CIWM’s Early Careers President: What is the future of waste?

CIWM

Circular Online speaks to the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management’s (CIWM) Early Careers President Charlotte Davies about the goals for her Presidency and the future of the sector.

CIWM appointed Charlotte as its Early Careers President last year to lead the Early Careers Team, which consists of several ambassadors from across the sector.

In her day job, Charlotte is a Senior Consultant in Resource Efficiency and Circularity at environmental consultancy Beyondly.

Circular Online caught up with Charlotte to hear about the goals for her Presidential Term, the importance of attracting the brighest talent to the sector, and what the future of the industry could look like.

What are your goals for your Presidency?

Charlotte_D
Charlotte was appointed as CIWM’s Early Careers President last year.

The theme of my presidency is to raise the profile of climate change through the lens of the resources and waste sector. I feel incredibly passionate about this and so do many of the ambassadors.

A lot of the focus with regard to the climate change battle is drawn to renewables and energy efficiency but we know that 45% of emissions are associated with the goods we use every day, so I really want to raise the profile of the circular economy and resource efficiency, which will be key to meeting our net zero goals.

According to research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, energy efficiency and switching to renewables would only address 55% of global emissions and adopting the three principles of the circular economy in the products, services and systems can start to tackle the remaining 45% of emissions.

Additionally, I want to make the resources and waste industry a sector of choice – in fact, we are also saving the world! Green jobs are definitely seen as the thing to be doing so I want to acknowledge that our sector also offers that “saving the world” green job as well!

Whether that’s being a consultant, out on the rounds collecting the waste from kerbside, or as an engineer designing innovative products, solutions or technologies.

To do this I have three key objectives.

Goal 1: Embed the ECPT in the CIWM structure

The first is to embed the Early Careers Presidential Team (ECPT) in the CIWM structure. Both internally, such as through contributing and observing roles in SEGs and other groups, like Centre Councils; and externally, through content in Circular and more publicly facing through webinars, podcasts and events. 

This will hopefully add the value of the ECPT’s voice to industry discussions, CIWM routine and governance, as well as throughout the industry.

Goal 2: Educational outreach

The second objective is educational outreach through supporting CIWM engagement with universities, schools, internships and technical/vocational courses. 

We have discussed doing this through career fairs, university workshops and lectures, school resource development and raising awareness of the sector and its importance in meeting climate goals.

The circular economy/importance of resources and waste management definitely didn’t feature in my geography degree and it is only by chance that I stumbled into the sector and this appears to be a recurring theme! 

I want people finishing school or university who are passionate about the environment to see this as a career path. Educating our young population on the importance of resources and waste will help establish this understanding from an early age and also travel back to households.

It’s something that is just not covered in the curriculum at the moment, so if we can help schools with this, why not?!

Goal 3: Brand

Finally, brand. This is about supporting and contributing to CIWM navigating its new brand family and meeting changing member needs/demands from the CIWM brand.

I think CIWM is an amazing organisation. The Institution has been running for a long time and we want to make sure that our brand is representative of the current industry.

So, whether that’s changing more towards the circular economy as we don’t really want to use the word waste anymore because waste is a resource; it shouldn’t be seen as waste.

It doesn’t mean that we want to lose that focus on waste because I know a lot of our members might traditionally work in waste management or that kind of sector.

I come from more of a resource efficiency background in the circularity sector, so we do a bit of waste optimisation, and I think it’s important to bring that into our brand and make sure that’s represented within our outreach.

Those are the three key aims for my presidency and our ambassador team going forward. I think what ties it all together is just that awareness of waste and resources in the battle against climate change.

How do you raise awareness of the role that resources and waste can play in addressing climate change?

CO2It’s engagement with businesses, organisations, schools, and education – that kind of thing.

Because a lot of businesses think the focus is on carbon. I see that every day when I’m working; waste and resources are kind of a second thought.

I think it’s important that this net zero goal that we all have to get to, we won’t ever achieve that unless we tackle our waste and tackle the circular economy.

Then also the education piece of making sure that it is in curriculums, or making sure that people do know that it’s a sector to go into.

I think the government has a big part to play in that as well, in terms of pushing green skills, which I know that CIWM is quite keen to drive as well.

But it is a challenge, and that’s why I think we want to focus on engagement across those three key aims for my presidency.

Because our voice and the CIWM membership probably will be aware, but it’s about targeting people outside of our membership as well.

