Edward Kosior received a Bachelor of Applied Chemistry and Diploma of Education from Melbourne University and Masters of Engineering Science in Polymer Engineering from Monash University Australia.

He then worked at RMIT University, in Melbourne, Australia from 1975 to 1997, reaching the level of Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering teaching polymer engineering and supervising PhD and MEng students. He was the inaugural Director of the RMIT Polymer Technology Centre that conducted industry focused polymer research into recycling.

He joined Visy Industries in 1997 and was based in Melbourne and Sydney in Australia where he was the Senior Research and Development Manager for Visy Recycling. In this role he was responsible for the plant design and business development of markets for recycled plastics.

He then set up Nextek Ltd in London in 2005 as the inaugural Managing Director. This involved overall management of the business and responsibility for the research and development activities of Nextek. Recent activities have included strategic advice and consulting to Fortune 500 organisations on end of life options for packaging wastes as well as complex materials. Projects delivered have included:

• UK: Development of a food grade PP recycling process and large scale trials
• Switzerland: Strategic advice and options for using recycled materials in branded products
• Australia and New Zealand– Design and commissioning a large new plastic recycling facilities food grade PET and food grade HDPE
• USA: Re-design of large scale PET recycling facility to increase output and quality targets
• UK: Design of recycling plant for the recovery of post-consumer films plastics shopping bags
• Canada: Best practice in collection and reprocessing of post-consumer plastic films
• UK: Development of detectable black colourants for automatic sorting of plastics packaging
• UK: Development of fluorescent markers for the high speed sorting of post-consumer plastics packaging
• UK - Malaysia: Development of bio-based meat and fruit packaging with extended shelf life
• UK – India: Development of affordable films with controlled permeability for food waste reduction

He is an Honorary Professor at Brunel University London, at the Wolfson Materials Processing Centre. He is a Fellow of The Society of Plastics Engineers (FSPE), Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FMMM), and a Fellow of Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).

His most recent award was the Prince Philp Medal for “Polymers in the service of Man”.

He holds several patents for the recycling plastics and been instrumental in the introduction of recycled plastics into food packaging in Europe and Australia (PET, HDPE and PP).

His goals are to help preserve and improve the natural environment through novel technologies that reduce waste generation and increase the closed loop economy that promotes high efficiencies in the use of limited resources and truly sustainable materials. He is also working on mitigating plastics in oceans and encouraging adoption of science and best practices in avoiding the environmental problems facing developing countries.