Circular Economy? Show us the money: PRESENTATION ONLY
David Tompkins, WSP, UK
(Free)
HEADLINES
• Circular Economy has become synonymous with resource recovery and is being devalued as a concept due to failures in UK waste policy
• The Water sector should be driving the transition from linear to circular, but we have no sense of destination and no understanding what this means in financial terms
• Defra’s creation of a CE Taskforce for England seeks to address some prior shortcomings (but makes no mention of water)
• HM Government’s focus is on growth. Trust is in short supply and we can’t make undeliverable promises to HMG, Ofwat, the EA – or customers
• Recovery of non-renewable resources should be prioritised. Have we already maximised this opportunity with P in biosolids?
• We need to constantly challenge ourselves to ask why resource recovery isn’t BAU and we need a more transparent, collaborative approach to knowledge exchange
• In a CWE world, the water itself may be the most precious commodity