Sustainable Business

Editorial Will Parsons Waste industry: "Do as you say and not as you do." This issue, my issue is waste. Or rather, my issue isn't with waste itself, it's with companies that continue to produce it, while telling others how to minimise it, re-use it, recycle it and otherwise improve their waste handling performance. This month was RWM at the NEC. Co-located with the Energy Event, the Renewables Event and the Water Event, it's the largest waste handling exhibition in the UK. And walking the halls (and walking, and walking) it was difficult not to feel as if some of the exhibitors there needed to take their own advice. The sheer number of pieces of promo literature, branded plastic bags (containing more paper and the obligatory plastic pen) and cheap disposable giveaways was incredible. In fact, there appeared to be very few exhibitors who had really thought about the amount of waste their stand was generating at all. I'd been on the show floor for all of a minute before a paper flyer (for a recycling services provider) was thrust into my hand by a rep who was littering the aisle with them. And I don't mean littered as in 'doing a proactive job and ensuring his company's message was disseminated effectively'. I mean littered as in 'floor covered by discarded pieces of paper in a two-stride radius around him'. By the end of the day I had been given two huge bags full of sales literature and press releases, often stapled and then put inside a plastic wallet whose only purpose was to hold a USB memory stick containing the information digitally and which rendered everything else included with it totally redundant. Along the way I was also offered miniature plastic wheelie bins, countless plastic pens, a foam globe, mouse pads, CDs (who still uses CDs for information?) a hat, plastic boxes of sweets (may have succumbed more than once) and myriad other cheap and worryingly, often nonrecyclable bits of branded merchandise. Which two minutes after being given to the passing punter basically became waste. From an industry that needs to not only take the lead, but be seen to be taking the lead, this is unacceptable. For companies to position themselves as solutions providers they need to stop contributing to the problem. Basically, it's time for the industry to do as they say and not as they do!

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