Arturo investigates the conditions for transitioning to a less dissipative, less toxic, more resource-efficient society. He creates multi-disciplinary approaches to tackle wicked problems such as plastic pollution and dependence on critical raw materials.
He is driven by the need to increase wellbeing with minimum environmental impact. Using principles of industrial ecology and systems thinking, he develops projects to enable the “smaller loops” of the circular economy such as reuse, refurbishment and diverse Product-Service-Systems. He supplements techno-economic analysis and sustainability assessment through wide-ranging collaborations on societal embedding and diffusion of alternative business models. He helps integrate public health implications of pollution by (plastic) waste in the socio-technical transition to a resilient, circular society following the idea that prevention is better than cure. His projects assess the feasibility, acceptance and scale-up of products and policies.
He believes in re-focusing societal debates on the way to fulfil human needs rather than on what products to use and in what quantities. For instance, focusing on how to improve nutrition outcomes rather than on how to improve – or, even worse, “waste-manage” – food packaging. Focusing on the original needs such as nutrition in quality not quantity, one can begin to obviate various kinds of persistent, polluting packaging that did not exist two generations ago.
He has worked on industrial symbiosis projects focusing on the chemical industry and on residues of the food-processing sector responding to megatrends in consumption, population growth and the protein transition. He was a member of the European Industrial Symbiosis Platform of the Climate-KIC.
He was the Leader of the multi-faculty Ocean Plastic Solutions Network at Imperial College London between 2017 and 2022.