in getting them to the user, and shocked by the obvious lack of design for repairability and re-use. One shoe may include metal, wood, leather, card, PVC, textile and rubber – all held together by a healthy helping of impenetrable glue. One laptop may include over 100 chemical components sourced from more than ten different countries – and likewise stuck down with impermeable solvents.

Engaging people with the materials around them is often the first stage in getting them to reimagine products and services as part of a more circular economy. And it is this practical engagement, together with the process of redesign, that The Great Recovery will continue to pursue in its next phase of work.

There’s been widespread interest in new digital fabrication opportunities for quite a while now – and I’m not just talking about 3D printing a gun or 3D printing your face in chocolate. There are Hackspace, Makespaces, Techshops and Fablabs popping up all over the world, and books about the implications of what is being termed the next Industrial revolution.

Activity around micro-manufacturing techniques is emerging in lots of different disciplines – from educators to individuals to entrepreneurs, to make-spaces to manufacturers – and we’ve been thinking for a while that it would be mutually beneficial to connect all these disparate parties. After our FutureMakers day back in June, people told us how inspiring and useful it had been to connect with communities that they wouldn’t normally have access to. It turned out that the network that we created by bringing people together was the thing that was most valued.

So… that got us thinking. How could we keep those connections going? Could we create a digital platform that supports all the amazing real world activity that’s out there? It made sense to us, but in order to check that we were on the right track, we needed to find out what was needed from our potential community itself.

We gathered together representatives from as many different interests and age groups as possible, to start a process of co-creating a digital platform which will be the mainstay of a network to connect all those working in the making sphere. We held the workshop last Monday at Makerversity, and the fabulous Tom and Dan at Swarm (who are also Good for Nothing), helped us run the event.

We asked participants to bring an image/photo/sketch of something they’d made and/or something they would like to make in the future. 35 people came and brought pictures of boats, sustainable phones, treehouses, crocheted turnips, hard drive cases and objects made from sparkly plastic.  

The ideas flowed thick and fast – we started making connections really quickly between people who needed advice about manufacturing, setting up a business, where and what to study, how to make a certain object; 9 times out of 10 there were people in the room who could directly help. Tom and Dan set group tasks which helped us work out what we would like to see from our ideal online network. Maps, profiles, sharing of work, giving of advice, discussion; we started seeing the value of this network before the morning was out.

Drawing one of the day’s many diagrams

Hilary, Jim and I are now taking all the drawings, diagrams and questions from the first session and have begun to flesh out what a digital prototype might look like, before taking it back to the group in early November. We’re looking for a few more people with experience or interest in manufacturing to join us, so please get in touch if you would like to take part in helping us to co-create an incredibly useful tool for this exciting emerging community.

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/redfishnat

Axion Recycling Ltd.
Outdoor media banners – Design for recycling
Outdoor media waste from predominantly plastic advertising banners produces an estimated 1.1 million square metres of material each year. This waste stream is not currently reused and is difficult to recycle due to the design, construction and mix of materials used to produce the banners. Axion is proposing a collaboration with members of the outdoor media supply chain including; the Outdoor Media Centre, advertising/media companies and designers and manufacturers of advertising banners in order to improve upon current banner designs. The primary objective is to produce a fully and easily recyclable banner, with a secondary objective to explore opportunities for novel printing techniques to overprint plastic sheeting for reuse. Re-designing the advertising banners will greatly assist future reuse and recycling efforts and help to support the establishment of an industry wide collection and recycling scheme.

Bond Retail Services Limited
Feasibility Studies to implement the Circular Economy model in large retail food cabinets.
The retail food sector is a large consumer of environmental resources. This project is focused on large fridges, freezers and cold cabinets deployed in the major UK supermarkets and food stores. Research shows that the life cycle of retail refrigeration display equipment is short (3-9 years) and minimal equipment recycling takes. Of the 800,000 food display cabinets deployed in over 9000 supermarkets in the UK, less than 13% are recycled. This project is to support a number of scientifically based feasibility studies which will investigate the complete manufacturing life cycle of these products to make clear recommendations on how to concurrently reduce the use of material and increase re-use and thus to minimise waste. In short, the aim is to implement the circular economy model with a leading UK supplier of these products.

