Waste sector urged to encourage female graduates

The comments from members of the group came as it held its first networking event at the RWM exhibition in Birmingham last week (September 12).

The Women in Waste Group was founded by Esther Kiddle, solicitor at Bond Pearce, earlier this year with the aim of providing a forum dedicated to women who work in the waste industry and to champion womens issues.

At the networking event, a panel debated topics such as the hurdles that the waste industry faces such as gaining finance and the importance of a workplace gender balance.

Speaking on the panel, Ms Kiddle highlighted the positive impact of Veolias new female chief executive. Estelle Brachlianoff took over the role from Jean-Dominique Mallet last month (see letsrecycle.com story).

Ms Kiddle said: The one thing we will say is the last few years has been a positive influence on the way we feel about our roles and our jobs, especially with Veolia appointing a female chief executive.

Graduates

However, Lucy Morris, landfill gas operations manager at Viridor, said that while there had been some progress, the industry was still largely dominated by men.

She said: I have noticed a change in a lot of graduate female engineers but still not many female hands on the ground. We do get the attention, we do get the support and we do have a prove ourselves. We draw attention to ourselves so we have to be prepared for that but hopefully we can tip the balance and encourage more women to consider a career in the waste sector.

Jessica Steward, recycling and compliance executive at Veolia, agreed that it was important to recruit skilled female workers.

She said: We have got such a dynamic sector with the opportunity to make a real difference. I want to focus on getting top quality graduates across the board.

It was added that while more women are working in the waste industry in office-based roles, the number of women in operations is still low.

Councils

Speaking from a local authority viewpoint, Rachel Jowitt, waste and resources manager at Monmouthshire county council, said that of the 22 Welsh local authorities, four or five of them had female waste managers with others employing female chief executives and environmental directors.

She said: In terms of what we do see in local government there is a split in the types of roles women take. They tend to be best at education and development. However we are seeing an increase in females doing technical and engineering degrees.

However some in the audience raised issues that women had to work harder to get placements after taking a degree, even if they are as good as their male counterparts, due to the hassle of installing single-sex facilities.

Discussing other issues in the sector, the panel noted the challenge of gaining finance and planning permission for some projects and debated the merits of Europes influence over UK operations.

The panel was completed by: Amaya Arias-Garcia, energy manager at Tamar Energy; Siobhan Kennedy-Hall, general manager of waste and environmental facilities services at MITIE; and, Beth Ripper, consultant at Axion Consulting.