Finland x Cornwall: Circular economy approaches in the georesources

This time, we're working with the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), a leading European competence centre on assessment and sustainable use of geological resources.

GTK provides expertise that serves the interests of clients, stakeholders and society as a whole. Working closely with clients and partners, they create solutions that lead to new technologies and business areas, as well as promote sustainable growth.

In 2017, the University of Exeter and GTK signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which continues to drive innovative, international collaborations between the university and Finnish partners.

Agenda

• Cornwall's transition to a circular economy (Edvard Glücksman, Tevi)
• Circular economy research briefing (Nic Bilham, University of Exeter Business School and Camborne School of Mines)
• Introducing GTK's circular economy solutions (Prof Tommi Kauppila)
• Creating sustainable solutions to recover resources of economic value and improve the quality of mine waters (MaÅ‚gorzata Szlachta and Teemu Karlsson, GTK)
• Reusing mine tailings as cemented paste backfill material (Soili Solismaa, GTK)
• Introducing Minviro, a Cornish start-up integrating circular economy thinking in mining (Rob Pell, Minviro)
• Q&A session

The Q&A session will be moderated by Tevi and aims to reconcile best practice approaches between Cornwall and Finland, including to set the scene for continued collaboration. If you have specific questions for our speakers, please email them to e.glucksman@exeter.ac.uk.

Speakers

Nic Bilham is a researcher at the University of Exeter, where he is working on responsible sourcing of minerals, the relationship between mining and the circular economy, and the challenge of assuring environmental and social impact standards across complex value chains and production-consumption networks. Until 2018, he worked at the Geological Society of London for over 20 years, most recently as Director of Policy and Communications. He has a longstanding interest in interdisciplinary approaches to global societal challenges relating to meeting our resource needs sustainably. Nic is chair of trustees of Geology for Global Development (GfGD), and an Executive Council member of the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG). He holds degrees in History and Philosophy of Science (BA, University of Cambridge) and Science and Technology Policy (MSc, University of Sussex).

Robert Pell is Founder & Director of Minviro, a spin-out company from University of Exeter. Minviro supports mining companies in adopting life cycle assessment approaches to their projects, highlighting environmental impacts and opportunities for improvements during the development stages of projects. Robert completed his PhD at Camborne School of Mines (University of Exeter) as part of the NERC funded SoSRare project on the topic ‘responsible sourcing of rare earth elements’. During this project novel life cycle assessment approaches were developed and applied to rare earth projects in the prefeasibility stage of development. A unique method to apply life cycle assessment to mine planning was also developed and these technologies have been further refined and applied in commercial settings. Prior to this Robert worked as Assistant Editor at International Mining, a globally distribution magazine covering technical innovations and project case studies for the mining industry.

Małgorzata Szlachta is working as a Senior Scientist in the Geological Survey of Finland, in the Circular Economy Solutions Unit. She joined GTK in 2018. She is also affiliated with the Wrocław University of Science and Technology in Poland, where she holds a position as Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Engineering. She got her postdoctoral experience from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. During her career, she conducted research at the University of Malaya, Department of Chemical Engineering, in Malaysia and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France. She has a PhD in the field of environmental engineering and specialises in physicochemical water and wastewater treatment. In GTK, she is focusing on subjects related to active treatment technologies, water recycling and recovery of valuable elements from mining waters and side streams. Currently, she is a research coordinator of the EIT Raw Materials funded upscaling project aiming at the development of the modular recovery process services for hydrometallurgy and water treatment.

Soili Solismaa is a geologist with good experience of circular economy and mining environments related research and versatile experience in ore exploration. Her bedrock geology, mineralogy and environmental sciences based master´s degree was accomplished from Turku University in 2012. She has been working in the Geological Survey of Finland since 2008 and started to do a PhD for Aalto University’s Department of Civil Engineering in 2019. The thesis concerns about environmental properties of mine tailings based products.

Edvard Glücksman is a business-facing manager on Tevi, based in Cornwall, UK. Tevi is an ERDF-funded programme supporting Cornish SMEs to grow whist contributing to Cornwall's environmental growth priorities and circular economy transition. Tevi currently supports over 300 enterprises through bespoke consultancy services, challenge networks and a grant scheme. The programme's circular economy aspects are led primarily by the University of Exeter's Business School. Tevi is delivered by the University of Exeter in partnership with Cornwall Wildlife Trust, Cornwall Council and Cornwall Development Company.

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