PhD position in assessing the impacts of marine plastic pollution in Norway with LCA

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We have a vacancy for a PhD candidate in the Industrial Ecology Programme at the Department of Energy and Process Engineering.

The appointment has a duration of three to four years. The appointment is financed by NTNU through its call for interdisciplinary research collaboration in sustainability.

The position is part of the MAPLE project (Marine Plastic Pollution: Environmental impact and life cycle scenarios) . MAPLE is an interdisciplinary research project between researchers from the departments of Energy and Process Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geography, and Biology, and includes four PhD positions.

An increasingly urgent issue for marine ecosystems is plastic pollution. Plastic is a diverse material that has been observed floating on the ocean surface, suspended in the water column, and sitting on or buried beneath the seafloor. As such, macro- and microplastics have the potential to affect the biological communities that occupy all of these marine biogeographic realms.

If we want to solve the plastic crisis in the oceans, we need to understand how and where plastic is emanating from and accumulating, what impact microbial communities have on the degree of degradation and sedimentation of plastic particles, and what the options are to minimize the use and mismanagement of plastic in the first place.

MAPLE focuses on marine plastic pollution and its environmental impacts in Trondheimsfjord and the outer central coast of Norway. We combine field studies, laboratory studies and computer modelling in an interdisciplinary approach to understand this complex problem.

The topic of this specific PhD project is the development of life cycle assessment (LCA) models for tracing plastic products through the Norwegian economy to see where they originate from, and which ones get mismanaged most. The PhD student will adopt, apply, and further develop life cycle impact assessment models for quantifying impacts from plastic entanglement and ingestion to the plastic amounts found in Norway to estimate the impacts of macro- and microplastics on the marine ecosystem. The PhD student will therefore also contribute to and profit from work in the ongoing ATLANTIS project (www.atlantis-erc.eu). The idea of tis PhD project is to derive species-sensitivity distributions and derive characterization factors for use in LCA that are specific to Norway and its ecosystem. The results of the LCA studies will show where and what the largest impacts are. Life cycle scenarios of possible interventions, such as replacing plastic with alternative materials, increased re-use and chemical conversion capacity, will help to identify the largest potentials for counteracting and mitigating plastic pollution in Norway.

Interdisciplinary collaboration within the MAPLE project and the Industrial Ecology group are envisaged.

The Industrial Ecology Programme (IndEcol) is a well-established interdisciplinary group in the field of environmental sustainability analysis. Researchers at IndEcol participate in international expert groups, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Resource Panel (IRP), the Life Cycle Imitative hosted by UN Environment, as well as international collaborative projects.

The Head of Department is Professor Terese Løvås . The position’s supervisor is Professor Francesca Verones , the co-supervisor is Professor Hans Bihs from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.