The Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) has announced it has upgraded parts of its Sustainable Waste Awareness Certificate to offer a new, ‘enhanced’ version, to be made available as a one-day training course.
Entitled ‘Waste Smart’, CIWM hopes to appeal to businesses ‘interested in improving environmental compliance, reducing waste costs and encouraging a culture of more sustainable waste and resource management within their operations.’ The updated course was created in conjunction with a number of organisations, including Defra, the Environment Agency, WRAP and CBI.
CIWM intends to launch the course at this week’s Resource and Waste Management (RWM) Exhibition at Birmingham’s NEC, where it is exhibiting at stand K67, hall 20.
The Institution’s Chief Executive, Steve Lee, explained what prompted the decision to update: “Quite aside from rising waste disposal costs and raw material prices, the Waste Framework Directive now requires businesses to take account of the EU Waste Hierarchy when making decisions about the management of waste, and UK governments have commercial and industrial waste firmly in their sights.
“With pressure growing on business and industry to find ways to reduce waste, improve resource efficiency and be proactive in developing more sustainable practices across the board, we felt the training could offer more and needed to cater for different levels of business responsibility.”
The course was endorsed in last year’s Responsibility Deal between Defra and the Environmental Services Association (ESA) as a way of ‘[raising] businesses’ awareness of their waste responsibilities’, and CIWM counts Network Rail and the BBC among the 12,000 organisations certified since the scheme’s inception in 2003. It says the training is particularly relevant for those who generate or handle waste, and aims to show how and why waste should be managed in a sustainable manner.
The course also endeavours to demonstrate ways to improve performance - teaching best practice, explaining legal obligations and the implications of non-compliance, and exploring the significance of waste and resource management from a financial, environmental and social point of view.
Additional, optional elements address identifying and measuring waste streams, opportunities for minimising waste and ways to improve recycling rates. CIWM hopes this section will particularly appeal to those who are looking to implement, manage and monitor improvements in waste and resource management, as it also offers training to help participants better evaluate these areas.
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