Ms Carol Pettit

I am the Senior Impact & Partnership Development Manager for the new Circular Economy Centre in Technology Metals (Met4Tech) led by the University of Exeter and funded by the UKRI. I am also leading on the policy impact activities across the collaborating institutions (University of Exeter, the British Geological Survey, and the Universities of Leicester, Manchester, and Birmingham).

The Met4Tech project is exploring how to create a circular economy for the technology metals such as cobalt, rare earths and lithium, for the cycle starting from the first stages of extraction, through manufacturing and recycling to the end-of-life and recovery stages. The project is developing a new roadmap for a technology-metals circular economy system centred on the UK. The tech metals roadmap is looking at battery materials for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage, as well as magnets for motors, wind turbines, and electronics. 

My degrees are in chemical engineering (BASc, MSc), and I have extensive (25+ years) work experience in policy-regulatory and environmental sustainability studies for the mining, metals/chemicals, and energy sectors. I have worked in both industry and academia. Recently I was the Senior Manager - Regulatory & Sustainability for a global industry trade association (Cobalt Institute), and also the Manager of the EU REACH consortia for the cobalt industry.

Previously I was a Senior Research Fellow and the Coordinator of a sustainability consortium project (PUrE - Pollutants in the Urban Environment) funded by the EPSRC and led by the University of Surrey and the University of Manchester. I have also worked for many years as an Environmental Consultant on large multi-disciplinary studies for the global mining sector.