Waste experts speak on ‘The Big Society’ at Buro Happold event

12/10/2010 Written by: Chris White

Forum addresses what policy initiative could mean for waste

New waste management approaches should be stitched into the Government’s ‘Big Society’ initiative according to experts who addressed representatives of the CBI, ODA, Defra, Environment Agency and firms including Land Securities and Sir Robert McAlpine at an event on Tuesday.

The event, hosted by international multidisciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold and chaired by Joseph Partners’ Principal Jonathan Joseph, was staged to initiate a wide discussion about what the Big Society could mean for waste management and how the sector should respond.

Speakers included Chris Brown (Communications Manager for Planning and Estates at Cory Environmental), Phillip Ward (Director for Local Government Services at WRAP), Peter Guthrie (Professor of Engineering for Sustainable Development at Cambridge University) and Andrew McKie (Group Director at Happold Consulting).

James Hobson, Senior Waste Consultant at Buro Happold, said: “The Big Society is about rejecting both market and statist-based solutions in favour of a new localism fuelled by decentralised power and budgets.

“There is much about waste management that works from a measure of centralisation. However, after a decade of misplaced thinking that ‘end of pipe’ solutions and recycling equate to waste minimisation we see the Big Society as a real opportunity to rethink how we look at, use and dispose of materials for the better.

“Our experience in helping to deliver new communities around the world suggests that there are demonstrable benefits in locally-based waste solutions which improve the functionality of communities.”

Topics covered by experts included private waste sector responses to new government policy, new methods of procurement for new policy and the direction of government support services in waste management.