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

To cheer you up…

Courtesy of www.letsrecycle.com

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)