The role of resource efficiency and the circular economy

Dr Colin Church

Chief Executive, The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining

Dr Colin Church FIMMM CEnv MCIWM is Chief Executive of IOM3 since 2018. He is also Chair of the Circular Economy Task Force, a business led group convened by Green Alliance that aims to lead policy discussions with ambitious business thinking. He is a Fellow of IOM3, a Chartered Environmentalist and a Chartered Resource and Waste Manager.

Previously, Colin was the CEO of CIWM, the UK professional body for resources and waste management. Before that, he spent 21 years in the UK Civil Service working in a range of areas including climate change, the theory and practice of regulation, and environmental protection including resource and waste management. He also held several environment-related non-executive roles.

Lord Deben

The Rt. Hon John Gummer, Lord Deben, set up and now runs Sancroft, a Corporate Responsibility consultancy working with blue-chip companies around the world on environmental, social and ethical issues.  Lord Deben is Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, Valpak Limited, and the Personal Investment Management & Financial Advisers Association. He was the longest serving Secretary of State for the Environment the UK has ever had (1993-97).  His sixteen years of top-level ministerial experience also include Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food, Minister for London, Employment Minister and Paymaster General in HM Treasury.  He has consistently championed an identity between environmental concerns and business sense. 

Keith James

Head of Policy and Insights, WRAP

As Head of Policy and Insights, Keith leads a team of experts across WRAPs areas of interest to support policy makers around the world with insights which inform the development and implementation of policy.  This includes informing national waste management and prevention strategies, and strategies to decarbonise the UK, including the role of resource management in delivering Net Zero.

: www.wrap.org.uk
: WRAP
: @WRAP_UK

Margaret Bates

Executive Director, OPRL Ltd | IOM3 Packaging Society

No bio provided

: www.oprl.org.uk
: margaret-bates-b98b374
: @Wastereader

Professor Julian Allwood FREng

Professor of Engineering and the Environment, University of Cambridge

Julian Allwood is Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge. He worked for 10 years for Alcoa on flat rolling, before academic positions at Imperial College and Cambridge. His research group develops new manufacturing technologies for metals and strategies to mitigate climate change. From 2009-13 he held an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship, to explore Material Efficiency as a climate mitigation strategy – delivering material services with less new material. This led to publication in 2012 of the book “Sustainable Materials: with both eyes open” - listed by Bill Gates as “one of the best six books I read in 2015.”

Julian was a Lead Author of the 5^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focussed on mitigating industrial emissions. He is an Honorary Fellow of IOM3, a Fellow of the International Academy of Production Engineering (CIRP) and served as chairman of its metal forming section, a member of the UK’s Energy Research Partnership and for ten years was joint editor-in-chief of the Journal of Materials Processing Technology. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2017.

From 2019-24 he is director of UK FIRES – a £5m industry and multi-university programme aiming to explore all aspects of Industrial Strategy compatible with delivering zero emissions by 2050. ‘Absolute Zero’, the first publication of UK FIRES attracted widespread attention including a full debate in the House of Lords in Feb 2020, and has led to a string of other reports, research and impact.

: www.ukfires.org
: @UKFIRES

Dr Sophie Parsons

LCA Specialist,

Dr Sophie Parsons is an LCA specialist, a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) with over 10 years’ experience in life cycle assessment and systems modelling specifically focused on new and emerging technologies. This includes research into the use of environmental and economic analysis to inform technology design and new product development. She has held roles in academic research, manufacturing, and consultancy, and worked on a number of EPSRC, Government, and EU projects to ensure their industrial relevance, scalability, and long-term sustainability.