Dr Costas Velis is an international expert on circular economy, resources from waste and plastics pollution (https://plasticpollution.leeds.ac.uk/). A Chartered Waste Manager by CIWM and registered with the Institute of Physics (MInstP) brings over 20 years of practical experience. Costas has been serving in tens of international committees and initiatives addressing relevant challenges of global scale, including the prestigious seminal ‘Global Waste Management Outlook’ released by UNEP. Dr Velis currently chairs the Community of Practice on ‘Harmonisation of Plastic Pollution Quantification Methodologies and Models’, instructed by UNEP GPML; and had led for 5 year the ‘ISWA Marine Litter Task Force’, aiming at establishing the clear link between sound waste and recycling practices and the prevention of plastic pollution. He led efforts to explore the links between public and occupational health from mismanaged waste for the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK; and led the new comparative PLAST toolkit for the World Bank on plastic pollution methodologies.
Published in leading journals, including Science and Nature, his academic research papers have been honoured with many prestigious awards and shortlisting, such as those from ICE, CIWM, ES&T, Frontiers Planet Prize and ISWA. Costas has a wide research portfolio as Principal Investigator and Co-I, and his wider expertise covers topics from modelling of plastic pollution to informal sector recycling in the Global South, to mechanical processing of waste, funded by UKRI, NERC, BBRSC, and many international organizations (e.g., The World Bank, GIZ, UN-Habitat, UNESCAP). He services the sector as Editor-in-Chief of Waste Management & Research, Section Co-Chair for Frontiers in Sustainability - Waste Management and via the Editorial Board of Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology. Dr Velis holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering (Sustainable Systems) from Cranfield University, an MSc in Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Development from Imperial College London, and a BSc in Physics from University of Athens, with major in Environmental Physics.
