Name: Jane Stephenson Occupation: Chief Executive of Resource Futures Summary: Jane Stephenson discusses the work of Resource Saver, an initiative of Friends of the Earth devoted to recycling in Bristol through curb side collections. It originally started in the late seventies when Alistair Sawday took over the old city council newspapers collections, and resource saver developed this by using other materials including textiles, cans and glass. It was one of the first curb side collections of recyclables in the whole of the UK that campaigned nationally for more attention to be given to recycling, and that led in the Environmental Protections Act to a requirement for local authorities to produce recycling plans. In the early nineties, resource saver then managed to get funding from the Bristol City Council to carry on these activities. Jane discusses the role that resource saver played in Bristol’s environmental movement; it played a key role in getting the Bristol council to understand the importance of curb side collections by gathering support from the Clarfields waste paper company, run by Nick Francis, and Harris and Co who took in textiles. The director of public health and services at the time, Robert Langbourn, was also instrumental in making sure that their services were maintained and written into future waste contracts, and Jane also acknowledges the work of local council leader Diane Bunyan. She discusses the recycling consortium and the beginning of Create; the consortium was born out of recognition that there were a number of community led initiatives, such as resource saver, Friends of the Earth, Children’s Scrap Store and the Sofa Project that needed premises, and it was decided that by setting up a consortium, there would be better leverage with the council and other funders in terms of finding a suitable premises. The only available site turned out to be the Create centre, an old bonded warehouse in Hotwells, which was highly unsuitable. By working with the council and the Bristol Energy Centre, they were able to develop the Create centre into a centre of environmental excellence, and also managed to secure council premises for each of the aforementioned projects. Jane was also involved in setting up a project called waste Reduction in the Community, which then became Community Waste Action, working with five communities in the old Avon area, ranging from a small village such as Hawksbury Upton to Westbury Park and Patchway. In each of those areas they facilitated community action groups that allowed those who felt passionate about waste to get involved and do something about it. Jane discusses working with schools, such as the Florence Brown School, with the Hartcliff Environmental Action Group, with education projects and other promotion projects, such as the Rubbish Revolution campaign. Resource Saver also contributed toward improving facilities at what used to be called the tip but are now called household waste and recycling centres, along with improving recycling at public events and festivals. In regards to Bristol being a sustainable city, Jane admits that Bristol has a long way to go, particularly in the public transport sector. She believes that it will require substantial leadership and imagination, to make sure that effort is focused and that groups work together. She hopes that in the future, Bristol will continue developing its waste and recycling initiatives, that it will move much more to looking at waste prevention and to giving good advice to local businesses, and that it will continue to have a thriving community and voluntary sector. Q: How did you get involved in Bristol’s environmental movement? A: I first got involved in Bristol’s environmental movement in 1983 when my husband and I, Andy Cunningham, moved to Bristol, having spent a couple of years travelling, and we arrived in Bristol at the time when Friends of the Earth were setting up a lot of environmental projects, particularly around waste and recycling, and at that time there was a lot of unemployment, youth unemployment in particular, and there were a number of government programs allowing young people to get work experience and grants available for voluntary organisations to set up new initiatives, and Friends of the Earth got involved in that and we became part of that, both worked for that organisation. Q: Could you tell me a little bit about Resource Saver? A: Yes indeed, Resource Saver is one of Friends of the Earths initiatives and it was completely devoted to developing recycling in Bristol through curb side collections, it had originally started in the late seventies when Alistair Sawday took over the old Bristol city council newspaper collections as it were in those times, again using initially volunteers and then young employment programs, and resource saver for over a ten year period developed that, what was firstly a newspaper collection using other materials including textiles, cans, glass and so on and ran that independently for many local government support through until the late eighties. And at that time it was employing lots of people on temporary contracts giving them work experience and developing that type of system. It was one of the first curb side collections of recyclables in the whole of the UK and so not only were Friends of the Earth involved in running the practical scheme but we also got heavily involved in campaigning nationally for more attention to be given to recycling and that led in the environmental protections act to a requirement for local authorities to produce recycling plans and then that started a whole movement where local authorities started to take more interest, so in the late eighties early nineties resource saver then became, managed to get some funding through the Bristol city council to carry on these activities and was an exemplar for other initiatives across the whole of the UK. Q: What role did Resource Saver play in Bristol’s environmental movement? A: Well I think a very important role at that time there were a number of other environmental initiatives, again through these youth unemployment programs on energy and loft insulation and so on and the cycle bath building arrangements and so on but resource saver was very instrumental in getting the Bristol city council to accept that supporting the curb side collection was an important part of its program of improving its waste management facilities and we resource saver campaigned hard with both Avon county council at the time and with Bristol city council to get them to embrace the work that we had been doing and over time that became part of the waste collection contract so there was a huge amount of effort if you like put into getting the council to take on board the work that we had been doing. I think it’s also important to recognise that we were very fortunate in Bristol because one of the things that had limited recycling development sometimes