Gloucestershire Friends of the Earth believe that there needs to be a fundamental change in dealing with waste to enable the responsibility of decision making and action to be within small local communities.
They are working on a local community/parish scale, empowering local communities, and believe that is the key.
Parish and Town Councils, Co-operatives, the Voluntary and Community Sector and small and medium enterprises all have a role to play in turning local waste into a local resource, reducing the carbon footprint and stimulating local businesses in the recycling and recyclates industry.
We hope that this conference network day will stimulate not only discussion, but more importantly action, so that Gloucestershire takes the lead nationally to pilot this new approach to empowering local communities in dealing with their waste and lowering the carbon footprint.
The event, Zero Waste – a Way to a Low Carbon Future, will take place on Saturday 9th October 2010 at the Bethesda Church, Great Norwood st. Cheltenham Spa GL502AP. Entrance free, lunch is set at £5.00
Speakers
Michael Warhurst, Senior Resource Use Campaigner, EU and UK Friends of the Earth, key note speaker
Adam Kennerely, Chief Executive of the Cwm Harry Land Trust, “Slow Waste” Welsh Assembly Zero Waste pilot project
Michael Pickering, Social Responsibility Manager, MidCounties Co-operative, “Co-operatives – Communities in Action”
There will also be a panel with representatives, including MPs, from main local political parties.
Key note speaker Dr Michael Warhurst (left) has been working for Friends of the Earth in London as the senior campaigner in the Resource Use team since November 2005. His work focuses particularly on EU and UK waste and resources policy, and he heads up Friends of the Earth Europe’s Resources and Consumption campaign. Prior to this role, he worked on the EU’s new REACH chemicals regulation, first at Friends of the Earth in London, and then in WWF’s European Policy Office in Brussels. In 2005 he spent 9 months working on US chemicals policy at the Lowell Centre for Sustainable Production in Massachusetts, USA. Dr Warhurst has a Degree in biochemistry from the University of York, an MSc in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD (in the breakdown of chemicals by bacteria) from the University of Glasgow.
Programme
Chaired by Mike Birkin, Friends of the Earth Regional Campaigns Co-ordinator South West
10.15 am Coffee
11.00 am Adam Kennerley – “Slow Waste” a Zero Waste pilot project for the Welsh Assembly
12.00 am Michael Pickering – “Co-operatives, Communities in Action”
1.00 Lunch
2.00 pm Michael Warhurst – Key note speaker “Zero Waste – a way to a low carbon future.”
3.00 pm Panel from main political parties for question and answer session.
4.00 pm Close and tea
Cwm Harry Land Trust
Originating as a land based enterprise at place called Cwm Harry in Mid Wales it has evolved to provide localised solutions to sustainable living. Now operating bioregional scale food waste collection and composting services for local authorities and extending the Cwm Harry Food Co in to a producer retailer cooperative we now pilot Zero Waste services for the Welsh Assembly Government in partnership with the communities of Presteigne and Norton. Our sister social enterprise, Light Foot Enterprises, runs the Household Energy Service which won the Big Green Challenge and is now piloting Farm Carbon services. Together we are interested in how closed loop systems can be delivered through businesses, and how those businesses are owned and operated by the communities they serve.
Adam Kennerley (pictured above) is Chief Executive of both companies and has arrived their via periods with Greenpeace on energy policy and in economic regeneration following a career in protected landscape management and ecology. This migration from wildlife to business reflects the understanding that, if society brings with it negative impacts on the planet then society holds the key to the solution; and that the key is as much about people and behaviour change as it is about technology.
Zero Waste is just one example of the businesses underway or under development. Unique in the UK the local authority has withdrawn from the settlements of Presteigne and Norton for one year and the community, supported by Cwm Harry, is taking on full responsibility. Within the year the intention is to prove the relative ease of high (90%) participation rates and target hitting (70%) recycling rate. Not content with this the project intends to reduce overall waste by 5% The underlying approach of ‘slow recycling’, whereby our investment is in the people of the community and not in the traditional ‘trucks’ of the waste management industry, whereby doing detailed kerbside sort with the householders actively engaged changes the dynamics from top down ‘received’ waste management to community ‘owned’ resource management. High value materials and high participation may form the basis of a commercially viable alternative?