Melanie L Harris

Background: A renewed focus on waste management and waste-repurposing strategies has sparked interest in the circular economy and sustainable development. This transition reflects a growing movement across industries and among entrepreneurs to adopt sustainable practices while enhancing efficiency throughout the life cycle of goods and services. As consumer awareness of the origins of their purchases increases, demand for transparency and accountability in business practices rises. In Oceania, particularly the Pacific Islands, limited land, rising sea levels, and high import dependence pose challenges for recycling and sustainability. This research examines how various stakeholders adopt sustainable practices to manage resources responsibly and achieve socially aligned outcomes. Methods: Following the PRISMA protocol, the study systematically reviews circular practices and innovations in Oceania’s food and agribusiness sector, identifying existing gaps and potential future research opportunities. An illustrative case study highlights how entrepreneurs in this sector are effectively meeting social, environmental, and business objectives in a global market. Results: The study highlights strategic waste management initiatives, business model adaptation, and the creation of new markets and products while maintaining the integrity of core operations. Our findings show that entrepreneurial activities offer social and economic benefits that extend beyond local communities, creating a positive ripple effect. Conclusions: This research enhances our understanding of circular entrepreneurial behavior as community-driven activities in environmental development, highlighting that such behavior often grows with experience. By examining how entrepreneurs balance economic needs with other demands, we gain insight into their motivations for adopting circular practices. The study shows that reusing, repurposing, redesigning, and reducing waste can improve profits and expand markets by treating waste as a valuable resource. We conclude with recommendations for industry and government support mechanisms to foster progress in this area.

The Timber Circularity Project has established Australia’s first integrated national framework for understanding and enabling timber circularity. It has addressed the technical, regulatory, logistic and market barriers limiting greater recovery and reuse of end-of-life (EOL) treated timber and engineered wood products (EWP), creating the evidence, decision-support tools, and partnerships needed to support future policy reform and commercial implementation.

Through a three-year national research and industry collaboration led by the National Centre for Timber Durability and Design Life (NCTDDL) at the University of the Sunshine Coast and supported by Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA) and industry and government partners, the project has provided the knowledge, tools and practical demonstrations needed to support the transition from linear timber waste management towards a more circular model of resource use.

This pilot project evaluated the feasibility of reprocessing decommissioned treated timber vineyard posts into reusable fence posts using Food and Beverage Australia’s (FABALs) mobile demonstration processing equipment. This equipment combines a hydraulic de-nailing system with a guillotine to slice off broken post ends (as shown in Figure 1) enabling the conversion of end-of-life (EOL) vineyard posts into repurposed fence posts. The mobility of the equipment enables processing to be undertaken at vineyards, reducing transport requirements.

The results demonstrate that the process is technically viable, with the equipment operating reliably under field conditions and producing structurally suitable posts for reuse.

The current and projected availability of end-of-life treated-timber vineyard posts in Australia has been assessed and mapped to enhance timber recycling and reuse potential by improving the visibility oftimber flows. While timber provides benefits such as low embodied carbon and renewability, chemically treated variants present significant challenges for reuse and recycling. This study addresses these barriers and aims to develop circular economy pathways for preservative-treated timber products in Australia, ultimately reducing the amount of timber sent to landfill. Data were collected through industry site visits, surveys, and publicly available sources. The inclusion of councils with existing circular economy strategies highlights regions that could develop into circular economy hubs, supporting new business opportunities. This map helps identify resource distribution, infrastructure, and regulatory constraints, enabling informed decision-making and fostering stakeholder collaboration.

Advancements in preservative treated timber and engineered wood products (EWP) have increased the strength, durability and longevity of timber, allowing greater high value use of wood in indoor and outdoor applications. However, the preservatives and adhesives that improve the performance of wood products also present major barriers to reusing, repurposing, or recycling this timber at end-of-life (EOL). With few alternatives to landfill or incineration, EOL timber products are currently underutilised, contributing to environmental impact and lost economic value.
As a low carbon, renewable resource, timber should play a vital role in Australia’s transition towards a circular economy (CE) and a net positive future. The Australian Government have committed to a national circular economy transition1, which will require the reintegration of manufacturing byproducts and EOL resources into the supply chain. A CE model for Australia could add $26 billion in gross domestic product each year by 2035, while saving 165 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2040.

