About us
Ray Georgeson is an independent professional operating in the resource efficiency sector. He has thirty years experience of the waste and resources management sector variously as a volunteer, campaigner, educator, policymaker, programme manager, chief executive and consultant.
Ray has recently been appointed as (part time) Chief Executive of the Resource Association, the new trade body for the reprocessing and recycling industries. He manages this alongside a portfolio of non-executive roles and consultancy through his own business Ray Georgeson Resources Ltd.
He was Director of Policy and Evaluation for WRAP from 2001-2008. At WRAP he produced four business plans that have directed over £200m of public spending on recycling market development, local authority recycling, public communications and waste minimisation programmes. This contributed to a fourfold increase in household recycling since 2001, elimination of increases in retail packaging and two thirds of English households regarded as committed recyclers.
Previously, he was Chief Executive of environmental charity Waste Watch from 1996 and held a number of other project management posts in the third sector.
From 2008-2010 Ray acted as a retained advisor to RPS Group on the recycling market development programme for the Republic of Ireland (rx3) and now advises on an ad hoc basis.
Ray has previously acted as an adviser to Defra (on the development of Waste Strategy 2000 and other policy developments), and the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in the Cabinet Office (on the Waste not: want not review of waste policy).
He has a non-executive portfolio in the resources and waste sector: Belfast based social enterprise Bryson Recycling, waste and resources management company LondonWaste Ltd, third sector representative body REalliance CIC and anaerobic digestion developers Oaktech Environmental.
He has worked with many stakeholders in the waste and recycling sectors, He is a regular chair and speaker at industry events and a media commentator, including a regular column for Resource magazine.
Ray was educated at the University of Lancaster, Cranfield University School of Management and the College of Europe in Bruges. He is a Chartered Waste Manager, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was appointed MBE for services to sustainable waste management in the Millennium Year Honours List.
After graduating from Leeds University with a degree in history Carole spent more than 20 years in a large Catholic High School in Yorkshire. During her teaching career she was promoted to Head of Department, Head of Sixth Form and Head of Administration responsible for Examinations.
In 2002 Carole joined Directorbank Executive Search, a company which recruits Chairmen, Chief Executives and Non Executive Directors for the Private Equity markets. She set up Directorbank's administrative procedures, was responsible for the integrity of the database and was appointed as HR & Finance Manager. In her last 18 months at Directorbank she managed candidate services.
In May 2011 Carole set up her own administrative services business – Capra Admin Services.
Outside of work Carole sings with Inspiration UK, the biggest unauditioned choir in the country, enjoys ballroom and Latin American dance, and is a member of a wine club. She enjoys international travel and is looking forward to spending three weeks in China in May.
Andy has worked in the field of waste management for the last nineteen years originally with Alcan Aluminium Can Recycling, then in local and central government. Andy joined DEFRA following 11 years in local government in London and Surrey.
Andy is the former Policy Officer and Chair of the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC) on whose national Executive Committee he served for 5 years.
Since 2006, Andy has been National Manager for Novelis UK Ltd. He is also a Member of the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management and an associate member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment.
In 2006 Andy joined the Board of Resource Media (a social enterprise specialising in publishing in the area of sustainability) and became Chair in 2008. He is also the current Chair of the Waste Action Forum.
Director of Recycling, Bryson Recycling
• Awarded MBE in 2006 for “Services to Waste Management”
• Board Member of the NI Waste Management Advisory Board for three years
• 20 years experience in recycling
• Degree in Environmental Sciences, Bradford University
• Masters in Business Administration, University of Ulster, Jordanstown
Eric started his career with Bradford Waste Chasers from 1989 – 1992, and since then with Bryson Recycling.
Through his career Eric had become very knowledgeable about doorstep and MRF recycling activities and has helped the company gain ISO 9001, 14001 and OHSAS 18001 standards and Investors in People.
The company now employs 240 members of staff at three depots and processes dry recyclables collected from 60% of households in Northern Ireland through a combination of MRF and kerbside sort activities, as well as a reuse operation for electrical goods.
Jonathan is the founder and MD of Europe’s largest post-consumer plastic processing business ECO Plastics Ltd. Founded in 2000 as Alternative Waste Solutions Ltd the business initially provided baling equipment to the packaging industry allowing them to improve their in-house recycling performance; this developed into a trading business providing recyclable paper and plastic to both the domestic and export markets. Identifying the greater opportunity within the plastic recovery sector the business set up an office in Hong Kong during 2004 and moved away from the paper sector.
