22 roundtable: environmental issues


The Business Magazine and solicitors B P Collins invited sector experts from our region to gather at Gerrards Cross to discuss environmental issues, and answer the pertinent question:


Are things going around in circles . . . successfully?


Participants


Simon Copping: European business development leader from Golder Europe


Matthew Farrow: Executive director, Environmental Industries Commission


Andrew Hillier: Managing director and owner, Ice Energy Heat Pumps


Michael Larcombe: Partner, B P Collins LLP


Sean Reel: Director and ‘eco-preneur’, HiCap Networks


Stephen Roscoe: Technical director, Grundon Waste Management


Diane Yarrow: Partner, B P Collins LLP


David Murray: Managing editor and publisher of The Business Magazine, chaired the discussion


Lined up to debate: our roundtable team Journalist John Burbedge reports the Roundtable highlights


A green ‘circular economy’ is everyone’s desired environmental objective – an economy where resources go full circle; an economy where precious resources are captured, recycled, remanufactured and reused to become goods for our tomorrows.


Instead, too often today, we still adopt a linear economy – taking resources out of the ground, turning them into products that last from minutes to a few years, then discarding them by putting them back into the ground as landfill.


Achieving a circular economy is no easy task, but we are making progress, was the Roundtable consensus.


How are we doing, and why is it so difficult to achieve?


Matthew Farrow from the Environmental Industries Commission estimated the UK was currently recycling around 40% of its waste. “We have come a long way. It was only around 10%, 10 years ago. But, we can’t claim to be a genuine circular economy until we are getting towards 70- 75% recycling, with non-recyclable waste


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going to modern energy from waste (EFW) plants to create a benefit to our economy.”


Even so, he placed the UK “respectably mid-table” when compared to Europe, with Germany and Austria leading recycling at about 60%.


He explained that, against a commercial background of global competition and individual interests, the challenges facing the circular economy still revolved around three main areas:


Product design


Designers need to make sure that their conceptual designs encompass the full lifespan of a product – including its re-use. “Too often final usage is not a key factor in the design brief, which concentrates on functionality, marketing appeal and manufacturing costs.”


Technical concerns


The capability levels of material recycling facilities (MRFs) to reclaim different materials needed to be taken into account.


Consumers


Can we change the way that consumers buy, use and dispose of their purchased products?


“So, we have to approach our supply chains in a very practical way and understand that we need the right incentives and networks in place to achieve change,” said Farrow.


Stephen Roscoe pointed out that it was awkward to make comparisons with other nations, because Germany, for example, did far more incineration than the UK, and others used different criteria for assessing recycling.


In the UK, he noted, most large companies were already engaged with recycling, largely for corporate social responsibility (CSR) reasons. “The problem for the waste industry is that we are now engaging with the whole supply chain in a way that we have never done before. We have to help them understand that there are ways of returning resource materials back to them.”


Dealing with mixed materials in volume was still a complex task, which could be helped by supply chain waste-separation at source. Waste operators were providing appropriate facilities, but separation remained a difficult task, particularly for different plastic wastes.


“It would be really nice to be able to give the plastics back to manufacturers, but currently it is such a novel concept for them that it is difficult to find someone to speak to credibly.”


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – NOVEMBER 2013


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