| Teaser Text | Having looked back on the journal’s 100-year history, CIWM deputy editor, Gemma Howard, felt it only right to redress the balance by asking some contributors to look forward. So what does the future hold?
Having delved into the journal’s past as part of our centenary celebrations, I wanted to turn my attention to the future. What can we expect for the future of waste and resource management, and what will the future waste manager look like? From what I have read of the past 100 years the opinions and desires of our predecessors haven’t changed all that much from what our peers think – and want – today.
There are already products and services that point the way to the future, in my opinion, as was demonstrated at Futuresource, for example. Imagine fewer collection vehicles on the road, and fully functioning underground waste collection systems, with separation occurring at the point of disposal. Is this the future or the present? Perhaps things could go even further, and we could transport all waste underground, straight to central depots where all materials streams could be re-used, or at least recycled, with the same system applied nationally… no longer a postcode lottery of waste collection systems! Could this be applied to high-rise buildings? And could it provide a solution to the storage of waste between collections? Okay, now that sounds more like the future than the present… but by how much?
And if we’re talking “future”, let’s really let our imaginations run wild. I see robot litter-pickers patrolling the streets, identifying and removing debris and detritus, while simultaneously recording data for the Clean Britain Awards, for example. The jobs lost to the “future workforce” could be redeployed elsewhere, in research and development roles, education and the development of newer, and better, technologies; in linking the waste, resources, climate change and all the other associated agendas into one driven, focused and passionate workforce. |
