In May at the first Project Integra open day we did little more than raise the agenda that market development was an important issue for waste management. I think we have seen already from the presentation by David that potentially it is a complex matter and needs some innovative thinking before we can really embrace it fully in the UK. There is no doubt that this is going to be difficult. The theory and the concept are quite easy but I know from the tour that David took my Chairman, Councillor Alex Varden, and myself on in Seattle two years ago that there is a need for a substantial investment in technical support, facilitation support, logistic support, project development support and other areas of support to assist people to work together in new patterns or networks that they previously did not, before anything can really be achieved.

 Change Needed

 How then do we transfer such clear achievement to the UK and take into account European Law, the UK waste strategy and also allows local needs? A change of programme is required.

 Logistics

 In the UK there are over 450 local authorities that collect materials for recycling. This means that there are over 450 authorities that have got a market problem.

 As far as Project Integra is concerned, we have one organisation that operates on behalf of 14 authorities. Even if this pattern was replicated round the country, then there would still be a substantial number of networks with a market development problem. It is likely that none of these organisations, whether one of the 450 or one of the network, are actually big enough to have an impact on the whole supply and demand of market economics. The logistics of the exercise will make implementing change too slow.

 Run 'Resource Management' as a business

 So is there a way forward? The answer is certainly YES and part of the solution is that local authorities can play a substantial role but not the sole role.

 We are fortunate, too, that we have at the moment a modernising agenda in government. This is leading to more joined up working between functional areas for example, the issue of sustainability with regard to waste the consideration of consumption and supply of goods in fact, good business management that looks at all sources of resource use becomes the issue rather than waste management.

Public/private partnership and scale

But it is not just local government who have a main role. Industry too, organisations like Proctor and Gamble - a massive multi-national - take global decisions on markets but equally they are very committed to dealing with the issues of packaging, minimisation, recovery of packaging to meet various laws and compliance schemes throughout the world and also to sponsor best practice in recycling. This is something that they have been doing for many years in Europe and they have had a lot of contact with Project Integra for some time too. Nevertheless it has been difficult moving forward with them on this issue because there just simply isn't a critical mass of material in Hampshire to make the economies work.

 So what we need then is to find a means to ensure that there is an organisation that is responsible for facilitating substantial critical masses of different materials that will actually be required reprocessed and sold by industry.

 We are fortunate that industry whether large, small or medium needs the local authority interface more than ever and equally local authorities need industries to respond to the challenge of sustainable development.

 New Roles

Some of the issues that are to be discussed today include; local authorities will have concern about budgets. There is no doubt that the language of business is different from the language of government.

 New networks will need to develop and networks take some time to gain access to and for trust to be built up. Once the trust is built, however, there will be a need to share information. That information can be of a technical basis as well as cost, but, of course, at some stage there will be elements of confidentiality which will need to be borne in mind.

 There are a large number of small and medium sized businesses in the UK and these are notoriously difficult to access because of their need to spend time generating income from the business and with very little time to think strategically as we are today. However, these are likely to be key players in the delivery of a sustainable resource management system.

 Local authority plans, whether waste strategies or land use plans or structure plans, will need to be written in the light of new community planning procedures as well as taking into account the philosophies that we might develop in considering the resource management agenda. Of course, everybody complains about the slowness of decision making in local authorities. We do need to find the means to be able to work together so that decisions are taken expediently with, at the same time, due public transparency and with due public engagement.

Issues

 So the issues really come down to:

 1.. How do we consider a common vision that will be meaningful to all sectors?

 2.. What will be the process of facilitation to ensure that both sectors work together?

 3.. How will we share information?

 4.. How will joint business planning be taken forward?

 5.. If additional funding is identified to promote a project, how will the support funding be procured?

 6.. To make sure all this happens, there will be a need to engage people and make people aware both at home and at work. How will this awareness programme be conducted?

 Assuming that we can find a pathway through these questions, what is likely to achieved? Well the key aim of all this is to close the loop from recovery of materials to subsequent reprocessing within a sustainable framework. In that sense all sectors should find something in it for them.