My top tip for attending the annual RWM show? Wear flat shoes. It’s massive! And I’m not just talking about the enormous plant machinery, with over 750 exhibitors there is simply so much to see and a lot of ground to cover, hence the shoes. This advice will fall on deaf ears to the majority of the audience in attendance because Resource Efficiency and Waste Management Solutions remains a largely male dominated industry. And really, why wouldn’t it? Diggers, grabbers, heavy plant machinery of such scale and power that it is the stuff of boys dreams. So what on earth were Charlotte and I doing there?
I’ve asked myself many times over the last four years, how on earth I’ve ended up down in Birmingham for this show, and not just there, but visiting scrap yards, ship yards, docklands, plant sites, scrap yards, did I mention scrap yards!…oh so glamorous.
European Metal Recycling (EMR) became my first client in this sector back in 2010 and so I embarked on my journey of discovery into a world of recycling. Working with EMR to produce their website, brochures, livery and various other items of marketing collateral I found myself becoming strangely inspired and excited. Everything about EMR is BIG, the scale of the global operation, the size of the giant shredders, which crush, sort and separate the metal, and the noise. The immensely loud NOISE, there is no getting away from it. I think because of my enthusiasm, I became the ‘go to’ girl at Ultimate for anything recycling related, so I swapped my heels for a hard hat as I moved onto my next new client in this arena, heavy plant machine experts Worsley Plant. One evening while inputting data onto their content management system (yes, its true, I get all the best jobs) I started to wonder how much I actually knew about large plant machinery, grabs, pulverisers, shears and screening buckets. Too much! I quickly grabbed my Cosmo to regain a sense of equilibrium.
For all my clients in this sector, the marketing contacts are female, and to be honest they’re a rather glamorous bunch, but just like me, they have been drawn into the world of recycling and have become as geeky as I have about facts and stats. The number of fridges recycled in the UK each year (300,000 in the capital alone fact fans), on average each person in the UK throws away their own weight in rubbish every seven weeks so many interesting facts – sad, but true!
So, how was the RWM? Well for those clients of mine who exhibited, a great success. They all have excellent stands, strong brands, messages and supporting literature. Of course there’s no bias here, its not like my company did them or anything ;)
Worsley Plant came away from the event as they have done every year having cemented contacts, sparked new enquiries and generated large hangovers!
This is what the RWM is all about, getting like-minded people together to talk about the environmental recycling issues of the day, understand what products are available to solve a recycling challenge, exchange contacts and have a bit of fun! Me and my flat shoes will no doubt be there again in 2015.