Organising committee

 

Tim Grant

Tim is the Director of Life Cycle Strategies and Adjunct Research Fellow with CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research.

A key facilitator in Australia’s shift towards life cycle thinking and environmental assessment, Tim is a founding member and president of ALCAS and organiser of the 2015 Conference Series. He is also the chairman of the Technical Committee of the Australia Life Cycle Database Initiative (AUSLCI).

His background in mineral process engineering and waste management consulting led Tim to seek a more rationale science based approach to environmental decision making.

Tim develops and applies LCA with a wide range of companies and organisations, through LCI Database development, software support and tool development. He has also been involved in key LCA studies including CSIRO’s comparison of transport fuels and the LCA of Building and Construction materials for the Building Commission of Australia.

 

Jodie Bricout

Jodie is the manager for circular economy and life cycle approaches at the French non-for-profit cd2e.

An environmental engineer with a flair for communication, Jodie started working in the LCA field in 2010 following 10 years of experience in water and waste management, industrial ecology and sustainability strategy. She launched the [avniR] conference series on life cycle management for SMEs and regions which attracts 300 participants from over 20 countries annually, building on the experience in integrating life cycle approaches across sectors in Northern France. Jodie managed the development of the phase 3 strategy for the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, and their communication strategy and is a member of their Board. She was recently elected to the board of the Forum for Sustainability through Life Cycle Innovation (FSLCI), and represents Northern France in the Ellen MacArthur Foundations CE100 programme for Cities and Governments.

 

Maartje Sevenster

Dr Maartje Sevenster is director of consultancy Sevenster Environmental in Canberra.

She has 12 years of experience in life cycle assessment (LCA) and using life cycle management concepts in consultancy to business and governments. Some areas of specialization are the food manufacture, waste, paper and board, packaging and energy generation.  The "food, feed, fuel, fibre" debate often is a topic of projects. Her experience covers long-term policy support and environmental economics, such as social cost-benefit assesment and material flow analysis. She was involved in development and implementation of several of the life-cycle oriented environmental policies pioneered in the Netherlands. Her interests include methodology development and the use of LCA in consumer information. 

 

Dr Nawshad Hauque

Dr Nawshad Haque is a Research Scientist with CSIRO's life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic evaluation team. His professional interests include process flowsheet modelling, economic and environmental evaluation of process systems for mining, mineral processing and metal making industries using various tools, databases and software. Nawshad has extensively studied LCA of iron and steel making, mining methods, the extraction of ores, the use of nuclear fuels, and opportunities for CO2 emission reduction in the mining area. He evaluated new initiatives such as biomass-derived charcoal application in steel making with fossil coal blends to reduce carbon footprints, and applications of aluminium metallurgy using LCA tools and techno-economic considerations. Based on these studies, he has produced numerous research reports and also published papers that have been used internally in CSIRO and by various external industry groups.

 

 

Speakers

Dr Sean O’Malley

Sean is Head of Research at Planet Ark. After completing a PhD in behavioural ecology with a scientific background across life and earth sciences, Sean spent 15 years in the food manufacturing sector, managing research and innovation projects. Sean's experience also includes two years of managing product development for one of Australia’s largest nappy manufacturers, including the development of a high-biodegradability nappy. Joining Planet Ark in 2007, Sean oversees Research and Development activities.

 

Nicole Sullivan

Nicole is Technical Manager, Sustainability for BlueScope leading the development of a set of EPDs for BlueScope’s Australian products, including the publication of the first Australian EPD registered under the Australasian EPD Programme in June this year.

Her background in chemical and process engineering combined with industrial experience has provided her with the ability to understand, interpret and simplify technical manufacturing information.

Nicole’s work was awarded the worldsteel “Steelie” Award for Excellence in LCA and the BPN Sustainability Award for Innovation of the Year. She is a member of the Australasian EPD Programme Technical Advisory Group and a member of ALCAS.

She currently sits on the Australian ISO mirror committees EV-005 (LCA) and EV-015 (GHG), is part of an ISO/IEC Joint Working Group developing a new standard on Environmentally Conscious Design, and works actively within the worldsteel LCA Expert Group.

