Profitable Future Leeds - Speakers

Simon Drury is the Business Partnerships Director for the Envirowise Project. This is a role he has held since 2006. Simon is responsible to the development and delivery of the Envirowise Large Business engagement strategy. He project manages a number of projects with large businesses and is a spokesperson for the wider Envirowise Project.

Simon has specialist skills in all aspects of corporate environmental management, to include corporate social responsibility, sustainable development, resource efficiency, waste management, and environmental management systems.

Prior to this Simon was the UK Environmental Manager for the Center Parcs Ltd (a UK Sustainable tourism destination). A post he held for seven years. Within this role Simon is responsible for all aspects of the four UK village's Environmental, Energy, sustainability and CSR strategies, including the company's ISO14001 certification.

Simon went to college as a mature student and gained his BSc Honour from Leeds University in 1997, he is an Associate Member of IEMA, Founder Chair of the EMRA's Promoting Sustainable Development Group, which works to drive forward the sustainable development and climate charge agenda with five counties. He is a member of the Regional Energy Group.

He sits on his regional CBI's Environment Committee. Simon is committed to showing businesses that the environmental consideration makes good business sense.

Simon is married to Susan and has two teenage daughters, Abbie and Megan. In his spare time Simon is a keen naturalist, he enjoys sailing and fly-fishing, something's, which he does not do as much as he would like.

Keith has been actively involved with the management and promotion of the Club's environmental programme entitled The Red's Go Green for the last 8 years and he has been a keen ambassador for the Envirowise Supply Chain Partnership Programme since Manchester United first joined the programme back in 2003.

Keith is now also looking to work with event organisers and their suppliers to actively promote the new Sustainable Event Management programme for Events, Conferences & Exhibitions held at the Old Trafford Stadium & Venue.

Andrew has been the Director responsible for Rigby Taylor's environmental performance during the past five years.

This involvement initially began as part of the supply-chain partnership with Manchester United FC and Envirowise and evolved into product development, transport routing, and on-going discussions with suppliers to the point where we now can offer our customers the best environmentally friendly products available

Roger is a Programme Delivery Leader for Envirowise. He is responsible for the sector teams promoting best practice for environmental improvement through resource efficiency to all sectors targeted by Envirowise. One of his major project areas was development of the Envirowise supply chain programme, which assisted high profile companies in interacting with their suppliers to improve environmental performance and save costs. This project delivered savings of over £14 million. This led to the production of the supply chain toolkit that facilitates companies in running their own initiatives.

His knowledge has been built on 30 years of practical research in the waste management industry, primarily concerned with the compositional analysis of domestic waste arisings. He has been involved with planning of systems to best assess process plants and the effectiveness of source separation schemes. He has designed flowsheets to improve separation of materials from the domestic waste streams for the recovery of values such as aluminium.

Gregor is a Director of Enviromentor Ltd. Since 1995, he has worked extensively as an adviser and consultant to Envirowise and has provided high-level support to this key government programme throughout the UK. Support has included writing good practice guides and case studies, and delivering environmental training workshops for regulators, intermediaries and businesses. Topics have included waste minimisation, water minimisation, environmental awareness, environmental management systems, legislative compliance, supply chain partnerships and sustainability strategies for companies.

Jenni has worked as the Head of the Envirowise Cleaner Design Team for the last 2 years and has worked within Envirowise for over 4 years. During this time, she has developed strong working relationships with industry by managing and delivering eco-design projects and workshops for numerous multi-million pound companies. Through this key account working, last year the Cleaner Design sector identified over £56 millions of savings through "quick wins" in eco-design, both with regards to product and packaging.

In October 2007 she organised and hosted the "Savings from Smarter Design" Webinar. This was the first ever webinar, not only for the sector, but for the programme as a whole. This was a huge success with over 80% of delegates saying they would log into a future on-line event. She is currently planning 2 more in the coming financial year.

More recently she has been involved with the re-structuring and re-focussing of the Envirowise programme, has been invited onto the Waste and Packaging Industry Working Group and is also a member of the British Standards committee on Eco-design.

Mark Shayler has 15 years experience in resource efficiency and ecodesign. He has been an Envirowise advisor for 4 years and prior to that sat on the Envirowise management advisory committee for 6 years.

After working at the coalface (not literally) with SMEs for 8 years Mark spent an unforgettable period as Environment Manager at ASDA-Walmart.

Mark is Managing Director of eco3, a specialist ecodesign and environmental consultancy. He is a Technical Advisor for the DTI's Waste Resources Action Programme, has published widely on business and environment issues and has directly advised in excess of 800 businesses.

He provided on-screen expertise for the Channel Four programme "The Insider" which looked at over-packaging and he has also provided expertise on clean design and environmental issues for Radio Four's 'You and Yours' and Radio Five Live.

Claire Sweeney has worked in the environmental field for 10 years. She leads the Envirowise Water Team, and is responsible for the delivery of projects designed to reduce business water consumption.

Claire is also a member of the team responsible for the Enhanced Capital Allowance Scheme for Water Efficient Technologies.

Prior to working in consultancy, she worked for the Environment Agency for 3 years regulating the Water and Waste industries and responding to pollution incidents.

Katie has over ten years experience in the environmental field, with particular expertise in water management, resource efficiency and IPPC. She is a Senior Environmental Scientist of Ashact, a Division of Hyder Consulting Ltd, and has worked on the Envirowise programme for nine years.

Katie has prepared material for a number of Envirowise publications including Good Practice Guides, Case Studies and fact sheets and has been an advisor on the Envirowise Advice Line for three years.

Much of her experience comes from working in the food and drink industry, retail, hospitality and other commercial sectors where she has undertaken waste and water audits, environmental reviews, effluent monitoring programmes and prepared a number of IPPC permit applications.