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Waste management industry needs to increase education levels

Deputy Head of Civil Engineering & Environment at the University of Southampton has commented that the waste industry needs to start educating its staff, or risk using the best workers for the job.

He explained that times are changing, and we are moving on from years when qualifications were not required for a successful and progressing career. The industry needs to start attracting the new breed of educated and degree-laden student just entering the workforce.

Adam Read, head of waste management at a consulting agency, agrees, “We need to make waste management über sexy so that when students are studying geography at school that they have modules that include waste management and landfill restoration. When kids at 14 are at school they automatically think of a dustman and black sacks when they think of waste management and are not seeing it as a crucial industry.”

There is a currently a severe deficit of University courses and degree in the area, and an increase in active education could result in a shifting perspective of waste management not only amongst young people but amongst society as a whole.