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The rocky road from waste to
resources
Presentation to NERF Annual Conference
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 25th Nov 2008
Ray Georgeson MBE MCIWM
The boy in the bobble hat...
Waste technologies – the future
The theme of today’s event is waste technologies
and the future
My task this morning is to:
• Remind us of the context to today’s challenges
• Take a whistle stop tour through some of the issues that
concern us
• Offer a few thoughts about our future challenges
Farming looks easy when your
plow is a pencil and you’re a
thousand miles from a
cornfield.
Dwight D Eisenhower
Context – where we are today
We have made real and substantial progress on
the road from waste to resource management
• Fourfold increase in municipal recycling since 2001
• England average recycling rate now 34.5%
• Two thirds of English households now ‘committed
recyclers’
• Significant investments by councils in collection
schemes
• Major investments by private sector in sorting and
treatment infrastructure
• Real reductions in waste sent to landfill
Recycling progress 1997 - 2007
How did we do that?
Concerted effort by many committed councils,
businesses, agencies and individuals
• driven in part by EU Directives – Landfill, Packaging, WEEE
• policy lead from DETR, Cabinet Office – first statutory targets
on councils for recycling and investments in infrastructure
following reform of Landfill Tax Credits
• drive for new and sustainable markets and uses for materials
• policy and funding support from Defra for new technologies
• in last few years, higher and faster increases in Landfill Tax
The rocky road…
It hasn’t been as smooth as many would have
liked
• Planning system and its effect on all waste and resources
proposals – not just the largest scale developments
• Perceived technical barriers and uncertainty slow down
investments and discourage innovation – the waste/product
definition issue, standards, EA rulings, use of recyclate in
products
• Plenty of boulders in the road – State Aids clearance for
investments in recycling and new technologies, relative
slowness of waste industry to gear up for change, fiscal
instruments to drive change limited and insufficient
As for the credit crunch…
Where does one start?
• the trigger for the major economic downturn
• the biggest in most of our lifetimes
• the seismic shift down in global demand
• impact on commodity prices – metals, plastics, paper
• lack of liquidity in banking system leading to fragility of
investments – PFI schemes, new technologies (particularly
‘novel’ ones)
Recovered paper Nov 07- Nov08
Non-ferrous metals Oct 07 – Oct 08
Recovered plastic bottles Nov 07 – Nov 08
Lots of issues that concern us…
The road stays bumpy
• Meeting recycling targets in a volatile commodity market
• Choosing the best options for ‘non-landfill’ residual
treatment: AD, IVC, autoclaving, pyrolysis, MBT, gasification
– the range of ‘new technologies’
• Does ‘good old’ EFW incineration start to look bankable
again – in the context of the credit crunch and the
positioning of some other technologies?
• What more can we do to reach the recycling targets we
already have, now that the ‘low hanging fruit’ has been
picked?
• What more can we do to improve our poor H&S record?
The health and safety challenge
Often too low down the list of debated concerns
32% increase in fatal and major injuries in last
three years (Source: HSE)
The climate challenge
Well documented and absorbed
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ad nauseam
(sadly)
• Met Office Hadley Centre report, September 2008 – lost in
the mists of the banking crisis
• Documented evidence of the role of recycling and waste
reduction in reducing carbon emissions
• WRAP Environmental Benefits of Recycling report, 2006
• European Environmental Bureau report, 2008
• Australian Council of Recycling report, 2008
• WRAP The Food we Waste report, 2008
We can rise to the challenge
We have no choice
• continued pressing demands of EU and UK waste
legislation – the revised Waste Framework Directive
• the constant and demanding imperative of climate change
– the Climate Change Act, EU Emissions Trading Scheme
• waste reduction and recycling, and some new
technologies, play their part in reducing carbon emissions
• we have to demonstrate leadership and bravery to drive
our industry forward and show we can respond to the many
public demands upon us
‘Old technologies’ – ‘hearts and minds…’
Sub title could go here
The demands of ‘public will’
Should drive our thinking and actions
•Providing services that are both responsive to public
demands and shaped by public understanding – the
concept of ‘public will’
•Our duty to communicate well, with honesty and integrity,
and explain the challenges we face and the public’s role
• Technologies are only as good as the public’s willingness
to understand them and accept them
• Do we underestimate the ability of people to rise to a
challenge?
The means by which we live have
outdistanced the ends for which we live.
Our scientific power has outrun our
spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King
(in Strength to Love, 1963)
Final thoughts on future challenges
Our collective will to change things
• we have been pretty ingenious over the years...
• .. and we will need more of that in the decades to come
• technology has its place, alongside a growing acceptance
of a different way of living, working and earning our keep in
a world with another 3bn people on it
• as we have seen these last three months, what happens in
the USA affects us, what happens in China affects us, what
we do affects many in developing countries
“All of life is interrelated. We are all
caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied to a single garment of
destiny. Whatever affects one directly
affects all indirectly.”
Martin Luther King
Thank you – from the boy in the bobble hat.!
Contact details
Ray Georgeson Resources Ltd
2 Garnett Villas, North Avenue,
OTLEY, West Yorkshire,
LS21 1AJ
Telephone: +44 (0) 1943 463680
Mobile: +44 (0) 7711 069433
E-mail: ray@raygeorgesonresources.co.uk
Website: www.raygeorgesonresources.co.uk (live
by Christmas 2008)
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