LAWR

August 2015 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 13 RWM With CiWM 2015 pRevieW range of perspectives. While it doesn't claim to have any of the answers, it is useful for facing up to the issues, and is part of the long-term movement in sustainable resource management. What have been some of the key highlights for you over the past 12 months during your various meetings and conversations with fellow ambassadors? It's not been so much about the outputs or products, but more about the new conversations and relationships, for example between supermarkets and local authorities. It's about gentle collaboration – not lobbying. Have any ambassador insights surprised you, or made you re-examine your own assumptions about the waste-to-resources agenda? I have been pleasantly surprised with the understanding and desire to act – from the construction sector, the manufacturers and retailers – to become part of this movement. We are engaging with people who were already thinking like us. Ambassadors were granted £15,000 to help develop initiatives to support the sector. The charity WasteAid has been the sole beneficiary of this first round of funding – what made their case stand out from the rest? With WasteAid it was all about timing. WasteAid was at a critical time in its genesis. The funding was more important than at any other time in its life. WasteAid needed seed funding to establish WasteAid UK and be able to do stuff. The funding helped WasteAid to form, create, register as a charity and create a network (See page 14 for more details on WasteAid). Why did we support WasteAid? Resources are global markets with global impacts – climate change is a global concern. Most of those impacts are felt outside of the UK and Europe – we are in a privileged position. Looking ahead to next month, how has the programme helped shape the content and direction of this year's RWM? Construction sometimes has a bad public reputation because of the large volumes of waste generated, but since most of that is soil and stones it is easily reusable. The Ambassadors programme gives us a chance to represent the sector directly and put our perspectives across. We are also able to suggest topics for the RWM show that affect construction – for example, what the circular economy means to the industry. The construction sector isn't, on the whole, aware or engaged in circular economy themes. We still need to get the message across that it's not all about recycling, it's about changing business models. So, while the show is still growing its visitor base from the construction industry, it's still important to have those conversations with waste and resource managers as our service providers. The Construction Ambassador Charlie Law, founder, Sustainable Construction Solutions Because the ambassadors have been brought together around the show, we haven't come with any agenda or baggage, so people are more relaxed about sharing ideas and having discussions. I have been pleasantly surprised with how the programme has evolved, particularly with the publication of the circular economy report Ever Decreasing Circles. It showed an ability and willingness by those involved to adapt and compromise in a shifting landscape. With the current data project, we have the opportunity to influence the process and share the local authority WasteDataFlow experience. Collecting better data on waste arisings will help inform local authority waste planners as well as other critical players in the resource management sector. The Local Authority Ambassador Lee Marshall, CEO, LARAC The ambassadors are helping bring in messages and feedback from the 2014 event – everything including the level of noise in the main theatres, to the role of design in a circular economy. We are asking the ambassadors to help shape the programme, design content and bringing forward tangible case studies. Visitors want to hear from organisations that are achieving circular economy success – what they did, how they measured it, and what they are going to do next. We very much live in a 'show me' society, and so that's what we're very keen to do with this year's event. What's next for the programme? Our next project is about establishing a solid data bank. It's not sexy, but without it we are guessing. Once we have the data we can turn that into information, plans and action. We're developing a complete data map – identifying the gaps in our understanding of resource flows. Without data we are stymied. That's why we focused previously on developing e-doc – one unifying data tool. We need to get e-doc to a stage where it is giving us statistically significant information from which we can make assumptions. Importantly, the e-doc system will enable us to aggregate data so that government, planners or those wanting to build infrastructure, can access the data to inform their decisions, without giving away commercial information. Interestingly, all the ambassadors recognised the value of gathering this information – everybody was enthused by the goal.

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