The current linear consumption model of raw material extraction, production, use, and disposal dominates the global economy.  Today, we clearly see that this linear model has led to serious unintended global consequences from resource depletion to global waste, spanning all industrial sectors, from plastics to the built environment.  In contrast to linear models, circular economy (CE) aims to decouple economic growth from resource consumption by cycling products and materials back into production, either by returning materials to generate new products, or by releasing benign substances to the environment through degradation. CE principles are based on the efficient use of resources and eliminating waste from product life cycles; a truly circular economy keeps material in continuous use by design. To achieve – or even begin to achieve – a circular economy, a convergent research approach needs to be employed with a multitude of disciplines -- chemistry, biology, engineering, business, economics, social sciences, and behavioral sciences all need to work in concert for circularity.By deeply integrating these diverse disciplines, we can begin to work on tackling the complex challenges that currently inhibit the growth of the circular economy today. Dr. Bilec will share her recent work on design for circular from not only the built environment perspective, but also how we need to design across scales to foster new and higher-value material pathways.

Bio

Dr. Melissa Bilec is the William Kepler Whiteford Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation.  Dr. Bilec has published 143 peer reviewed articles and secured $12.3 million in funding, including 15 National Science Foundation grants.  Her research focuses on the sustainable built environment.  She is committed to exploring how the built environment can be an integral part of climate change solutions.  She views the world and her research using a systems-level approach, and she is an expert in life cycle assessment.  Using this view, she integrates critical built environment modeling approaches from building energy modeling to indoor air quality to develop robust strategies to mitigate climate change and deleterious environmental and human health impacts.  Most recently, she is working to solve the global waste challenge through the advancement and development of circular economy principles, since the built environment is a major consumer of resources and producer of waste.