 

Andrew D Moore

Andrew is passionate about doing things better and believes that doing things better also means doing them in a more sustainable way. The best way he has found to do this is through exploring the life of products, from cradle to grave. To uncover the story behind a product and discovering how it can be done better. The thrill of the science drives him as much as sharing the journey. Using this approach Andrew has helped many people in  a wide range of industries including agriculture, building and construction, mining and energy. He loves to inspire others to explore products life cycles through giving university lectures, presentations, and workshops. He supports the LCA community by actively contributing as member of the ALCAS board, ALCAS committees,  Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) technical advisory group. He is also an approved EPD verifier and a reviewer for the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.

 

John Gertsakis

John is a sustainability practitioner with more than 20 years experience as an industry adviser, consultant and research academic. As Chief Sustainability Officer of Infoactiv Group, he works on a range of issues including Product Stewardship for electronics, regulatory analysis, government relations and environmental communications.

Through his current position as Chief Sustainability Officer with Infoactiv, John’s work is focused on the design of new stewardship solutions for manufactured durables as well as broader EPR advocacy and agitation.

John served as Executive Director of Product Stewardship Australia from 2006 to 2011 representing global consumer electronics brands and OEMs. He was deeply involved as a key advocate of the Product Stewardship Act 2011 and sat on the Implementation Working Group for the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme.

He authored Australia’s first report on e-waste product stewardship in 1995 titled 'Short Circuiting Waste from Electronic Products'.  He was also the co-author and editor of Return to Sender: An Introduction to Extended Producer Responsibility (1997). John was an early advocate of LCA in Australia (together with Tim Grant), and its application to product design while at the Centre for Design at RMIT in 90s.

John is also Vice President of the Australian Battery Recycling Initiative, and an Honorary Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia. He has worked in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

 

Dr Marguerite Renouf

Dr Renouf is a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane, and an Associate of Life Cycle Strategies. She has worked in environmental research at UQ for 15 years, with a particular interest in the environmental evaluation of production and consumption systems using Life Cycle Assessment and eco-efficiency. Her particular interest is in agriculture, food and bioenergy systems, and has contributed data to the Australian Life Cycle Inventory (AusLCI) database. Marguerite is a Board Member of the Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society and currently chairs the ALCAS Impact Assessment Committee, coordinating the development of a Best Practice Guide for Impact Assessment.

 

Stephen Northey

Stephen is interested in unpacking what sustainability concepts actually mean for finite industries such as mining. Currently he is completing a PhD with Monash University, focused upon how best to account for mine site water use impacts within LCA and water footprint studies. Prior to this, Stephen worked at CSIRO for several years where he was involved in LCA and techno-economic assessments of mining and metal production processes. He has published in a range of areas related to the environmental impacts of mining and resource depletion.

 

Joana Almeida 

Joana has been busy with the sustainability of agricultural and forestry systems, namely of bioenergy crops. She worked for the NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal, where she investigated the environmental impact of energy crops in Europe. She later obtained her PhD at KU Leuven University, Belgium, where she dealt with space and time-specific GHG emission inventories in the LCA of bioenergy. She has a keen interest in the communication of sustainability evaluation, as well as of other scientific content, to stakeholders and the broader audiences.

 

Martin Roffeis

Martin is a researcher and doctoral student at KU-Leuven (KUL) and Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). In 2013, he started his doctoral research as a member of Professor Bart Muys’s Forest Ecology and Management Research Group at the at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the KU-Leuven (KUL). His research being jointly supervised, he is also affiliated to the Institut de Gestion de l'Environnement et d'Aménagement du Territoire (Institute for environmental management and land-use planning), Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). 

 

Melanie Kaebernick

Melanie is Director of the Carbon Neutral Program in the Australian Government Department of the Environment. She has over 12 years of experience in various areas of national climate change policy, including the Carbon Farming Initiative, the Asia Pacific Partnership Renewable Energy Taskforce, and a range of emission reductions policies and programs in the agriculture, local government and community sectors. Melanie has a particular interest in building innovation and continuous improvement in the public sector. She holds a BSc (Hons) and a PhD in molecular biology from the University of New South Wales. 

 

Scientific Committee members

•Peter Fisher

•Gregory Peters

•Nicole Sullivan