Edinburgh Science Festival

As part of our engagement activities, our CircularChem team took part in the Edinburgh Science Festival on Saturday, 9th April 2022 in the National Museum of Scotland.

The CircularChem team focused on converting waste materials such as plastics, industrial waste gas, food waste, or any other type of waste into chemical monomers, thereby reducing the reliance on fossil sources and creating a circular chemical economy.

Associate Professor of Finance Bing Xu who leads Theme 3 said “The Edinburgh Science Festival offers a great platform for us to provide an insight to the children, and adults on how the linear chemical economy can be made circular in practice, to increase the attention and positive attitudes towards to sustainable products and recycling.”

While many won’t think about it, most of us will interact with the chemical industry on a daily basis. The problem is that chemical sector is highly linear relies on a “take-make-use-dispose” model, in which 80% of chemicals are derived from fossil resources makes it the second-largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide in the UK. Furthermore, the end chemical goods (e.g., plastics) often find their way into the environment after they have been used.

The interactive activities used during the festival were designed to teach children and adults about the chemicals they are using and how we can reuse them. Our team gathered feedback throughout the festival to ascertain what the participants and children learnt and enjoyed.

Our findings are reported below.