Real-world innovation spaces for a circular plastics economy.
The Indonesia – UK Living Lab Network connects university campuses and their surrounding communities as places to co-develop, test and scale solutions to plastic pollution.
Building on the success of the PISCES Research Programme’s pilot Living Lab in Banyuwangi, East Java, PISCES Relay is establishing a coordinated network of PISCES Living Labs at Brunel University London, Institut Teknologi Bandung and Udayana University, with additional hubs to follow.
Each Living Lab is embedded in a real system – a campus, city, industrial area or coastal community – where students, researchers, enterprises, governments and citizens can work together to design, trial and evaluate circular plastics interventions.
What the Living Labs Do
Across the network, PISCES Living Labs:
- Map plastics use and waste flows in and around campuses, neighbourhoods and coastal communities
- Co-design and test alternatives to single-use plastics (reuse systems, new materials, improved sorting, behaviour-change interventions)
- Run user-testing and pilots with households, students, small businesses and informal sector actors
- Support student-led research and innovation, including projects, dissertations, hackathons and entrepreneurship challenges
- Generate data and insights that inform university operations, local government policy and private-sector decisions
- Share methods, tools and lessons across Indonesia and the UK, adapting frugal innovations from Indonesia for use in the UK and vice versa
Where We Work
The initial network focuses on three core Living Labs, with scope to expand:
Brunel University London – Campus & Coordination Hub (UK)
- Campus-based Living Lab to reduce plastic use and improve circularity in catering, retail and student life
- Serves as the coordination and learning hub for the wider network
- Provides a platform for applied research, innovation sprints and technical services (waste audits, material testing, monitoring)
PISCES Living Lab – Institut Teknologi Bandung (West Java)
- Located in a dense urban context with varied waste infrastructure
- Focus on sorting, collection and user testing for new packaging and circular business models
- Acts as a bridge between campus innovation and surrounding communities/industry
PISCES Living Lab – Udayana University (Bali)
- Situated close to tourism, coastal communities and rural villages
- Focus on coastal and community-facing solutions, behaviour change and alternative materials
- Provides a testbed for interventions relevant to island and tourism economies
Future phases envisage additional Living Labs in other Indonesian universities and communities
Who the Network Serves
The Living Lab Network creates value for:
- Students – hands-on experience, dissertations, exchanges and entrepreneurship opportunities
- Universities & researchers – a ready-made testbed for research, funding bids and impact pathways
- Communities & local government – evidence to support policy, planning and community programmes
- Businesses & innovators – a low-risk “sandbox” to trial new packaging, systems and services in real markets
- National and international partners – a platform for South–North knowledge exchange on circular plastics
Why This Matters
Plastic pollution is rooted in everyday decisions about how products are designed, sold, used and recovered. Traditional projects often test solutions in isolation from the systems they are meant to change.
Living Labs turn real places – streets, markets, campuses, villages – into shared innovation spaces where:
- Social, technical and policy experiments can be run safely
- Evidence on what works (and what doesn’t) is generated quickly
- Communities and enterprises help shape and own the solutions
By linking multiple Living Labs across different socio-economic and infrastructure contexts, PISCES Relay creates a global learning network capable of accelerating circular solutions from Banyuwangi and Bali to London – and back again.
Next Steps for the Network
Over the next phase, the Indonesia–UK Living Lab Network will:
- Finalise governance and coordination structures across the three core universities
- Launch student-facing programmes (projects, challenges, placements, exchanges)
- Develop standardised Living Lab tools: co-design templates, user-testing protocols, monitoring dashboards
- Pilot joint industry partnerships that use the network for product and system testing
- Seek additional funding to establish new Living Labs in other Indonesian regions and UK contexts