As air pollution affects everybody, and our project could result in a technology which would be implemented in public spaces, deployed on a mass scale and generate a significant volume of waste product, doing all we could to ensure that it is responsible was at the forefront of our minds from the outset.

Inspired by the approaches of Responsible Research and Innovation, we therefore, at the beginning of the project, organised a whole-team ethics seminar with our nearest expert to hand, Dr Paul Curnow. From this, we produced an AREA (Anticipate, Reflect, Engage, Act) study, in which we noted down potential issues we foresaw with our project, further reflections on this, ideas for how to engage the public in our work, and ideas for how to act upon all of these potential ideas now, to address issues. You can take a look at the notes from our AREA study here.

One clear message we took from this was that we would need to engage with a whole host of experts as well as members of the public to ensure that our research and work would be safe, responsible and effective.

So, we set about arranging meetings with experts...

On 12th July, we met with Professor James Ladyman, an expert on the philosophy of science. He stressed the importance of building trust with the public by engaging with them from an early stage and communicating our work clearly and transparently, whilst taking on board their criticisms. Without making such efforts to explain and reassure, we could end up facing a backlash from a frustrated and surprised public, unnecessarily nervous about our project’s implications. Prof Ladyman had shown us that where a project impacts the public, engagement is an essential part of responsibility.

We then set out to engage with members of the public and to find out both whether they felt that our project would be a desirable, positive change and receive feedback to make it more so. Here, we were determined to engage a public as diverse as possible, to tackle the potential inequalities issue identified in our AREA study of only wealthier, university-educated members of the public having a say over key design and implementation issues relating to our project. Our project is for everyone, and as many people should contribute feedback towards it as possible.

Firstly, at the Big Bang Fair, which introduces school children throughout Bristol to stalls exhibiting the cutting edge of science, we asked children and adults - teachers and parents - to design pods to hold our bacteria. The pods needed to be secure, have a large surface area for maximum efficiency and look good! See all of the pod designs here.

We also visited Avonmouth’s Summerfest, at which we were able to engage with more families as well as older members of the community and hear their responses to our project. Read more about it here.

On both occasions, our ideas received an overwhelmingly positive response from people of all ages, who did not seem to mind the idea of having pods on their streets absorbing air pollution. A handful raised safety concerns surrounding environmental release but, as we had predicted this in our AREA study, we were equipped and ready swiftly to allay such concerns by explaining that we had discussed this issue with our supervisors several times from our project’s inception, and they confirmed that the E. coli used in pods would be a disabled lab strain, only able to exist in pod conditions, which would immediately perish upon release. Pod designs incorporating trees, plants or leaves appeared the most popular among adults and children alike. We therefore decided that this idea would be best to pursue in future design work, particularly as it also struck a perfect balance between people who wanted the pods to be artistic and attractive, and those that would prefer them to be subtle and unobtrusive.

Designing pods at the Big Bang Fair. The designs were then hung on trees for everyone to see (right).

These public consultation efforts were complemented by our meetings with local politicians, which were essential in informing us of the political realities which could make or break our project’s real world implementation. Councillor Fi Hance, Bristol City Council Member for Energy, Waste and Regulatory Services, informed us that our project could provide a politically palatable way of mitigating air pollution’s worst effects - more popular than one alternative, which is imposing congestion charges. Cllr Hance informed us that public acceptance of our project would be essential in allowing its implementation to be politically responsible and viable - affirming the importance of our efforts to hear the public’s concerns, address them, and incorporate their ideas into our design approach. We also met with Councillor Jo Sergeant and Bristol North MP Darren Jones in Avonmouth, who confirmed Cllr Hance’s comments. Cllr Sergeant also suggested that, for example, we could convince private companies to implement our pods around their premises to improve their public image.

Professor Eddie Wilson, Head of Engineering and Maths, and Dr Tim Chatterton, a Social Scientist and Air Pollution expert, focused, among other issues, on the environmental implications of our project. Dr Chatterton, for example, highlighted the importance of considering the full life cycle implications of our project, raising concerns regarding release of NOx back into the environment if the ammonia our pods produced were used as fertiliser. This encouraged us to plan to integrate an MFC into our pod design which would utilise the ammonia at source. See more on this on our Integrated Human Practices page.

Beyond hearing and reflecting on the above advice, we were determined to incorporate it all into one attractive and invaluable reference document, which would inspire both us and future teams to be even more self-reflexive. We therefore decided to conduct a structured and in-depth Future Scenarios Analysis, examining the utility and potential problems our project could face when it is ultimately implemented, by examining different potential future scenarios. To ensure our analysis was as useful and professional as possible, we sought advice from Dr Michael Reinsborough of BrisSynBio and Australian Foresight Specialist Maree Conway, on how to structure and conduct our analysis. We conducted extensive research into current trends, with particular reference to the National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios document, to ensure our scenarios all stood within the bounds of possibility. We also ensured to leave ourselves a significant amount of time to reflect on these, before stating how we would address potential issues. Our analysis confirmed that a technology resulting from our work would have a use in all realistic futures, but that research would have to be directed in different ways depending on which begins to seem most likely. Ultimately, as well as forming a vital integrated human practices tool, our scenarios analysis must be included here because it formed a comprehensive reflection on the environmental and ethical concerns most likely to surface in future, based on all the advice we’ve received. See the Scenarios Analysis on our Integrated Human Practices page or download it as a PDF.