Sitting on a pristine beach in Sri Lanka on a family holiday in December 2023, Steve Carrie asked himself: “What’s the reality behind this tourist-filled paradise?”
He didn’t have to go far to find out – just a few kilometres down the country’ s south coast was the “real” Sri Lanka. Stretches of coast that has been infiltrated by endless plastic pollution.
Carrie was taken out on fishing boats where he saw the real extent of the plastic pollution crisis facing the country.
He told me about the experience as we sat in the meeting room of their head office in South Milford, North Yorkshire: “It was no surprise. The tourist beaches were kept immaculate while the beaches used by fishermen and other locals were covered in waste.”
Disturbed but determined, Carrie started exploring ways to help out through the use of the company’s signature MYBoard – a similar product to plywood but made of hard-to-recycle plastics.
MYGroup had recently commissioned a mobile plant and Carrie spotted the opportunity to test it along the Sri Lankan coastline – which he did a few months later.
He said: “My family all rolled their eyes. I don’t think I saw them again for the rest of the holiday.”
The project is continuing to grow and MYGroup hopes to set up a permanent factory to turn ocean plastic into shop finishings and signage.
The initial experiment has now launched another Sri Lankan venture under the group’s ReFactory arm. In an effort to support local artisans and communities, local tradespeople will be growing cotton in the country for the first time since the 1970s. The project is in collaboration with local people and pays a fair living wage by UK standards.
It joins the group’s other textiles initiatives, which look to find to explore avenues for sustainable textiles, for example turning PPE into bags, hats and covers.
Having launched in February this year, the Sri Lanka textiles project is already looking to expand across four provinces: the North West, North Central, Uva and Eastern regions.
This is the kind of man Carrie is – self-styled as a “disruptor of the waste industry”, he isn’t held back by what others would perceive as limitations.
He is thought to be the first person in the UK to excavate a landfill, which is now home to the group’s Goole concrete manufacturing facility in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Carrie said: “I’m pretty sure we were the first. We had to wade through miles and miles of red tape to make it happen – the Environment Agency wasn’t happy with what we were doing.”
The bureaucracy of the environmental permitting process is a hot topic for Carrie. As someone who clearly is not used to being held back, my questions about his relationship with the environmental regulator leads to a lengthy discussion about the back-and-forths they’ve had in the past.
He lamented over one such dealing: “We received a delivery of perfectly useable bleach – the exact same type that is used in our yard.
“I went to the Agency and I said to them: ‘Look we have all this bleach, please can we use it?’ But they said no – so I had to go down the road and buy the exact same bleach while the rest of it was processed. It’s insanity.”
What’s clear is this: for someone who deals in waste, Carrie is not a big fan of waste. As we walk around his food waste processing yard he points out how they are squeezing every last drop out of both the site and the waste they process – from repurposing Victorian beer vats to ensuring every bit of packaging is recycled.
I ask him where this mentality comes from, he laughs but immediately turns serious: “We’re Yorkshire through-and-through. It’s in our blood.
“My father was raised to never let anything go to waste. It was this philosophy that led him to start the scrap metals business which later evolved into MYGroup.”
Steve’s father and MYGroup founder David Carrie expanded the business into skip hire in 1989 but made a point of ensuring that the waste was sorted to maximise the amount of material that could be given a second life. Back then, the company was known as Mytum & Selby and rebranded to MYGroup in 2020.
It is still very much a family run business – despite being semi-retired, David is still on the board with several other family members working at the sites four facilities and its new office in Leeds.
While working with family can have its frustrations, it’s evident that being a family business is as important to them as being “Yorkshire through-and-through”. I can see how proud Carrie is of the business he and his family have nurtured and grown.
The MYGroup group director is straight-talking, pressed for time and direct – but it is obvious that he makes time for the things that matter to him: whether it’s the individuals in his employ or Sri Lankan fishermen.
You wouldn’t want to find yourself on the wrong side of Steve Carrie – à la the Environment Agency – but you would be extremely pleased to find yourself on his good side.
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