The Timber Circularity Project is investigating circular economy pathways for end-of-life treated timber and engineered wood products across Australia. This report examines end-of-life timber utility poles which are a critical component of the Australian electricity distribution network. Most timber poles are durable hardwood species such as blackbutt, spotted gum, ironbark and various other species valued for their strength and long-term performance. Over the past century, utilities have transitioned from using untreated naturally durable species to poles treated with preservatives such as chromated copper arsenate (CCA) and creosote.

Estimating forest attributes is crucial for understanding forest performance. While forest protection and tree plantations can serve as cost-effective mitigation strategies to address climate change challenges, monitoring natural forests and plantations remains expensive and challenging for a developing nation like Bangladesh, which is highly donor-dependent and lacks advanced remote sensing research facilities such as LiDAR or drone technology. In this context, open-source remote sensing data can serve as an effective tool for monitoring forest structure. In this study, we evaluated the ability of Landsat-8 and Sentinel-1 data to predict forest attributes using ground-measured tree data from 110 plots (each 400 m2 in size). We applied the random forest algorithm to predict tree height, density, basal area, and volume in two forest-protected areas of Bangladesh. For tree height and tree density, Sentinel-1 showed slightly higher prediction accuracy (RMSE = 7% and 46%, respectively) compared to Landsat-8 and combined data (Landsat-8 and Sentinel-1). Landsat-8 data had a higher prediction accuracy (RMSE = 23%) for basal area compared to Sentinel-1 and combined data. For volume, the combined dataset outperformed Sentinel-1 and Landsat-8; however, prediction accuracy was low. Our results indicate that height and basal area can be well predicted by combining Sentinel and Landsat data. The results underscore the value of open-source remote sensing tools as cost-effective alternatives for forest monitoring, offering critical insights for forest management and climate change mitigation strategies in developing nations.

As the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030) approaches halfway, inclusive input on progress and innovative approaches to achieving ocean sustainability is timely and necessary. Input from the leaders of tomorrow—today's Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOPs)—brings important generational perspectives on delivering marine science that can inform and contribute to achieving future ocean sustainability. ECOP perspectives may also offer novel insights on informing solutions to ocean-related challenges. Here, we articulate ECOP perspectives on priority recommendations for addressing current gaps and opportunities in ocean science in the context of the “Ocean Decade”. These recommendations include: (1) a culture shift toward more active and transparent data sharing; (2) valuing and connecting different knowledge systems; and (3) achieving effective knowledge-sharing across disciplines and jurisdictions. We outline how all actors in ocean research, across different disciplines and institutions, can implement these changes, and where relevant, demonstrate unique roles ECOPs can play in this process. We propose that the implementation of these recommendations, by all actors in ocean science, along with greater inclusion and transfer of diverse knowledge, will support efforts to achieve the goals of the Ocean Decade, and ensure ocean sustainability for generations to come.

To enact a circular economy (CE) by 2030 in Australia, there is a need to understand the resources available. The viticulture industry in Australia, has a vast number of chemically treated timber posts which can potentially be reused or recycled. These posts are removed from vineyards either because they break (normally at the soil interface) during harvest or because the trellis they support is being upgraded or removed. In the later process, the entire original post is typically extracted. Most winegrape growers stockpile these posts on site.

As part of the National Centre for Timber Durability and Design Life (NCTDDL), the Timber Circularity Project funded by the FWPA and industry partners, has sought to quantify this resource in terms of numbers of posts, their sizes and volume, weight, quality, and geographic distribution. The information has been collected through a series of surveys, site-visits, discussions with growers and post suppliers, geospatial data, recorded documents, and strength and chemical retention testing. This report details the resources available, and assumptions made in estimating the amount of resource on a national, state-by-state, and regional level. Numbers, volumes, and weights of posts removed from vineyards and stockpile numbers are detailed.

The information will support the transition to a circular economy, which will require diverse reuse and recycling strategies, at different scales – from small mobile solutions to large scale technologies. Regional solutions can help lower transport costs and environmental impacts while fostering community and economic development. To help identify and support regional solutions, data in this report has been provided on regional, state, and national levels. Key insights are showcased in the visual summary.