DCW was pleased to co-author two papers on a system-wide assessment of Indonesia’s plastic value chain. One, mapping external stakeholders, was published this week in the journal Environment Systems and Decisions. The other mapped both plastic and monetary flows and stakeholders dynamics, and was published in July in the high impact Journal of Cleaner Production. A third part of the trilogy was published in the Journal of Circular Economy in April 2025. All three papers demonstrate the innovative use of the structured systems-based framework provided by CVORR (Complex Value Optimisation for Resource Recovery), for the earlier development of which I chaired the Steering Committee. I also sat on the Advisory board of PISCES, a collaborative research project on preventing plastics pollution in Indonesia, from which these papers are outputs.

I am grateful to the two lead authors Eleni Iacovidou and Spyridoula Gerasimidou; and to my fellow co-authors Professor Susan Jobling; Eddy Setiadi Soedjono; Jessika Luth Richter; Mike Webster; Andre Kuncoroyekti; and Elena Lovat.