Bottle Alley Glass
Develop a specification for a product made from waste glass bottles that can be used in place of conventional building materials. The aim is to extend the time the glass remains in active use, add value to the UK economy and achieve a reduction in carbon doxide emissions over the life cycle of the product.

Clarity Sustainability
Reducing the Environmental Impact of Branded Event Communications
Thousands of exhibitions are held each year, attracting millions of visitors but there is little focus on negative environmental impacts. We have conducted research to investigate and identify the environmental concerns and impacts from exhibition stands. Partnering with Cranfield University, an exhibition stand design using sustainable materials has been developed. It comprises of a jigsaw panel system and interlocking mechanism. This is a modular approach to stand design which we believe is innovative because it would be reusable, while meeting the demands of creative stand design that the industry requires. This funding will enable us to carry out a full lifecycle assessment of the concept. We will also build a prototype so that a feasibility study can be conducted on the materials and reusability of the stand.

Dyson Ltd
Assessing the through life impact and understanding the implementation steps to using bio-polymers for Dyson products
Dyson products are primarily made from plastic and therefore require significant investment in managing their through life impact. This feasibility study aims to evaluate the potential for using 2nd generation bio-based polymers as an environmentally beneficial alternative to conventional polymers. Evidence suggests that these new materials could lead to significant through life benefits if a closed loop recycling process could be established but it is still unclear where such materials may be appropriate and what the true through life benefit could be. This study looks to explore this by understanding where 2nd generation bio-based polymers can be used, what are the true through life benefits and ultimately what does the roadmap for realising this look like.

Haydale Ltd.
Nano Particle Polymer Enhancement for Recycling Sustainability (PPERS)
Using an innovative process technology, Haydale Ltd. have developed a cost effective route to both manufacture and disperse nanoparticles such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. With funding from the TSB a feasibility study will be undertaken to establish how modification to the performance of polymers can be used to enhance the properties and performance of recycled polymers, thereby enabling the circular economy to be sustained.

Kingfisher
Return to Sender
35 million paintbrushes are discarded each year in the UK, clogging landfills and wasting resources, creating an estimated 5000 tons of waste. In most cases, brushes are disposed-of due to poor cleaning by consumers, while the handles could be reused immediately. Other ‘circular’ barriers are that no closed loop collection system exists to take used brushes back, plus suitable end-of-life options for them are not clear either. This project will see Kingfisher and Seymourpowell explore the design of a system to reload brush heads so that consumers can maintain and reuse their paintbrush handles. As part of this we plan to design a returnable packaging system in which consumers can put used bristle heads into the original packaging and post it back to the retailer, who will identify and manage a circular end-of-life route for this to avoid landfill – be that reuse, or as technical or biological cycles.

Kingfisher Plc
Circular Design for an Economy Power Tool
This project will conduct a feasibility study into the re-design of power tools to retain material within the economy over several cycles of use, thus “closing the loop”. The goal is that the new designs should lead to products with a lower environmental impact, and less dependency on strategic materials. The project will deliver a series of implementable design changes which will make power tool products more suitable for repair and reuse, without introducing additional net costs. These design changes will be disseminated to the group of Kingfisher companies (B&Q, Castorama, Brico Depot, Screwfix, Koctas) and more widely disseminated to the home improvement retail sector.

Kingfisher Plc
ProjectBox
Kingfisher’s new ‘ProjectBox’ solution will enable our customers to hire, rather than buy, all the tools, consumables and support materials that they require to complete common household DIY tasks, such as shelving, flooring, plastering and tiling. Each ProjectBox will be carefully tailored to provide the exact tools that our customers require to complete a specific task. The boxes will also provide a clear set of instructions about how to use the products together with hint and tips about how to achieve the best overall result.
By diverting those customers who have only a periodic requirement for access to tools and equipment towards this new rental service, ProjectBox will enable Kingfisher to provide people with access to much higher quality tools and equipment whilst also reducing total material consumption.

Phineas Products Ltd
Feasibility of Implementing a Circular Economic Business Model for Phineas Products
Phineas Products Ltd designs, manufactures and distributes over fifty million shoe hangers per annum, most of which are used in the United Kingdom. Their current business model uses a linear system where products are predominantly manufactured in China from virgin materials and shipped the UK. This project will evaluate the economic and environmental impacts, as well as the technical feasibility of transitioning to a circular economic model, where products are manufactured in the UK from UK-sourced recycled material and designed to be reused over closed loop cycles, and recycled only when the product has reached the end of its usable lifetime. Materials analysis will be conducted to explore the mechanical properties of the new design and four potential circular business models will be compared to the current baseline system to indicate relative costs and environmental life cycle benefits.

