In September, senior consultant Charlotte Davies was announced as the first Early Careers President for the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM). We spoke to Charlotte about her role as a senior consultant at Beyondly, plans for her presidency, and the future of waste.

As a Geography graduate from the University of Leeds, Charlotte already had a strong interest in the environment when she joined environmental consultancy and compliance scheme Beyondly. But waste wasn’t the direction she thought her career would take. 

However, after a few months as a Packaging Account Manager, Charlotte realised that it was something she found fascinating: “Anytime I had a spare moment, I was Googling polymer types or recycling.”

As Beyondly expanded its consultancy services, Charlotte moved into a consultancy role, then earlier this year became a senior consultant for resource efficiency and circularity. Her day-to-day can be anything; from working on project delivery of life cycle impact assessments and consulting on packaging optimisation and preparation for EPR, to speaking on a webinar and assisting with organising an event on resource efficiency. To exemplify this variety, Charlotte mentioned a partnership Beyondly has with the British Toy and Hobby Association, which has made her “a bit of a weird niche geek on toys” and their life circularity.

I’m not your traditional waster, as I was learning yesterday at the [CIWM] trustee meeting,” Charlotte said. “I haven't come from a material recycling facility or a waste management company. But since CIWM acquired the Circular Economy Institute, it’s clear that waste and resources are the glue that holds the circular economy together.”

Despite not being your “typical waster”, it was announced in September that Charlotte would be the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management’s (CIWM) first Early Careers President. Alongside several other Early Careers Ambassadors, Charlotte will represent the voice of professionals at the start of their careers, from across the sector. She joked that applying for the presidency made her finally get around to signing up for a CIWM membership, which she described as the “leading waste body within our sector”. 

As president, Charlotte will attend CIWM board meetings, acting as the mouthpiece for the Early Careers ambassadors. “It's been a part of their EDI strategy to bring in some new voices and diversity to these sorts of board meetings,” she explained. 

She also stressed that the Early Careers team isn’t just for “young people” but anyone new to the sector. Charlotte used a colleague of hers as an example, as they had recently transitioned from the water sector to waste. 

“[Those starting their career] ask the questions that perhaps aren't questions for the other people sat in the room,” Charlotte explained, referring to the importance of including those early career individuals. “You get that innovative mindset – thinking outside-the-box might come a bit more naturally just because you don't know what's going on.”

Diversifying the sector in general, not just by including professionals at the start of their waste careers, is important to Charlotte.

Making sure that our resource and waste sector is open to everybody, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background [is important]. Because at the end of the day, everybody is getting serviced by the waste industry. So we want to represent everybody we're servicing.”

The team all hope to not just be a fresh voice in these board meetings, but also gain skills and progress their careers in the waste and resources sector too, to make way for the next generation of leaders, working towards a more circular and sustainable future. Something that, in her new role as president, Charlotte is eager to encourage.

“Through my university progression, I didn't know anything about waste and resources,” she said. “I was very interested in the environmental side of things, but it never occurred to me that waste and resources could be part of that. I just always thought energy and renewables were the way forward.”

It's unlikely that Charlotte was the only university student who was interested in sustainability but never viewed waste and resources as part of that. Charlotte noted a statistic from the Ellen Macarthur Foundation that said 45% of emissions are associated with the carbon embedded in the products and goods we use every day.

So, there's no way we're going to meet net zero by 2050 if we only focus on the other 55%, which is energy”

Because of this, the industry is going to need a lot of people in the industry to support and fill the green skills gap. Charlotte went through some of the ways that the Early Careers group hopes to raise awareness, encouraging more people into the industry, from CIWM joining TikTok and Instagram, to visiting more universities. Their goal is to show prospective “wasters” that waste is an interesting and exciting sector to get into.

“My housemates, my friends, my family, all want to know about waste,” she explained. “Everyone puts something in their bin but often you just think of the bin collection lorry. You might not think about what's going on behind that, the data science that goes into it and the technology and the people management.”

Hopefully, by raising awareness of how important it is, we can get more people into the industry and, on top of that, encourage more members to become part of CIWM.”

Often in our spotlight series, we ask our interviewee how the waste industry has changed over the years. But Charlotte is only just getting started, so instead we looked towards the future. 

As a “waster” working in resource efficiency and circularity, it’s no surprise that Charlotte hopes to see more succinct waste and resource sectors, working on creating a fully circular economy. “I hope we start looking beyond just waste and start incorporating all those different circularity principles within it.”

But there is one crucial part to making all this happen, and it comes down to legislation. “As climate change is becoming more and more crucial to combat, I think [waste and resources] will naturally just become more important,” she said. “But we really need the government to lead the way on that in terms of legislation and encouraging green skills, as there is only so much businesses and non-governmental organisations can do.”

CIWM’s introduction of an Early Careers team comes at a vital time for the sector, showing they are serious about enhancing green skills and attracting the next generation of “wasters” into the world. But to achieve a successful circular economy, and make sure every resource is used as efficiently as it can be, the sector needs people like Charlotte Davies in it. Brimming with new ideas and passionate about creating that circular world, it seems Charlotte is only just getting started.

By Izzy Felton