Last week Mr Lee concluded a two week stint helping CIWM chief executive, Colin Church settle in to his new role at the Northampton-based Institution.
Mr Lee keeps the position of chief executive of RWUK which he also had while in charge of CIWM but explains that he will now have more time to “focus on a number of RWUK priorities”.
He told letsrecycle.com that RWUK will have its own work while the two organisations which formed it – CIWM and the Environmental Services Association – will both continue to have their respective independent roles. He explained: “RWUK has a role and the two organisations have their roles. You have a strong leader with Colin here [CIWM] and with Jake Hayler at the ESA.
“RWUK’s role hasn’t changed and I don’t think it will change in the future. The two organisations are autonomous, they’re very clever, they have their own agendas and they will have their own opinions on issues. The delightful surprise is that we disagree on so little.
“RWUK could drown itself in saying ‘right, ok, let’s draw a rope around everything we agree on and let’s fight on all these fronts’. That would be wrong, wrong, wrong. RWUK is there to identify three or four crucial issues.”
Strategy
Referencing the RWUK manifesto published in May 2015, he said the crucial issues will be things like “a screaming need for a coherent strategy. What is the future environment policy for UK and at European level?”
Secondly, he pointed to waste crime as the one issue “that binds everyone together. Nobody can compete with liars and cheats and it is one thing that binds us together as an industry.”
There will also be work on facing up to Brexit and its implication for the waste and resources sector. However, Mr Lee refrained from being over critical of Defra secretary of state Andrea Leadsom and resource minister Therese Coffey, “because they are so brand new.”
Reflecting on his time at CIWM, which started in 2003 after seven years with the Environment Agency where he became ‘Mr Waste’, he says that his time at CIWM has been one “in an industry where there is always change. It is always pulling you forward.”
“The world has changed around the Institution and the Institution has changed to fit into and help lead that world. We have between six and seven thousand members, very clever, knowledgeable people.”
Steve Lee
RWUK
Mr Lee saw that change within the Environment Agency which he had helped design and set up and this experience helped at CIWM.
“The world has changed around the Institution and the Institution has changed to fit into and help lead that world. There are between six and seven thousand members, very clever, knowledgeable people. The Institution has definitely modernised. I have seen huge changes in the way it manages itself and talks to its members.”
And on his successor, Colin Church, Mr Lee said: “I’m delighted with the appointment they have made. I wasn’t part of that selection, I helped get it to that stage and was a group of trustees that came together to make that selection – some real stars put themselves forward.”
Strengths
Asked whether he had any advice for Dr Church, he remarked: “Be your own man, work to your own strengths, they are considerable. Colin is different to Steve Lee and he is a spectacular animal. If you think about a man fit for the times, the uncertainty we have to live through, at an individual UK nation level and our relation with Europe and our future environment policy; wow, what a shoe in.”
And as for any regret in leaving: “There was always going to be regret but if you make the mistake of fooling yourself and slipping into the mindset of always doing another six months then that won’t work.”
Apart from running RWUK, Mr Lee hasn’t ruled out other involvement in the sector but he terms himself as a generalist without any idea of returning to his roots in groundwater hydrology where he started out after university. As he modestly says: “People might benefit from my ability to bring people and ideas together”.
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