Powervault Ltd
A New Lease of Life for Expired Electric Car Batteries
This project will investigate the potential to use expired batteries from electric cars as the energy storage batteries of a stationary electrical energy storage device.

Re-Considered Ltd
Development of an innovative, reclaimed textile fiber furniture range
This project aims to reinvigorate the textile recycling sector by adapting traditional nonwoven recycling techniques for a new, high value application – furniture manufacture. If successfully commercialised this will tackle a priority waste stream (post consumer textiles) and create a closed loop furniture range designed for extended materials use. The project team will explore new furniture designs, develop prototypes, undertake market testing and explore innovative business models which will engage the consumer in end of life textiles collection. This responds to the following 4 opportunities: 1. large supply of raw materials (0.8M tonnes of textiles sent to landfill each year from households in the UK (WRAP), 2. Increasing interest in end of life textiles applications (e.g within the Sustainable Clothing Roadmap),3. an experienced textile reprocessing sector, and 4. increasing consumer interest in sustainable and UK manufactured furniture.

Re-worked Limited
Coffee Board: Designing an energy-light closed loop system for waste coffee and plastics
Re-worked is a not-for-profit company that sets out to reduce the amount of post-consumer coffee and plastic waste that gets sent to landfill and offer a closed loop coffee recycling service to business. The funding will be used to redesign and commercialise a product called Çurface that is a composite of waste coffee grounds and plastics. There is high demand from businesses to use Çurface as a construction material, however the processing costs are currently too high. Initial research suggests that a new processing design and technique could reduce the energy intensity, amount of materials and manual labour required in manufacture, making Çurface more commercially viable for its target customers. The feasibility study will conduct further investigations into this new processing technique, create prototypes and trial a closed loop coffee recycling service collecting coffee waste and then fitting the newly designed Çurface in a London-based coffee shop.

Rich Coles Packaging Associates Limited
Design of re-usable biomaterial packaging systems for the chilled meat and fish industry.
Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is a significant contributor to landfill – to a point where many city authorities, such as New York, are seeking to ban it’s use from food packaging. Finding viable alternatives to EPS is therefore a rapidly growing problem for a sustainable food industry. This study investigates the design of logistical packaging systems utilising biomaterials. These renewable resource materials offer greater durability for re-use, ease of compostability and recyclability. Layered or sandwiched biomaterial systems are especially appropriate for improved packaging design solutions as their properties e.g. insulation, can be highly tailored to the unique logistical/user and commercial needs across different sectors of the food industry. In addition they are a natural candidate for innovation e.g ‘flat-packing’ to assist reuse and return.

Soltropy Limited
Investigation of the use of silicone sponge tube and design study of other components in solar thermal collector
Most solar thermal systems in Northern Europe have a separate antifreeze filled loop for protection against freezing and require a new tank fitted with a heat exchanger. When retrofitting to existing homes this means that a perfectly good tank (usually copper) needs to be replaced. We have developed an innovative solution that allows a domestic water supply to be heated directly, without the secondary fluid cycle. This increases the efficiency of the system and reduces capital and installation costs. Our solution allows the system to freeze but cause no system damage by using a compressible closed cell silicone sponge tube within an outer copper pipe. When it freezes the compressible tube takes up the expansion due to the ice and prevents pressure build up and damage to the system. This study will determine the optimum specification of the silicone sponge tube by trialling various specifications of tubes and sizes in a real world situation as well as freeze tests.

Toyota (GB) PLC
Design requirements in product, process, organisation for End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) to achieve Circular Economy State
How can an innovative value chain promote a circular economy for End-of-Life Vehicles (ELVs)? Toyota will address this challenge by investigating the opportunities to use innovative configurations of their value chain (system redesign options for ELV recovery and treatment system) to close the loop of materials embedded in ELVs. By better understanding the environmental, social and economic implications of such network configurations, this study will provide a strong foundation for Toyota to develop its business plan to move towards a circular economy for the wider benefit of UK society including Toyota customers.

