About a quarter of UKWIN’s 82 member groups were represented at our Annual General Meeting, held this year at Voluntary Action LeicesterShire’s wonderfully friendly and well-equipped venue in the centre of Leicester. The theme of the AGM event was: Zero waste to burn, zero time to waste, and the notion of zero waste ran through the various presentations and discussions.
For a copy of the minutes from UKWIN’s Annual General Meeting, please contact the UKWIN Coordinator, Shlomo Dowen.
Tim Burns strikes key note for a sustainable lifestyle
Our keynote speaker was Tim Burns, Waste Watch’s Head of Community Engagement. Tim’s PowerPoint presentation is available to download. Tim explained how Waste Watch been busy working out their new approach to enabling communities to live more sustainably. This begins with the recognition that what we are doing right now isn’t working, and that we need to trial, innovate, collect evidence and advocate for new approaches to social change.
Waste Watch’s Sustainable Lifestyles programme provides a framework for innovation and has four founding principles:
• valuing society and the environment,
• learning through experience and exploration,
• collective change, and
• collaboration.
Tim explained how:
At the moment Waste Watch doesn’t have all the answers. For this initiative to succeed Waste Watch needs like-minded individuals and organisations to join us in a collective call for change. Waste Watch therefore invites UKWIN members and supporters to join our on-line community to take part through workshops, discussions and the sharing of ideas and experiences, by going to: http://www.wastewatch.ning.com/
Waste Watch recently released the first in a series of discussion papers. Working from Values (available from http://wastewatch.ning.com/group/workingfromvalues/forum/topics/working-from-values-discussion) calls for more to be done to engage communities by appealing to, and building on, our more altruistic or common values. Waste Watch believes that this approach provides a solid foundation upon which we can create change on the scale required.
Tim Burns ended his presentation with a quote from Tim Jackson (Professor of Sustainable Development and Director of the Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE):
We spend money that we don’t have on things that we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.
The presentation was followed by a question and answer session.
Download Tim Burn’s UKWIN AGM 2011 presentation [pdf].
Julian Kirby, Friend of the Earth and friend of UKWIN
Friends of the Earth’s (FoE’s) Waste and Resources Campaigner, Julian Kirby, discussed the recent successful FoE action that calls for a halving of residual waste. This campaign links anti-incineration and pro-zero waste campaigners, and included some 80 participating local groups.
Julian also dampened down expectations in relation to the forthcoming Defra Waste Review. Despite the requirement for a Waste Reduction Plan, called for as part of the revised Waste Framework Directive, the Review may only present a series of case studies – and may exclude both targets and strategic goals (thereby avoiding further consultation), and thus would not meet our EU requirements. Julian’s presentation was also followed by questions and answers, although time ran out before all of the questions could be asked…
Robert Palgrave of BiofuelWatch
Biofuelwatch is a volunteer-led campaign group supported by grant funding and donations. The group works to raise awareness of the negative impacts of industrial biofuels and bioenergy on biodiversity, human rights, food sovereignty and climate change. In the UK, Biofuelwatch focuses on energy (power and heat) and aviation, as well as on biochar, and the human rights impacts of biofuels.
Biofuelwatch’s Robert Palgrave delivered a presentation about how UK and EU policy is “bio-fuelling a disaster”. Robert used RWE Tilbury B Power Station as a case study to demonstrate how planning permission may be granted for conversion to burning wood pellets without an Environmental Impact Assessment, and without scrutiny by either the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) or the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). In this case the proposed feedstock is to come from as far away as The USA, Canada and Australia! Despite the obvious climate impacts of the proposed operation, it would be eligible for £400 million a year of “Renewable Obligation Certificates” (ROCs).
EU Sustainability Criteria for biofuels also fail to protect human rights and food sovereignty. Land grabs are common in countries where tropical biofuels are produced, e.g. Indonesia, Colombia, and Honduras. Both in the UK, and indeed globally, there simply is not enough land available to produce biofuels in sufficient quantities to satisfy energy demands, and the carbon emissions associated with biofuels are unacceptable in any case.
Far from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the UK’s bioenergy policy threatens to accelerate global warming by destroying tropical and sub-tropical forests and peatlands, which are amongst the world’s most important carbon sinks.
Download Robert Palgrave’s UKWIN AGM 2011 presentation [pdf].
Maxine Narburgh of Zero Waste Alliance UK
The Zero Waste Alliance UK was well represented at UKWIN’s 2011 AGM by founder members Val and Ralph Barton, and by the newly appointed Trustee Maxine Narburgh. Maxine is no newcomer to the zero waste movement, and her presentation retold the story of the origins of zero waste, globally and in the UK. Maxine provided a timely reminder of the one and only internationally peer-reviewed definition of zero waste.
The Planning Group of the Zero Waste International Alliance adopted the following definition of Zero Waste on November 29, 2004:
Zero Waste is a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use.
Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them.
Implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges to land, water or air that are a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.
Val, Ralph and Maxine extended a warm welcome to UKWIN members and supporters to join the Zero Waste Alliance UK and to attend their Annual General Meeting, to be held at the London Greenpeace offices on Saturday 14th April 2011.
Jane Green of 2020 Zero Waste Initiative
Jane Green is the representative of the very successful group known as “CRACIN” or Coalition for Recycling and Against Coventry Incinerator. Since convincing Coventry Council to abandon Project Transform, Jane has been busy transforming herself from anti-incineration campaigner to positive promoter of a zero waste project. The project entails the establishment of a zero waste centre to draw technical experts and academics together. Jane briefly told those assembled for UKWIN’s AGM a bit more about the 2020 Zero Waste Project and the progress she is making towards realising her vision.
Brainstorming session
Following the presentations, Shlomo and Julian facilitated brainstorming sessions with all of the participants who were able to stay on. These focussed on the future of the anti-incineration movement, and included much strategic thinking that will require further discussions. To read the notes from these brainstorming sessions, and to participate in the discussions, please contact Shlomo Dowen.