Awards for Innovation in Waste & Resource Management : Waste & Recycling Industry Celebrated at CIWM Sustainability & Resource Awards

This year’s Chartered Institution of Wastes Management’s (CIWM) CIWM Sustainability & Resource Awards have showcased the latest waste prevention and recycling success stories in the UK.

From students to surgeons and coffee-drinking commuters to community groups, this year’s winners have engaged a wide range of audiences to encourage recycling and reuse.

The awards, presented today at a lunch event hosted by stand-up comedian, TV personality and comedy writer Jo Caulfield (pictured), showcased the very best in sustainable practices, technology innovation, behaviour change and professional achievement.

Healthcare featured large this year, with the Southwest Clinical Centre in Brasilia, containing medical and dental clinics, winning the award for Best Resource Project by Facilities Management, sponsored by Hubbub.

As part of a renovation project, which saw a new tensioned canvas roof structure installed, 7 tonnes of metal from the old roof were shipped for recycling and the cut outs from the canvas turned into reusable promotional bags for use by the companies in the building.

Axion in partnership with the British Plastics Federation, meanwhile, scooped the London Energy-sponsored award for Best Recycling Project for the RecoMed take-back scheme that allows clinical teams to recycle single-use PVC medical devices such as oxygen mask tubing and IV fluid bags.

Celebrating community-based efforts, the Project Innovation award went to Community Resources Network Scotland (CRNS) Reuse Consortium. Consisting of 17 furniture reuse organisations, the consortium was established to deliver quality, affordable furniture to people in need via a pioneering procurement process developed with Scotland Excel.

The Reuse Lot is part of Scotland Excel’s Domestic Furniture and Furnishings procurement framework and enables councils to purchase reused furniture. Manchester’s student community was the target audience for Greater Manchester’s ‘Give It, Don’t Bin It’ partnership, which won the Best Reuse & Waste Prevention Project award, and the ‘Pride in Pill’ volunteer community group took home the Community Champion award for their efforts to tackle litter and flytipping in the Pillgwenlly area of Newport Mon.

The Best Innovation in Vehicle, Plant & Equipment Award went to Vision Techniques this year for their DriveStop system, which ensures that only authorised personnel with an RFID tag can start a vehicle.

A modification to the original VT Ident, the system was developed in response to recent events where vehicles have been taken and used as weapons.

Engineering and construction company VolkerFitzpatrick took the award for Most Sustainable Construction & Demolition Project, sponsored by Ascential Events, for the Ely Southern Bypass. Through a number of measures, the project avoided 133,200 road miles and 50,253 tonnes of CO2e and saved the client £273,600.

A hot topic at the moment, a disposable coffee cup recycling campaign, scooped the Most Effective Communication Campaign award. The SquareMile Challenge is a campaign by Hubbub in partnership with the City of London Corporation and Simply Cups and by the end of July this year, 1.7 million cups had been recovered for recycling.

Surpassing best practice across the construction and energy sectors, London Energy were awarded GJF Fabrication’s Health & Safety Best Practice Award for their new safety culture. Initiatives included ‘START Safely’, a 12 month programme of facilitated workshops for staff on key issues.

Waste and recycling contractors had their moment of glory too, with WSR Recycling beating a crowded field to take the Catalyst Corporate Finance Waste and Resources Fast 50 Award, and O’Donovan Waste Disposal taking home the Roger Hewitt Learning & Development award, sponsored by WAMITAB, for their HGV safety training. The programme focused on health and safety measures related to vulnerable road users and safety equipment on the vehicles was also enhanced.

In a win for Wales, Dr Andy Rees, Head of Waste Strategy for the Welsh Government, received the Waste & Resources Leader of the Year award. Andy has been a driving force in developing and delivering the Towards Zero Waste strategy in Wales and is rightly proud of the progress in Wales on recycling and resource efficiency.

Celebrating Learning

A core part of CIWM’s role is to encourage and uphold professionalism and standards across the sector and this year’s awards also recognised learning, knowledge sharing and operational achievement.

The Roger Perry Award for Best Research Paper recognises research being carried out by CIWM Members at Master and PhD level and this year went to Purva Tavri for a paper entitled ‘What is Reuse?’.

Nearing completion of her doctoral research from Kingston University, she has gathered expertise in organisational and individual waste behaviour, pro-environmental behaviour change, and qualitative and quantitative research techniques.

The 2017 James Jackson Award for the best formal written paper was presented to Professor Ian William, Professor Simon Kemp and David Turner for their paper ‘Combined material flow analysis and life cycle assessment as a support tool for solid waste management decision making’.

Finally, not one but two facilities have won the coveted PEEL People’s Cup, which recognises team excellence in the operation of licensed or permitted waste facilities.

Public Power Solutions (PPS)’s Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) and Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) facility opened in 2014 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Swindon Borough Council.

The Waste Solutions part of the business operates the HWRC on behalf of the council and manages the UK’s first SRF plant to use residual municipal waste as its primary feedstock, diverting 75-80% of waste from landfill.

PPS takes the professional development, safety and welfare of the 60 employees in the Waste Solutions business very seriously, with plenty of opportunities for staff to feed back their views on improvements to the operation of the facility, and regular rewards for achievement.

The Suez owned and operated Rugby Solid Recovered Fuel Facility (Malpass Farm) opened in 2015 and has developed into an established facility that produces around 160,000 tonnes of SRF/year.

The team are focused on manufacturing products to a strict specification with quality at its centre, using performance tools including Lean Six Sigma, a methodology that relies on a collaborative team effort to improve performance by systematically removing waste and encouraging a lean manufacturing approach to eliminate defects, overproduction, waiting, non-utilised talent, transportation, inventory, motion, and extra-processing (abbreviated as ‘DOWNTIME’).

The site operates 364 days a year and has the capacity to process over 200,000 tonnes of waste per year.

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