Useful Simple Projects
Polarising designs: Redesigning neodymium magnets (NDM) for the circular economy.
Neodymium Disk Magnets (NDMs) are found in many everyday items, including; headphones, cordless tools, drive motors for hybrid cars, loudspeakers and microphones. Of the 66,800t produced worldwide, 33,000t of magnets are used in Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) each year, with a total carbon impact of 298,980tCO2e. Given the high value of the raw materials, the carbon emissions associated with their production and the rarity of neodymium (100 years at today’s consumption rates), it makes financial and economic sense to close the loop. We will carry out a feasibility study into the creation of standardised sizing for NDMs within the electronics sector, focusing on application within hard disk drives (HDDs). The study aims to design closed loop systems that will reduce consumption of virgin neodymium in ‘new’ magnets, and enable NDMs to be reclaimed during disposal of HDDs.

Useful Simple Projects
Design of new tools for closed loop manufacturing
A recent study by Mckinsey, entitled “Resource Revolution”, identified that security of supply and cost of materials pose a major threat to the manufacturing industry.  36% of the world’s raw materials are wasted as a result of inefficiencies and far too many resources end up in landfill. Population growth and rising prosperity in the developing world will make these issues more acute.  Re-thinking and re-engineering the product manufacturing industry around circular economy principles can help address these problems and reduce waste and pollution.  We are designing new product services and tools in collaboration with selected manufacturing businesses that will help them transition towards a closed loop approach to manufacturing. Lessons learned will be shared with industry at large and design and business colleges.

We All Design
Project Recover and unBuild: Beyond WEEE regulation
We are investigating the feasibility of using Kyocera products to drive new industry programme for the recovery, disassembly and reprocessing of materials, including those marked as critical by the EU, used in electrical goods. The hope is to retain all the materials value within the UK economy, increase supply chain security and decrease the environmental impact associated with mining raw materials.

Sophie Thomas, co-director of design at the RSA and one of the founders of the Great Recovery Project says that the waste sector is “either on cusp of something great or the edge of cliff” depending on how fast it can react to resource efficiency pressures.

See the full series of Resource Revolution Leaders here.

The intention of the What’s In My Stuff? project is to engage the public and raise awareness of the chemical elements used in our everyday objects and to explore whether an emotional connection between people and high technology devices can be created through the making of contemporary jewellery objects. This creative work is being carried out by Maria Hanson an established Designer Maker and Reader in Metalwork and Jewellery at Sheffield Hallam University.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

http://storyofstuff.org

94 Elements is a global filmmaking project, exploring our lives through the lens of the elements. Everything that surrounds us is made from these 94 building blocks, each with its own properties and personality. Our own bodies are mostly made from just 6 of them.

The stories of the elements are the stories of our own lives. They reveal the patterns of our economies and the state of our relationships with our natural resources. The project is in part a celebration of the art of documentary film and some of the best filmmakers working today are making new films for the project. There’ll also be opportunities for talented new and emerging filmmakers and animators to pitch their own films, with the winners chosen by you – the project community.”

Are you a film maker? Get in touch with 94 elements or submit your own mini film by signing up.

http://www.94elements.com/

• Do you know what’s in the stuff you use every day?
• Do you know where the chemical elements in your things come from, how they’re extracted and how much is left on our planet?
• How often do you discard something rare and precious without even realising it?

What’s In My Stuff? is an interdisciplinary research project which brings together scientists and artists in order to explore the public’s awareness of the chemical elements used in the everyday objects we all own and use. It explores issues of sustainability, recycling and growing concerns about the scarcity and ethical sourcing of the minerals and materials that we take for granted or never knew existed but which are vital for the technology we use every day.

What values do we place on the technological devices we use every day and what factors influence the decisions we make when we discard them?

What’s In My Stuff? Is a Sheffield Hallam University, Engineering for Life research network project, sponsored by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Science Research Council) and Harsco Metals. It is a collaborative project between Dr Hywel Jones and Dr Karen Vernon-Parry from the Material and Engineering Research institute (MERI) and Maria Hanson, Reader in Metalwork and Jewellery in the Art and Design Research Centre (ARDC).

http://www.whatsinmystuff.org/what-is-wims/