Stephen Aston, head of waste strategy at the Department of Environment in Northern Ireland, accepted the chain of office from former president Peter Ager at the opening session of this week’s CIWM Annual Conference and Exhibition in Torbay.
Addressing the CIWM membership, Mr Aston urged the waste sector to change, to move up the life cycle of materials and move for closer links with manufacturers.
Mr Aston said: “Once anyone refers to a material as waste, they might as well give it a criminal record. Our true responsibility is as stakeholders in the whole life cycle of materials. We cannot dream, but we can inspire. We must reach out to manufacturers higher up the line and also to young people, the next generation of decision makers.”
He added: “The waste industry is literally at the end of the line. Surely we can offer more protection that that.”
Referring to the flood of new waste legislation as a “small step for waste managers, but a huge leap for manufacturing kind, the new CIWM president said that he wanted to see the Chartered Institution reaching out to new members from outside the private waste management sector.
He explained: “Companies and individuals want to do the right thing, but they need information to make it easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing. And they need the motive. We are influential. We must explore new sectors, look for a wider, deeper membership.”
Mr Aston called the debate over incineration versus landfill as a distraction from the real issues that needed looking at. Costs are too low, he said, tax measures too light and new technologies too inaccessible.
“This decade, the highest fine for a waste related offence has been 300,000 – and that was over a number of charges. This year, a single fine for the fixing of prices for a toy was for 22 million,” he said.
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