CIWM Past President Dr Adam Read, Chief Sustainability & External Affairs Officer – SUEZ UK, speaks to Circular Online after receiving his MBE.
Current Trustee and Fellow of CIWM Dr Adam Read was recognised with a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the King’s Birthday Honours List 2024 for services to advancing the waste and resources agenda.
The Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) nominated Read for the honour without telling him and the moment he found out was when he opened the letter from the Palace.
“It was a great shock,” Read told Circular Online. “1995 was when I entered the sector, so it’s been almost 30 years. It’s always nice to be recognised for putting a shift in but I’ve got no intention of stopping anytime soon.”
Circular Online spoke to Read after Princess Anne presented him with the honour at Windsor Castle. He said he looked at the MBE as recognition he had “pushed the boat out” and made a difference.
But Read told us that his proudest achievement was helping to mentor and guide the next generation of the sector.
“I think of myself as a communicator or an educator. I help make difficult things accessible, and that’s always been my job, because there are much brighter engineers around me wherever I’ve worked, but my job is to help make that stuff real to my mum, or any layperson.
“I think that’s maybe the thing I’m perhaps most proud of and the thing that gives me the buzz. Being a mentor and a guide and, I don’t know, a provocateur, perhaps, someone who showcased what the sector might look like and why it would be a great place to work in.
“I went into Manchester University not long ago, and did a whole day workshop Dragons Den style, with a bunch of engineers, biologists, geographers.
“Afterwards, they go ‘We didn’t think about your industry before, but we’ve started to think this is quite an exciting place to be, and I think ‘Yeah, okay, I’ve, I’ve done something good today’.”
Helping to put the industry in good hands for the future is something Read takes seriously.
“Those events probably give me more pride than any of the projects I’ve done.”
Even more so than the Reuse and Renew Hub in Manchester, which renovated and resold more than 50,000 items in its first year to divert over 500 tonnes of material from going to landfill.
If there’s another 10 or 15 that came in the next five years for contributions to transforming the sector, then, that wouldn’t be a bad legacy.
“Those projects were all fantastic and really, really important, but actually, the legacy is the people. I think waste management is a people sector, and people sometimes forget it’s people making good decisions most of the time that’s going to get us to the promised land of net zero.”
Read told us that he hopes his honour paves the way for more people in the sector to be recognised.
“If you go back and look at honours in the waste industry over the last 15 or 20 years, it’s kind of hard to name more than a handful.
“I don’t want people to look back in 10 or 15 years and see I was number eight on a list of 12. That would be terrible if people were struggling to name waste and resource managers. I don’t want to be next on a very short list, I’d like to be on a very long list.
“If there’s another 10 or 15 that came in the next five years for contributions to transforming the sector, then, that wouldn’t be a bad legacy; if I prompt a few people to throw their hat into the ring or encourage organisations to put people forward for this kind of commendation.”
Read also spoke about the role CIWM has played in his 30-year career.
“CIWM has been there since I was finishing my undergrad degree in geography with a thesis on the future of landfill policy.
“There were a few of us knocking around the London scene, we were all relatively young and dynamic, and it was a great kind of place to be.
“CIWM was the glue. It gave me a spider’s web that I could use to feel my way around a sector that was kind of alien, even though I had been researching it.
“There was always somebody able to answer a silly question or give me the phone number for somebody that could get me into a new site that I couldn’t access.”
After 30 years, Read said he and CIWM are kind of “indistinguishable”.
“There will be a day when I when I probably stop as much of the heavy lifting at CIWM as I’ve done over the last 15 years, but doesn’t mean the relationship will stop.
“It just means it’ll be time for some new blood with some new ideas to get on the Trustee Board and do some of their own stuff because the Institution is changing and the sector’s changing, and that’s good.
“I can still enjoy being part of the bigger family, and I think that’s what CIWM for me is.”
