Glass half full

We are just emerging from one of the hardest and longest recessions in living memory. Thankfully, the economy is looking far healthier than it did a year ago, with construction activities picking up and manufacturing starting on the road to recovery.

This last point was made clear to me recently at the Manufacturer Directors’ Conference in Birmingham, where I experienced first hand the drive, enthusiasm and confidence of the manufacturing industry leaders. It left a strong and lasting impression on me that clear vision, confidence and a drive to deliver solutions are the foundations of a thriving manufacturing sector. The industry is definitely taking the ‘glass half full’ approach to life.

This made me take a second look at the on-going debate in the recycling and resource management sector around potential over-capacity and under-capacity in facilities that recover energy from residual waste. While I’m not suggesting we stop matching capacity to need (which we spend a great deal of time modelling and measuring in order to plan investment accordingly), we do tend to look on the down-side, taking a ‘glass half empty’ approach.

Our sector, through the worst of the recession, has managed to finance numerous projects and is well into the delivery of billions of pounds worth of new infrastructure and solutions – all of which is desperately needed by the UK to achieve landfill diversion and contribute to energy production.

The recycling and resource management industry is growing at a rate faster than UK GDP and delivering new jobs in construction and operation. So, taking the lead from the UK’s manufacturers, let’s be more confident as a sector. We have achieved a lot, so let’s have a vision for the future that will allow us to deliver even more. Let’s have ‘a glass half full’ attitude.