Do you see progress?

Mary Creagh
Mary Creagh MP is the UK’s first Circular Economy Minister.

I mean, there seems to be more conversation since the Election. Labour spoke about a zero waste goal. There’s a Circular Economy Minister. Is that good? Maybe it is good progress because it means there have been conversations in government, or is it a sign that people are still reluctant to talk about waste?

I think it is definitely a good thing. Since the new government has come in, we’ve seen a lot more rapid progress in terms of legislation being written up, we’ve seen the new Circular Taskforce and the initial different initiatives within that. That’s really positive.

We know we’re going to get a new Circular Economy strategy, so that’s also positive. However, I think it’s all well and good having all these action plans, but we actually need to do the doing part of it.

I always think of packaging EPR, which is something that I deal with quite closely in my day job, and we’ve taken nearly five or six years to implement it. 

How is this a shelf-ready policy that we’re seeing across the EU that’s already in place? How are we struggling for so long? We have seen more progress in the last couple of months, and hopefully, we are on the right track now.

How do you think you can make the sector more attractive to the new generation?

Green skillsI think it’s a terminology thing in the sense that we are saving the planet with our roles. It sounds silly because I know day to day, maybe it doesn’t feel like we are but we are in what we’re doing. I think that is definitely something that we need to move towards through our use of terminology.

I know that moving the world beyond waste is what CIWM stands for, and that’s definitely supporting that approach, in terms of brand association.

I guess as the Chartered Institution, does that sound accessible? You don’t necessarily have to be Chartered to be part of the Institution. I think that’s perhaps something that people don’t necessarily understand, or it (membership) might not seem as accessible to somebody just starting in the industry. I think that’s definitely something we need to think about in terms of that outlook.

We’re sort of progressing. Although I’m relatively new to the industry I’ve seen quite a lot of change. At RWM, the first year I went, I didn’t necessarily notice a women-only panel and things like that, but you see it more now, which is really positive.

I think that accessibility piece is just going to keep improving as we follow through with that pathway.

You mentioned ambassadors as having a diverse range of perspectives. How important is that for accelerating progress and for making real-world strides?

Yeah, we’ve got people from local authorities, businesses, there’s a lot of people from academic sort of roles, whether they’re doing research or a PHD or things like that, so I think they just bring a full range of perspectives, which then drives faster progress. 

If you’ve got more opinions and more represented ideas, then you cover all bases far quicker than sort of making the decision and having to go back on that. I think it’s massively beneficial to have that representation across the board. 

I come from a circular economy consultancy-type viewpoint, whereas you’ve got people who are actually managing waste facilities who have that real, on-the-ground knowledge of what’s going on in a Material Recovery Facility.

But then we’ve also got people that are doing research that will then guide all these other areas as well. It is really cool to be working with such a range of backgrounds and different people. At the end of the day the waste industry serves everyone – so our industry should represent that.

What work do you think you need to do to embed the EC voice in CIWM?

CIWMI definitely think just having a representative in groups, whether that’s somebody who’s going to actually input information or just sitting and listening, is so valuable. I think making sure that there’s a role for an early career position is important.

I know a lot of the time I’ve had a look at these steering groups and thought: oh gosh, I’m not experienced enough to be part of that. But it’s not necessarily the experience that’s needed. It’s kind of an innovative mindset, or because you’ve come from outside of that situation, you might be able to identify something that somebody else can’t.

I think having representation across the output and outreach, so having early career voices speaking at events, writing articles, and lobbying is really important as well.

I always sit on lots of webinars and it’s amazing to see your waste heroes. It’s been an amazing experience to be the Early Careers President because I’ve met all these people.

So having Early Career people in those positions as well, alongside these sorts of people, will hopefully encourage new people to the industry to see that they are actually welcome and a wanted voice on these sorts of panels or groups.

I think the member councils will be really important as well for the ECPT’s voice because they have more of a link to member bases than some of the other groups. Just having representation across all the groups would be really helpful and really embed that perspective.

The word waste can sometimes put a circular economy professional off because within the circular economy, although there is waste being generated, we try not to see it as waste. It’s a resource.

I think it would be interesting to do a piece of work on how early career professionals see the brand because, I guess, it would be a very different perspective to someone who’s been within CIWM or as a fellow or within these groups for a few years.

 

Send this to a friend