Tony Chappel has only been in the NSW EPA hotseat for three weeks but already knows that collaboration is a key to success if a truly circular economy is going to happen not just within NSW but Australia as a whole. He also said it also is important to remember social licence has a critical role to play, too.
His remarks came at a speech he gave at the Resource Recovery Summit, which is part of the two-day Australasian Waste and Recycling Expo (AWRE) held at the ICC in Sydney, Chappel pointed out that while the EPA cannot ignore its regulatory responsibilities, working with those at the sharp end of the waste industry will only help optimise the opportunities a circular economy will have to the wider community
“The social licence question is absolutely central, not just to the waste recycling and circular economy sectors, but to any major infrastructure endeavour,” he said. “And I know that government can make a social licence harder or easier. My commitment, at least from the NSW EPA perspective, is to work with my other government colleagues to do what we can to try to help build that collaboration.”
Read more: Procurement and tenders – more work needs to be done
Chappel said that he having just come from the ‘tempestuous’ Australian energy market with his last role, he knew how challenging it was to cost gas and electricity infrastructure and that the waste industry would also have similar challenging issues.
“One of the one of the key challenges that I’m very conscious of is around waste infrastructure. And I’m very pleased to share that that government’s now started a process focusing on strategic planning for all that critical waste infrastructure needs. Sometimes government doesn’t always make it as easy as we might,” he said. “I guess when I step back and think about that, it occurs to me that we can only achieve those goals, if we do it in a deeply collaborative fashion.”