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Certain elements of Hayek’s work are prominent precursors to the modern field of complex adaptive systems, including his ideas on spontaneous order, his focus on market processes, his contrast between designing and gardening, and his own framing of complex systems. Conceptually, he was well ahead of his time, prescient in his formulation of novel ways to think about economies and societies. Technically, the fact that he did not mathematically formalize most of the notions he developed makes his insights hard to incorporate unambiguously into models. However, because so much of his work is divorced from the simplistic models proffered by early mathematical economics, it stands as fertile ground for complex systems researchers today. I suggest that Austrian economists can create a progressive research program by building models of these Hayekian ideas, and thereby gain traction within the economics profession. Instead of mathematical models the suite of techniques and tools known as agent-based computing seems particularly well-suited to addressing traditional Austrian topics like money, business cycles, coordination, market processes, and so on, while staying faithful to the methodological individualism and bottom-up perspective that underpin the entire school of thought.

The production of waste creates both direct and indirect environmental impacts. A range of strategies are available to reduce the generation of waste by industry and households, and to select waste treatment approaches that minimise environmental harm. However, evaluating these strategies requires reliable and detailed data on waste production and treatment. Unfortunately, published Australian waste data are typically highly aggregated, published by a variety of entities in different formats and do not form a complete time-series. We demonstrate a technique for constructing a multi-regional waste supply-use (MRWSU) framework for Australia using information from numerous waste data sources. This is the first subnational waste input–output framework to be constructed for Australia. We construct the framework using the Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab), a cloud-hosted computational platform for building Australian multiregional input–output tables. The structure of the framework complies with the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). We demonstrate the use of the MRWSU framework by calculating waste ‘footprints’ that enumerate the full domestic supply chain waste production for Australian consumers.

In debates about recycling and the circular economy, the role of existing organisations that already facilitate the circulation of materials through society can be neglected. Indeed, the social enterprise sector may currently be more significant than the commercial waste management sector in facilitating the circular economy within Australia. Drawing on interviews with organisations involved in collecting and reprocessing used electronics and scrap metal in Australia, the authors detail some of the synergies and tensions between the social enterprises and commercial organisations that have emerged as recycling gains traction through government policy and various forms of product stewardship. The authors conclude with suggestions for policy and governance approaches most likely to facilitate productive and perhaps symbiotic relationships between the two sectors in the future.