Action not words for London Remade

After a year in his post as chief executive of London Remade, Hugh Carr-Harris has helped to divert 30,000 tonnes of household waste from landfill. This reflects London Remade's philosophy of action when it comes to turning London's waste into new products and applications.

London Remade is a partnership between regional government, London boroughs and the private sector. Its objective is to develop and promote new markets and secondary industries based on the reprocessing and reuse of London's waste. The programme is supported by "Single Regeneration Budget" funding from the London Development Agency.

Over the last 12 months, London Remade has spent more than £1 million of Single Regeneration Budget funding, of its allocated £5.4 million. At the same time has it raised a further £1.7 million funding from the private and public sector. The funds are being used to support the Mayor's Green Procurement Code, as well as composting, glass and paper eco-sites, which aim to increase the amount of material recycled. London Remade has also helped develop a major a fridge recycling site in Willesden, is working on a tyres project and has an innovation centre, or London Remade HQ, where ideas are generated.

Fridges

Carr-Harris said: "We have ideas and we work them up into capital proposals. For example, with fridges we saw an opportunity and held a meeting to get people together and make a difference. In this industry a lot of people talk about waste problems. We don't want to be another organisation that talks about the problems, we want to talk about the solutions."

One of London Remade's contributions to London's recycling problems is its fridge recycling work and Carr-Harris believes that without its intervention, the situation would still be a mess. "If we hadn't come in people would still have been talking about the short term solutions," he said. "A lot of people didn't want to do anything because they could make money by storing fridges. They had a vested interest in not doing anything."

But Carr-Harris made it clear that London Remade does not just exist to give out money. It expects private investors to match funding requirements as EMR has done in its fridge recycling partnership with community recycling group Ozone Friends. He emphasises: "We are not here to fund everything, we will fund a bit and you fund a bit."

A key part of what London Remade is doing to increase recycling is to commercialise currently non-commercial projects. Carr-Harris explained that London Remade can give small organisations such as Ozone Friends advice on how to expand. He said: "We have the commercial skills which can help small companies. We are not trying to buy a set of people. If we need specialist people for a few days we will bring them in."

WRAP

Another organisation that is trying to find markets for recycled materials and solutions to the country's waste problems is WRAP - the Waste and Resources Action Programme. But Carr-Harris said that while WRAP is building up a large team of experts, rather than having an expensive team London Remade has concentrated on building up a network of expertise which it can call on for specific projects.

Carr-Harris thinks there is some conflict between London Remade and WRAP, but that "as with any business a certain amount of competition is healthy". But he did say that if WRAP came into London and carried out a project without consulting them, London Remade would be concerned. The organisations are working on a number of projects together and while Carr-Harris acknowledged the similarities between some of their work such as the Green Procurement Code and WRAP's procurement work, he said that London Remade's work concentrates on the capital, where most of the FTSE 100 companies are based, while WRAP's work covers the whole country.

London Remade aims to create markets for recycled products and has just announced a ?4.8 million investment to develop markets for recycled glass. But one of its first projects to secure a contract for the Free Form Arts Trust, a small design company that uses recycled materials, to make tiles from recycled glass for the new Greater London Authority building fell through. Inexperience meant that despite nearly a year's work, the project didn't come off. Carr-Harris says that London Remade has learnt from its earlier mistakes and now has more commercial awareness. He explained that the main problem with the GLA project was that they underestimated the number of people they needed to talk to in the supply chain to secure an order for recycled glass.

He said: "Some businesses don't need commercial help, but others such as the Free Form Arts Trust need advice on how to do things on a commercial scale and this is what's needed to increase recycling in London."

Community

London Remade is also working with the London Community Recycling Network (LCRN) who will hold workshops to give the community sector access to London Remade advice. Carr-Harris said: "We have empowered the role of the community sector by giving them the confidence that we are behind them."

Carr-Harris is pleased with what London Remade has achieved so far in its work to "redefine recycling". London Remade aims to transform the capital's thinking by showing that placing paper in the 'recycling bin' does not constitute recycling and that to complete the loop people need to purchase post consumer recycled paper.

Although all the SRB funding has now been allocated, Carr-Harris is confident that London Remade will be able to get further funding to continue its work. "The Regional Development Agency (RDA) see London Remade as a flagship project and is keen to support us in the future. We will also look to secure funding through the landfill tax credit scheme and will continue to apply to the European Regional Development Fund and will look at other European funding."