18th December 2017
With less than one week to go until the Christmas holidays kick off in all their glory, the increasing media coverage of all things ‘Christmas’ has got me thinking about the festive period. Throughout my years in the waste and resource sector I am always looking for new ways to reduce waste and increase reuse that are simple and easy
14th December 2017
At this time of the year I unleash my inner-Scrooge and often find myself thinking of the over-consumption, gratuitous spending and general wastefulness that accompany the festive season. But, bear with me for a few minutes, as I think there are some important decisions to be made at this time of year. Children as drivers of consumption The advertising for
29th November 2017
The next stop for Dr Adam Read, External Affairs Director, on his backstage tour of SUEZ sites is to Surrey to visit the facilities that are a part of the SUEZ contract with Surrey County Council. Adam is putting together a series of short blogs giving you a flavour of what goes on at each of the sites he visits. Fourth stop – Surrey, community
24th October 2017
The term “rethink” is a particular favourite within our sector. Examples of reports and projects abound: rethinking waste, rethinking waste management, rethinking waste crime, rethinking organic waste, rethinking recyclability. What about rethinking the waste hierarchy? Many suggestions have been put forward, expanding the so-called 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) to 5Rs, 6Rs (Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Replace) and even 10Rs
23rd October 2015
New ways of tackling old problems One of London’s worst offenders on the fly-tipping block, Newham, is looking to mend its ways and encourage its residents to change their attitudes towards waste disposal. In the face of grim national statistics, which recorded approximately 852,000 incidents of fly-tipping in 2013/14, up 20 per cent from 2012/13, and over 70,000 call-outs to
25th August 2015
The Scottish Government is to be commended for opening a wide-ranging consultation on “creating a more circular economy in Scotland”, end date 30 October 2015. The consultation document Making things Last is a call for action along each of the various stages of the supply chain, starting with product design and progressing through reuse, repair, remanufacturing, recycling, recovery, and ending
25th August 2015
Repair, reuse and remanufacturing continue to get a raw deal from policymakers. A panel discussion on current performance and future challenges in the UK held at the recent CIWM’s conference Resourcing the Future 2015 highlighted this fact in contrast to the undoubted success the UK has enjoyed in raising recycling rates. Yet the European Union household waste target of 50
13th August 2015
December 2014 saw the launch of the report Triple Win: The Social, Economic and Environmental Case for Remanufacturing. It is generally forgotten that the target in Article 11 of the Waste Framework Directive requires the UK to achieve 50 per cent recycling and reuse of paper, glass, plastics and metals from households by 2020. But reuse, which broadly speaking includes
17th June 2014
In articulating what a circular economy should look like, the latest thinking is that it is not just about recycling, where end-of-use articles and products are destroyed in order to recover the materials contained in them. There is a so-called ‘inner loop’ of reuse that should be prioritised first. Products that have come to the end of their ‘first’ life
5th February 2014
I recently had the pleasure of taking part in a debate about re-use, as a panellist at an industry event in London. The people and discussions were fascinating and inspirational, but what really intrigued me was the aspiration, complexity and also the terminology used to describe various re-use activities. Currently there are many relatively small schemes seeking to make use