in other parts of the country was having secure markets for the materials that were collected and we were very fortunate in Bristol both in having Clarfields waste paper which was run by Nick Francis who would accept our paper and gave us a good price for our paper which meant that it was financially viable, but also Harris and Co who took in textiles as well so we had two local businesses where we had an outlet for the materials that we collected that was relatively secure I mean the prices always fluctuate because the market conditions always change but we knew these people really well and that made it a much stronger proposition really and we were also fortunate that we had within the council at the time when we were wanting the support, the director of public health and services at the time Robert Langbourn was very instrumental in helping us to make sure that the services were able to be maintained and were written in to the future waste contracts and councillor Diane Bunyan who was leader of the council at that time as well was very important so it was a number of different factors that I think led to the work being made more secure but it was a lot of hard work by a number of us who worked a lot of the time voluntarily, campaigning for this work to continue. Q: How did resource saver and the Bristol city council work together to improve Bristol’s recycling? A: Well initially of course, resource saver was completely independent from the council, and then over time, as I’ve already mentioned, we spent time developing good relationships with officers and councillors and persuading them of the value of the service and particularly the value of the service to residents because they, it was a very popular service, the recycling service, and it would have been a very retrograde step if that had had to stop, so when the funding from the youth unemployment programs finished we did manage to secure funding from the council and also persuaded the council that they should incorporate recycling within the waste collection contract. Initially we had been hoping that that would be set as a separate recycling contract but that we weren’t successful in that so it was incorporated into the one waste collection contract and resource saver continued to operate that service as a sub contract from Seater until relatively recently. Q: Could you tell me a little about the recycling consortium and the beginning of Create? A: Yes indeed, the recycling consortium was born really out of a recognition that there were a number of community led initiatives, resource saver and Friends of the Earth being two, but also Children’s scrap store who collects materials from industry and passes them onto playgroups and school for play purposes, and the sofa project which collects unwanted furniture and re-distributes that to people on low incomes. We had all been very active in the waste and environmental field for, you know, a number of years from the early eighties and it was recognised that there was some value in working together and particularly at this time when a lot of government grants were coming to an end and also the premises that we had all had a part in shaping was going to be knocked down to build what is now the spine road between the A4 and the M32, so there was a desperate need for premises for each of these projects and we decided that by setting up a consortium that we would have much better leverage with both the council and other funders potentially in terms of attracting some money to find a premises suitable. We spent quite a lot of time developing ideas with the council and the only available vacant council premises turned out to be the create centre which is an old bonded warehouse in Hotwells. Now that was never going to be suitable in actual fact for an operational centre because it doesn’t have a lot of outside space in terms of having facilities for the receipt of lots of materials from the recycling streams so what we did do was work with the council and others, the Bristol environment, sorry, the Bristol energy centre in particular in helping develop the Create centre as a centre of environmental excellence, but we also managed to secure council premises for each of the practical projects so for scrap stores, sofa and resource saver, they all secured council owned premises which was very important at that particular time of their development where they were embryonic social enterprises and having that security of tenure of the premises they were occupying made a big difference to their development. Q: Could you tell me a little about resource features and how that’s grown from… A: Yes indeed, well the recycling consortium, just to give a little bit of history to what work that then did, um obviously in the initial stages a lot of work was around securing a premises for its members but then we also recognised that each of those member groups had really started from a couple of often very small teams of local activists who had wanted to make a difference and had set up the projects, but over time they had all grown and become quite substantial enterprises in their own right and there was a danger that they would lose touch with that sort of grass roots, new ideas so we felt that there was some value in going back to local community groups and asking them in order to effect change within waste and recycling and waste reduction in particular, what sort of things would they like to see in their areas, so we set up a project which had national funding and support called Waste Reduction in the Community which then became Community Waste Action and we worked with five communities in the old Avon area ranging from a tiny village like Hawksbury Upton to Eastern Hartcliff, Westbury Park and Patchway which is on the borders of Bristol and South Gloucestershire. And each of those areas we facilitated community action groups so we found out the people who felt passionate about waste, we got them together and we helped them to develop their own ideas in their own communities, so Patchway and Hawksbury Upton set up community composting schemes which are still operational to this day although now they are run by South Gloucestershire council, in Eastern we worked very closely with the eastern community centre and made sure that a lot of waste materials were used in some of their local festivals so making things out of junk, you know, costumes props and that type of thing and we also in each of the areas produced a little waste reduction guide so things for house holders to, for them to have a better idea about what facilities were available locally, not just for recycling but also tips for waste reduction too, we also worked closely with schools in those areas and Florence Brown School, for example, we set up a community composting scheme there, and in Hartcliff, we worked very closely with the Hartcliff environmental action group, so it was very much about empowering