The Institute works in an applied and experimental way: testing assumptions, advancing academic models through real-world application, and creating new technologies in living labs with the communities they serve. We do this by working with and shaping consortia around critical research questions, working across wider sectors of industry and society to address critical knowledge gaps on global sustainability issues.

Our aim is to push the boundaries of how society understands sustainability. The current ‘zero-waste’ vision of a circular economy will not generate the type of thinking and doing which is needed if we are to address the exponential nature of our time. By providing open datasets and software tools, we hope to support policy, society and technology to work together in a fundamentally restorative way.