Designing Circular Precincts and Regions
Wow – we did it! Another Waste Expo Australia completed and what a fantastic event! This Expo continues to grow becoming more impactful, year on year. This may, in part, be driven by the growing importance of the circular economy, and its relevance to a wide range of stakeholders. I was happy to see my GHD colleagues presenting on a variety of topics from Energy from Waste - David Gamble, C&D Waste - Bettina Zimmermann, Wastewater recycling - Brandon Bloom, and my joint presentation with Nicola Bess who provided market and business case perspectives to our presentation on the role of landfills as circular economy precincts of the future. Great work team.
My personal highlight (yes - biased) was a panel I moderated on Designing Circular Precincts & Regions with Tina Perfrement - representing the rapidly growing Geelong region, Luke Wilkinson representing Victoria's energy and biohub powerhouse - Gippsland and Kirstin Coote representing the work delivered in 2022 on circular economy regional plans.
Our panel had a super discussion with some common and contrasting themes. On our topic of how to design precincts and place-based circular economy, here are some of my key takeaways:
1. Identify Regional Strengths - In their introduction, each speaker highlighted the importance of understanding the strengths and needs of a region. These will vary and each region will have a distinctive strength. Tina referenced physical infrastructure, such as the Port of Geelong and the identification of Clean Economy as an economic development focus area for Geelong. Luke referenced the dual economic shocks of the forestry sector and Hazelwood mine closure as providing focus for the region to address with circular economy opportunities.
2. Collaboration is Critical - Kirsten underscored the importance of listening, hard, to local voices in the room. To be able to work with different perspectives.
3. Physical Infrastructure isn’t essential – Tina mentioned the work City of Greater Geelong had done in trying to identify suitable infrastructure to support an emerging circular economy, ultimately deciding that it wasn’t necessary for their needs. Instead, they found the connections between businesses were most important. Luke addressed this point similarly as Gippsland has recently launched the Gippsland Circular Economy Hub. For me, this highlights the importance of networks.
4. Common elements to design:
- Lean into what differentiates your region
- Listen and learn from stakeholders
- Identify local champions
- Baseline data is important
- Brokerage of opportunities is helpful
5. Challenges:
- Managing different perspectives and views
- Managing potential skepticism on when an initiative might deliver direct benefits for a region.
- Ensuring initiatives, such as grants, support diversity, inclusion and are accessible to all.
It was a great panel and super to hear the similar and different perspectives of the panel. Each of us working as transition brokers in our respective roles.
As a final question, I asked the panel for a one-word takeaway from our session. I loved Kirstin’s cheeky G.O.B response – and I immediately wondered if a chewing gum analogy might be heading our way! Until Kirstin announced this was short (long?) for Get On Board! Tina’s response was Hope, which I think is lovely, as we could all do with a little more of that in our lives when the going gets tough. Hope is a necessary tonic against any Eco-Anxiety, of which I occasionally suffer (think ice cap melting or positive feedback loops….). Last but not least, Luke provided a real Zinger – Value. This was a reference to the importance of demonstrating value-add as part of the promise of Circular Economy strategies for a region. All fantastic takeaways.
As a panel moderator and member, and writing this summary, I realise that I didn’t provide a one-word take away myself! Many potential candidates come to mind. I choose, Collaborate. I know, yawn. It's one of my favorites. However collaboration is so essential for achieving anything as part of a transition. No single individual, entity, or region should go it alone. There are many benefits to sharing lessons learned. Speaking of which, that’s what I hoped attendees would take away from this panel session!
Hope you all had a great event, and until next year, keep up the amazing work and continue to care for country 😊