local people and I’m a strong believer that new ideas and new initiatives are going to come very often at a grass roots level, not just from peoples whose jobs it is to come up with new ideas, people in councils or organisations like myself are the resource future, so it’s very much local people have good idea who need to be promoted and supported and we therefore have this network that in the latter days of about thirteen groups. Sadly the funding for that work didn’t continue but we still run a network of action groups in Oxfordshire where we have twenty six very active local groups that have now broadened out to working much more broadly in sustainability so not just waste and recycling. Off the back of that projects we developed education projects, and we also did a lot of promotion work, we ran a campaign in Bristol called the rubbish revolution which coincided with the introduction of the black box system that everybody is familiar with now and all of that was possible because there was a fund around at the time called the land fill tax credit fund that came to an end in the early, well late 90’s, early 2000, and since then we’ve had to completely commercialise our whole operation, um and recognising that at the recycling consortium, we realised that on our own we probably couldn’t survive in a more commercial environment, so there were a number of other non-profit distributing organisations who had very similar aims to ourselves, very complementary streams of work and we decided to merge with two other organisations; network recycling which had grown up in Bristol and was, had a national reputation for improving facilities at what people used to call the tip but are now called household waste and recycling centres, and also recycling at public events and festivals, so they were one of our partners, and the other partner was based at Leeds called save waste and prosper and they had been very (end of Video 402.2) proactive and working with government and others on developing national communication campaigns which most of you will be aware of as recycle now but originally there was a campaign called re-think rubbish which swap and another energy waste watch set up. So we A) recognised that we needed to be much more, have a much higher presence UK wide and this alliance helped us to do that, but also that we had to be more commercial in our operations, so as we speak now we don’t have, we hardly get any grant money we still get some small amounts of grants for our work with schools but all the rest of our work are commercially run contracts and that will be with both local authorities, national governments and also increasingly with waste management companies themselves so we will support companies in rolling out new waste collections systems or doing composition analysis at their various processing sites because obviously clearly the re-processing technology is very dependent on the type of mix of waste that comes in at the front so having regular testing of that is quite important. Q: Do you think that Bristol is on its way to becoming a sustainable city? A: In truth its still got a long way to go but then you know any city in the developed world is, has got this problem, there are some particular challenges around transport and transport links, and I think some of the problems particularly related to transport its quite difficult for Bristol to tackle on its own it needs to work and is indeed working with the neighbouring authorities and I think you know it is going to be very challenging in the light of the public expenditure cuts that we have at the moment and I’m very anxious about the impact that those cuts will have on the voluntary and community sector which as I’ve said before I think are the seedbed for a lot of new ideas, I mean Bristol is fortunate that it has a number of local entrepreneurs who are very sustainably minded and have over a number of years supported initiatives in the city but there is still a long way to go and a long way to go I think in really galvanising the whole of the private sector behind this need to look at business of being more sustainable and we’ve got I suppose we have a legacy of some fairly unsustainable businesses in Bristol if you start with the tobacco industry and then obviously the aero space industry and the defence industry and you know none of those have great sustainable credentials so you know it’s quite, it’s, to shift that thinking and to shift the whole way the whole local economy works is a big task but having said that there are lots of green shoots if you like, if you look at what’s happening south of the river at the tobacco factory and you know, in Stoke’s Croft there are a number of things that are moving in the right direction but it will require substantial leadership and imagination as to how to co-ordinate all the various initiatives and activities to make sure that effort is focused and doesn’t become very fragmented and initiatives working against one another and that’s always going to be a challenge where you’ve got lots of different people doing lots of different things. Q: What do you hope for the future of Bristol? A: I would hope that it will continue, you know, developing its, obviously its waste and recycling initiatives, I would like to see that moving much more to looking at waste prevention and to giving good, sound advice to local businesses, I think one of the, and this is not a failing of Bristol, this is a national failing that all our emphasis on waste has been on the municipal sector, and there is a lot of commercial waste produced in the UK, it represents more than 75% of the total waste arising so clearly more work needs to be done on that. Provide you know getting the right sort of energy supplies for the city is going to be challenging and you know we keep coming back to transport, it hasn’t, the public transport system in Bristol is not great, the council have had a number of attempts at improving that but have not come to fruition, so I would hope that you know the transport will rise the sort of priorities, and I would hope that the city will be able to continue to have a thriving voluntary and community sector who will continue to have an influence on policy and direction at you know local government level, but it is challenging, I would like to think that Bristol will continue to you know be at the forefront, but you know there are quite a few restrictions really in terms of the way the whole public financing of council work runs in the UK, you know, councils have quite little, not that much autonomy really, not much freedom to do what they will with the money that they’re given and we’re obviously faced with a lot of cuts at the moment and there are, it is going to be very challenging, you know trying to balance the sustainability initiatives against social services and education and other council services which clearly also need to have a priority.