Meet our Environmental Affairs Manager
It's our great pleasure to announce that our new Enviornmental Affairs Manager is a familiar face. Katy Constance has agreed to join Plastics NZ on a permanent basis.
Up till now, Katy has been with us under fixed term contract as our Circular Economy Manager, delivering key elements of our CircularConnect design advisory service, and to facilitate our national working groups. As these aspects of our WMF project come to a conclusion, Katy will transition into broader environmental work.
Before we get into the detail of the new role ..... Katy got married! She has been generous enough to share some photos from the day. Doesn't she look stunning!
Back to the new role. Having a permanent environmental position will allow us to balance some of the workload between the CEO and Environmental Affairs Manager, providing enhanced focus on particular areas. This will include ensuring our members have access to best-practice guidance and advice on environmental issues, representing our members in key discussions and working groups, and collaborating with partner organisations across the plastics, packaging and resource recovery systems. Katy will also support the Environment Committee with their activities.
A key aspect of the role will be leading the refresh of our Operation Clean Sweep work and managing the transition to our new and improved programme. Katy will work closely with the Environment Committee and Simon Wilkinson on this work and will be in touch with our members soon on the changes. Also - keep the week of the 11th November in your calendar. We'll be holding our second Operation Clean Up Week and are aiming for an increased participation from both our members and others.
Some of you have asked what's happened to Simon. His business, Wilkinson Enviornmental, is doing really well and has had too much work. As a result, Simon had to step back from a lot of his work with Plastics NZ at the beginning of 2024. He is still a key part of our Operation Clean Sweep programme and running the OCS audits for stakeholders. We definitely haven't lost him! Wilkinson Environmental are also one of the CircularConnect consultants who can help you with moving towards more circular systems, environmental risk management and training. You can get in touch with Simon and his team at https://wenz.co.nz/ .