Vivek Patil has summarized the panel discussion and put together a set of interesting quotes.
QUICK SUMMARY & QUOTES
ADAM READ, SUEZ UK
I expect recycling and recovery to be higher profile, just [because] the circular economy has never before have come across the government, across the departmental debates
- It was easy for the UK for too long to know that China would take 60% of our materials [and] that was going to come to an end one day. It just that it happened a bit too soon for particularly the smaller and the medium-sized players.
- The UK, with the new government environment strategy that was released in January [2018], we have now got from the DEFRA that the environment department’s ‘Resources and Waste Strategy’, resources are now more important in the UK’s legislative terms that will be released.
- We are talking about potentially banning single use plastics [or] at least making them prohibitively expensive. We are talking about recycling rates that are higher than the circular economy package from Europe.
- One of our messages to the residents when we get the opportunity is ‘target materials only.’ Don’t think [if] it’s plastic [then] it’s recyclable, because recyclability is not about being able to segregate and keep it clean, [but] there is got to be an end use [for] drawing that material through. [And for] some of these materials, there isn’t [an end use]. So, we are similar to the US in that respect.
The UK has suffered from a stagnation of momentum and now we have got this window of opportunity, a culmination of many stars aligning that could really inspire a change.
- One of my jobs is still to be that consultant in the room to think outside the UK box and go “well, what if we did it like this”. We know we have worked in that type of environment.
- The other thing I think that is changing rapidly is technology and I think the power of data for real-time solutions and the ability to switch plants into different [processing] modes depending on feedstock quality [of waste] [is] what we are looking forward into.
The future of our sector is as much about our ability to communicate and share, as it is about novel, new technology.
- The platform of social media, alongside face to face meeting, conferences, working groups and workshops, [is] enabling us to have different conversations with different sectors in different countries.
- I love the innovation that is now open in our sector globally and we should embrace that, encourage it. The engineers and thinkers of tomorrow, the waste and resource managers of next millennia bring it on.
A 25 year environment strategy and a 25-year waste and resources strategy will have quite a significant impact in the next 5 years. That’s the step change I am most interested in. Because, if we don’t make that kind of progress, then the aspirational stuff drags on slowly in the background.