In the very first issue of Resource, back in April 2000, Jane Stephenson – then director of the Recycling Consortium (TRC) and chair of Waste Watch – was described as ‘a shaping force within UK sustainable waste management’. And indeed, Stephenson’s involvement in the sector goes back even farther, to the ‘80s when she was lightyears ahead of most in terms of her grip on resource efficiency: “In order to be effective, you need to take a very holistic view of the waste hierarchy, and that’s always been my view from day one. You can point back to the mid-‘80s when I did speeches about how there was no point in recycling just for the sake of it, and sending individual drinks cans to Blue Peter for some fundraising campaign wasn’t really very resource efficient.”

Stephenson’s progressive attitudes to waste were, in part, formed by time spent travelling in South America in the early ‘80s; she notes that “in those days poorer countries didn’t waste anything” and that consequently she and her husband, Andy Cunningham (who works as an independent waste consultant), “both came back with a bit of an obsession about the wastefulness of our society”. The obsession caused Stephenson to get involved with the emerging community waste sector: on her return, she joined Friends of the Earth in Bristol – then launching some of the first kerbside collections – and eventually helped set up Waste Watch in conjunction with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and directed TRC, an advisory organisation representing community recycling groups in the Bristol area.

As she was so involved with the community waste sector from the start, Stephenson’s career closely mirrors the evolution of the sector itself. Starting off as innovators in kerbside collections, many third-sector groups have found they’ve had to adapt and become more businesslike to survive; likewise, Stephenson is now at the helm of the consultancy Resource Futures, a social enterprise that runs in the same circles – working and competing with – commercial organisations. On the evolution of the sector, Stephenson notes: “The NGO sector is very good at developing new initiatives, being at the cutting edge and starting things off, but if and when that work becomes mainstream, then it becomes a slightly different kettle of fish. Your ability to be innovative is more limited if you become involved in delivering the day-to-day service... There are very few third-sector organisations now doing kerbside collections... and although it has been quite sad to see that change, it’s quite a natural progression.” As waste management has developed in the UK, third-sector waste organisations have either joined the mainstream, as with Resource Futures, or had to focus on niche markets, like bulky waste and other types of reuse, where they continue to develop new ideas.

All this is not to say that the evolution has stopped at Resource Futures itself, which was set up in 2006 through the merger of three non-profit distributing companies – Stephenson’s TRC, Network Recycling, and Save Waste and Prosper (SWAP) – because they’d found themselves in constant collaboration or competition in the increasingly competitive waste environment. At the start, Resource Futures focused on working on the ground, providing services to local authorities like communications work, community engagement and education projects, as well as data gathering on things like compositional analysis. But, as ever, things seem to be changing. Earlier this year, it emerged that the company would be cutting staff and closing its Leeds office in response to tough market conditions and decreased public expenditure; at the same time, it divested itself of its subsidiary Network Recycling, which largely conducts recycling at music events, and which is now owned and run by its former employees. Stephenson explains Resource Futures’ shifting focus: “We have in this last year, looked more at consolidating and refocusing our work on particular markets, rather than having a team structure that has our technical people in one team and our communications team in another and our operations staff in another. We’ve decided that there are four main focuses to our work at the moment: research; service reviews to local authorities; direct delivery work to local authorities; and support work to the waste industry.”

It seems likely the decrease in public spending brought about this shifting focus to the commercial waste industry; Stephenson explains what the new line of work involves: “We have supported the rollout of new services for collection contractors, and done materials acceptance testing at new facilities for disposal contractors and some market assessments for companies looking to invest in new treatment facilities. Of our turnover so far this year, nearly 50 per cent has come from the private sector, which is quite a dramatic change.”

As for Stephenson herself, the thing that still gets her the most fired up hasn’t changed in all her years in the industry: the top of the hierarchy, waste minimisation. It’s something she feels is still to have its day. In addition to varied influences like the recession, lightweighting and other drivers decreasing the amount of waste produced, waste minimisation plans are finally moving onto the radar. Stephenson compares the situation with waste minimisation now to the situation with recycling 20 years ago: “I remember the early ’90s when recycling plans first surfaced, and though every authority had to produce a plan, they didn’t actually have to do any recycling... Now, I appreciate that for waste minimisation it’s more problematic because you’re trying to measure things that aren’t actually there, but I think the very fact that people are starting to think about producing plans means there will be a shift in the way the whole subject is perceived. And I think there is genuine interest out there in all parts of the industry because it has the most potential to impact on costs.”

So, does that mean Jane Stephenson is in the ‘zero waste’ camp? Well, not exactly – as ever, she’s more of a pragmatist than an idealist. “I think as a phrase to get us all thinking about how we can reduce the amount of waste we generate, it has actually been quite a helpful device for getting people to move along a spectrum from the point where all the emphasis was on disposal”, she explains, adding: “I think also we have to be a bit more open minded about the sorts of technologies that can be deployed to residual waste. I think where the zero waste argument fell down was in trying to suggest that there wouldn’t be any residual waste once you’d done recycling and waste prevention.”

The UK does of course still have a long, long way to go in its waste minimisation efforts, not least because so much of the focus has been placed on households and so little on businesses. “The biggest weakness that I suspect is still a very long way from being cracked is the lack of emphasis on commercial and industrial waste”, Stephenson observes. And though she seems reluctant to point the finger, she blames a general “reluctance to interfere with the markets... It’s all been done on the basis of voluntarism and when you go down that route, then things move slowly, really.”

With local authorities, on the other hand, things have been moving quite quickly in certain instances, but Stephenson is certainly not alone in fearing budget cuts might put an end to all that. “Sadly, the local authorities that have been the most progressive and probably would have the will and the interest in continuing to be progressive are the ones that have the least scope for saving money, because they’ve already made lots of efficiency savings. And so the ones that in the current climate are able to move forward... and make changes would be those that haven’t done that well so far.” The innovators will stop innovating, but the rest now have a chance to catch up.

And will the illusive ‘big society’ (read: the ever-innovative third sector) step in to fill the gap? It seems unlikely: “I’m waiting to hear what the ‘big society’ really means, to be honest”, Stephenson says. “I mean, it’s a great slogan, but my fear is that this is seen to be an initiative that the government appears to think can be done without any significant financial support... And the other thing is all the tiny little myriad of groups within the waste sector at a local level who are beavering away doing community composting or promoting seed sharing or whatever – these people exist and have existed for a very long time.” It seems the ‘big society’ is already out there and needs funding, not lip service, to thrive. And this from a woman who has been living the ideals of the civil society for 30 years. David Cameron, take heed.