At the end of May, I travelled to Belfast for the Northern Ireland Waste and Resource Management Conference at the Titanic Conference Centre.
It was an excellent opportunity to meet our members and network with delegates, fellow speakers and exhibitors. The conference theme was: Journey to Net Zero, so we were treated to insightful talks throughout the day. We heard from WRAP's CEO, Harriet Lamb, who spoke about the transition to a circular economy in Northern Ireland and the tools needed to get there. She emphasised that targets can only be achieved when citizens are onboard, understand why change is necessary and then fully use the services provided. We couldn't agree more.
Cathy and I presented in front of the re-creation of the iconic Grand Staircase from the Titanic. We might not have been Oscar-worthy, but we did our best to inform and inspire Local Authorities on the day with a glance at the policy landscape across the four nations, how each is taking different routes to reach the same goals, and we are more aligned than ever before, despite our differences.
We finished with a couple of case studies of best practices, highlighting opportunities to increase recycling by restricting residual collections and collecting food waste separately.
LARAC sponsored this event and provided 14 free places to Northern Ireland members. Our next LARAC Conference is just over a month away. Register for your free place at the upcoming Wales LARAC Conference on 12 July in Cardiff. Free delegate places are available for LARAC members; this is the leading event for organisations looking to network with Welsh local authority waste and recycling officers.
I attended the Environment Agency - Waste Upholstered Domestic Seating (WUDS) POPs resolver group this week. I have posted a question on our Discussion Forum about transporting shredded POPs containing material and how Local Authorities manage the journey to incineration. Please let us know if you have any local information about this; you can read more and reply here. POPs are not going away anytime soon, and given their prevalence and detrimental impact on people and the planet, we hope to see EPR applied to POPs sooner rather than later
This month I am looking forward to attending some events that will undoubtedly be inspiring and insightful, including the National Letsrecycle Conference this week. I will be keeping a watchful eye out for the English Consistency Response, but I won't hold my breath.
The job will go on...
