Last Thursday Prince Charles as founder and patron of Business in the Community (BITC) convened the “Waste to Wealth Summit” at the Veolia Southwark facility for businesses to attend. Another speaker was Michael Gove and the event was even profiled on Radio 4 Today programme. The event was intended to persuade businesses to sign a Waste to Wealth Commitment which over 40 large businesses did on the day and seven businesses were announced as waste to wealth champions under three categories set out by DEFRA. These champions include two businesses on the theme of construction, four on the theme of food production and one on the theme of metal use. It is always encouraging when something that considered to be rubbish can be reconfigured into an item or activity that is worthwhile. This concept is certainly not but it does required extra thought and activities and due to the speed with which businesses tend to respond to opportunities, providing them with a catalyst for increasing their focus recycling is clearly very important. Outside of big businesses those of us who watch TV programmes may well be familiar with a Sussex resident called Sarah Moore who is based in Marden, North of Chichester. For several years her work in reclaiming goods from rubbish tips and selling the items as new products has demonstrated the waste to wealth concept and it is sad that she was not invited to the BITC event. Another local person with a similar amount of experience on the same theme is Brighton based Cat Fletcher who has been working in the voluntary and public sector for many years carrying out the same sort of work in some senses on a much bigger scale. Although Cat was probably not part of the BITC event either, thanks to Radio 4, her hard work and inspiration in using waste materials to build homes featured on the Today programme in the few hours before the W2W Summit was held. In that sense someone like Cat should have been included in the work of the two construction champions Jones Lang LaSalle who are builders or Interface which is a company that makes carpet tiles in a sustainable manner. On the food theme, it was significant that last week in Brighton FareShare Sussex held an event to celebrate the first fifteen years of their work. Although I was not present at the event last week I founded FareShare in Sussex in 2002 and so I feel I can relate to the W2W idea personally, I also know Cat having sat on several committees that she was part of and I have even met Sarah at one of her open days. Both of them are very inspirational and credible people on the subject of W2W.

Even the business I am part of works hard to promote the idea of reducing waste so for example we focus our activities on Sussex, Surrey and Kent which makes great sense to all of our workers who prefer not to spend hours travelling and staying overnight in locations further away. This approach reduces our environmental footprint. The irony is that we face challenges as we attempt to take part in various Government based procurement schemes that all demand that Companies cover a much bigger area for no meaningful reason. It was just as ironic that at the end of the programme on Radio 4 that they argued that offering zero rated VAT to building schemes which extend the life of existing buildings which would match the VAT zero rate available on sites where a building has been demolished and a new building is being constructed in its place. Even though Michael Gove was due that same day to speak alongside Prince Charles about the importance of using recycled materials in the construction of new buildings and one of the W2W agreements is to “Work collectively towards doubling the nation’s resource productivity and reduce avoidable waste by 2030, contributing in the way that is most relevant to business” the response from his Government to the Today programme’s VAT proposal was to refuse to provide a spokesperson and refuse to even make a comment!

Perhaps one element of the historic connection between Michael Gove and Prince Charles that shows how committed they both are to putting the past ‘’waste’ behind them and renewing their approach with a commitment to working together was that they have overlooked a Channel 4 programme in 1992 in which Michael Gove, a 25 year old journalist at the time criticised Prince Charles for taking his environmentalist ideas from Adolf Hitler, who like Prince Charles had German roots!