James Hobson, Waste Consultant

07/10/2011 Written by: Rachel Davies No comments

James is a Waste Consultant based in our Edinburgh Office. 

How does your story in waste begin?

Well I went to University in Edinburgh where I got a degree in Forestry, and after that I moved to Ireland where I did some of the more pragmatic waste management stuff.

So you were a bin man?   

Ha ha, I wish. I helped a waste management firm to apply environmental policy and legislation into their business. It was a great time for me; I learnt a huge amount from them about the industry.

Then what?

My girlfriend and I decided to go travelling, eventually ending up in New Zealand.

You got a sheep shearing job?

No I got lucky and managed to get a post as a waste manager in Wellington.

What were you doing for them?

My role was to work on city wide waste schemes. The office was actually based at the city dump!

So what made you come back to the UK?

Well my girlfriend and I got engaged and wanted to come back to get married. We missed our family and friends so we travelled 12,000 miles overland to get back.

And then you met BH?

Yes I applied for a role at BH and I must admit I’d never heard of the firm. The role offered was as a Waste Consultant. Initially I began by developing the BH waste capability and offering Waste Strategies for new developments. 

This has now expanded and BH also offers advice on Waste Infrastructure and Waste Logistics; all the time ensuring that we are designing for the future.

Doesn’t feel like a Waste Strategy would be at the top of many people’s priority list?

No, but our work has proved really successful with architects who want to show their buildings will actually function day to day, and the value that a considered waste strategy can bring.

Tell me about how you’ve implemented some waste initiatives into our very own Edinburgh office.

Well we designed the BH Edinburgh office to be highly sustainable in every way. I started by looking at the goods coming in and going out. It’s the little things that make the big difference so in Edinburgh we decided that there would be no vending machines and no individual bins. We’ve got recycling pods for the whole office and people go out into the local shops for snacks. 

This is the type of thinking that can be applied on larger scale projects.

I recall you working on a government scheme recently – what was that all about?

Yes, I was working with the government’s WRAP team creating guidelines on how to design out waste and in particular designing out waste on construction sites. I updated their existing work, bringing it in line with today’s thinking, making it easier for end users to understand and implement. It’s not been published yet but will be in the near future.

Waste is a hot topic and often one that receives a lot of media coverage... what does the future look like for waste?

Well if you look back through the decades there have been a number of different solutions; we went from big landfills to big incinerators and then we got hooked on waste “bling”, expensive waste energy plants and recycling facilities.

Yet we still have a problem and we all still chuck stuff away. It’s just called something else now. There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution.

Waste is related to people – cultures, climates, behaviours, beliefs. So we are looking at the localism bill and big society thinking. The way forward, I believe, is through working with communities. Letting communities take more ownership of their waste – micro waste treatment and tackling waste origin is the key going forward.

You’ve got kids... let’s talk nappies

Nappies receive a huge amount of coverage and negative press around the sheer volume of them and how long it takes them to degrade. In reality nappies only really account for less than 1% of all household waste. My wife thought about washable, disposable and “green” nappies and when you add up the water used and associated energy expelled through washing nappies they are actually around the same in their carbon emission as straight disposables.

So what’s the solution in the Hobson household?

Well we’ve looked at the time our children stay in nappies, again if you look back there has been a real shift in behaviours on this and at what age a child should stop using nappies:

40’s – by 6 months
90’s – by 2 1/2 years
Today – by 3 1/2 years

So we are aiming to get our children out of nappies by the age of 2!