Webinar Series - Community engagement within the biosolids stakeholder landscape. Presenter: Dr James Hayes UNSW
Author Editor
Updated March 2025
This presentation is part of our ongoing webinar series being undertaken as part of the IWN Webinar Series Circular Economy – Solids stream.
This on-line webinar was presented on 5 March 2025. The recording of this webinar can be found via the IWN members site .
Below is the Flyer that was published for this event:
Community engagement within the biosolids stakeholder landscape
Biosolids experiences a set of unique factors, in particular odour, that affect the way in which industry-community engagement operates. Within nine years, biosolids as a market is anticipated to grow over 1 ½ times its current size. How well do current community engagement policies and mechanisms rise to these emerging opportunities and challenges?
This webinar provides an overview of three research methodologies used to understand the current community engagement policies as well as the stakeholder landscape of wastewater management and biosolids.
First, semi-structured interviews with company representatives for biosolids and community engagement were conducted to understand attitudes, beliefs, and policies.
Second, a scenario exercise that involved industry personnel, consultants, and environmental regulators was used to establish the relationships between these stakeholders and their objectives for moving towards best practice community engagement.
Third, complaint databases from wastewater companies were collected and analysed as to their efficacy in addressing odour and other environmental issues.
About the speaker
Dr. James Hayes is a Research Associate at UNSW, working at the Water Research Centre and the Air Quality and Odour Laboratory. He completed his PhD investigating the effect of malodour on communities. James’ research has involved the application of surveys, interviews, as well as psychometrics. He has also published in research relating to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry/olfactometry, considerations of the analysis of sulfur measurement, as well as novel research including odours of synthetic turf, detection dogs, engineering education, and humanitarian engineering.