SMART DESIGNS, SMART RECYCLING
Bywaters’ David Rumble; the MRF at Lea Riverside in east London (inset, opposite)
A man on a mission
What’s it like juggling overseeing a materials recovery facility, drumming up new business and exploring opportunities in the waste market? Katie Coyne meets David Rumble, head of strategic development at Bywaters’ MRF in east London
But then as David Rumble, head of strategic development at Bywaters, shouts above the din of the conveyer belts, the £7M facility at Lea Riverside, east London, is state of the art. Opened by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in June
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2008, the plant is unusual in that it targets both co-mingled and source-segregated dry recyclables from the municipal and commercial sectors.
The facility takes paper, cardboard, plastic containers and film, ferrous and non-ferrous metal and glass. From these inputs, it then generates three grades of soft mix paper, OCC, HDPE, PET, mixed plastics and film, ferrous metals, aluminium and glass.
Using state-of-the-art technology, the Bywaters facility is the type of MRF that will take the UK one step closer to a universal kerbside collection system. Excluding waste elec- trical and electronic equipment (WEEE), the Lea Riverside plant takes a diverse range of materials – and with more facilities like it, local authorities can arguably offer a more comprehensive recycling service to residents. The job is a perfect fit for Rumble as it requires him to be
22 Local Authority Waste & Recycling March 2012
hile some of the workers are wearing masks, it’s not the unpleasant odour you might expect to find at the largest under- cover materials recovery facility (MRF) in London.
“self motivated” in much the same way that he was when he was managing director of his own optical engineering firm, a position he held for 12 years.
Having spent 26 years with the company, Rumble decided to voluntarily close the business when the prisms it manu- factured were no longer in demand. But the loss of its closure was Bywaters’ gain as the recycling and waste managers are making good use of his considerable business skills and experience. Rumble has plenty of initiative and is used to an autonomous way of working. His is a highly varied role which goes beyond the day-to-day running of the plant.
Opportunity knocks
“One day I might be talking to the press,” he says. “The next I might be attending the Palace of Westminster for a meet- ing of the Associate Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group.”
Describing his role as “spotting the opportunities or gaps in the market before anyone else”, no day is ever the same. For instance, one morning he could be giving an in- depth briefing and a MRF tour to a new facilities manager and then later that evening attending a networking event hosted by a local authority or a commercial operation. “It was part of my job to find more feedstock when the MRF first opened, to establish our relationship with local
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