One of the main grades of plastic exported was ‘mixed plastic bottles’ and in 2005 we identified an opportunity to reprocess this material within the UK – our first plant was built during 2006 and expanded in 2008 quadrupling sort capacity to 100,000 tonnes/annum and introducing hot-wash and food grade PET extrusion equipment. During 2010 Coca Cola Enterprises made contact with us, which culminated in the signing of a joint venture between the two businesses, aligned to a ten year supply agreement, to more than double the amount of food grade rPET manufactured in the UK. This required a further expansion and following a £20 million fundraise and re-banking our plant was expanded towards the end of 2011 and early 2012 adding 50% to sort capacity and increasing hot-wash and extrusion capability. The business has now been re-named (ECO Plastics) and re-branded to more accurately reflect our main activity, with the joint venture being re-named Continuum Recycling.
Nick Brown is Associate Director for Recycling at Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE). The role was created as part of CCE’s investment in CSR, with the ultimate objective of meeting the company’s commitments to set the standard for sustainable packaging and transform recycling in GB.
Nick is building new ways to change consumer recycling behaviour, championing best practice collection systems and supporting recycling industries in GB through a series of partnerships that will ensure CCE is a leader in this field.
Nick is a member of the Advisory Committee of Packaging Plastics Taskforce and is a member of the Steering Group for the ALUPRO Metal Matters consumer campaign. Nick also lead the development of the Joint Venture agreement between CCE and ECO Plastics to more than double the amount of food grade rPET material produced in GB. As CCE are users of all the major packaging materials Nick is keen to see material reprocessors work together to overcome shared issues and was therefore delighted to make CCE a founding funding partner of the Resource Association.
Nick’s background is in Operations Strategy and New Product Development, having previously worked in several roles driving change and innovation through the organisation.
Simon has been Managing Director of Smurfit Kappa Recycling, the recovery and raw material supply arm of Europe’s largest manufacturer of fibre based packaging and board for the past 7 years and has held other senior roles within the paper making industry for nearly 20 years. He was a director and Chairman of the PaperChain lobby group and been a member of numerous industry groups, working both with government agencies and the Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI).
A leading advocate for material quality, Simon believes that as the UK moves towards a resource based economy the reprocessors of secondary materials need a lobby group to promote the interests of the domestic economy, a low carbon society and the environment. He has been an active member of the steering committee of the Resource Association since its inception.
Having worked for UPM for 10 years, Craig Robinson is a Sourcing Director for UPM Shotton and represents the purchase of 720,000 tonnes of recovered paper and 270,000 tonnes of co-mingled material for the largest manufacturer of newsprint in the UK with a European total consumption of recovered paper of 4 million tonnes. Also responsible for all sales of recyclable materials from within Europe for domestic and export markets, Craig represents UPM on the Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) Council and the INGEDE quality working group. Craig sat on the Steering Group for WRAP’s project to introduce quality standards that latterly has evolved into the ESA MRF Code of Practice document.
Paul Vanston manages the Kent Waste Partnership, which looks after the interests of all 13 Kent councils. The KWP's numbers are large: 1.5 million residents producing over 700,000 tonnes of discarded materials and costing around £100 million annually. Paul's agenda is to maximise value for money for the taxpayer including a major focus on financial, economic and environmental performance.
His career history over the last 25 years includes three years in banking, five years in central government, six years working for district councils, one year on secondment to the Local Government Association, four years with a London Borough, and the most recent six years with a county council and the KWP. The last decade has been spent in 'waste' roles focused on collection, disposal, strategy, communications, and partnerships - including cross-sector working.
Paul is a member of the ACP Plastics and Market Development Taskforces; Defra's Controlled Waste Regulations Group; Wrap's National Communications Advisory Group; and NAWDO's Policy & Advisory Group. Other recent appointments included Defra's Expert Panels on Waste Prevention, Food Reduction, and Behavioural Change.
Ian has been Finance and Recycling Director of Aylesford Newsprint for 16 years. The Company recycles 500,000 tonnes/year of newspapers and magazines, and over this period the quality of the incoming material has been of ever-increasing importance.
Keen to promote recycling, Ian was an active member of the Board of London Remade for five years, as well as being on the Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI) Recovered Paper Sector Council.
Ian believes that it is important that the whole recycling chain of supply works in a co-ordinated way to achieve maximum value for the materials in a sustainable way, and does this in a way which promotes high real recovery rates.
