TECHNICAL PANEL - PLASTICS & PLASTICS RECYCLING

Dr. Forbes McDougall is a sustainability professional with 20+ years’ experience in environmental engineering, circular economy, municipal waste management and life cycle thinking. He recently joined Saudi Aramco as their Global Leader for plastic recycling and waste management and has both strategic and technical responsibility for all Aramco waste generated globally.

He is a Visiting Professor of Practice in the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University in the UK.

He was the Head of Circular Economy at Veolia UK from 2014 until 2019. This central coordinating role was created in 2014 and brought together Veolia’s capability in Strategy, Innovation, Technology, Materials, Water and Energy and worked closely with key business development functions to identify and develop new Circular Economy opportunities for all commercial, industrial and municipal customers.

Prior to joining Veolia, Forbes was the Global Waste Strategy owner for Procter & Gamble, responsible for the management of the waste from 150 sites in over 40 countries. Between 2007 and 2014 he was responsible for increasing diversion from landfill from 56% to 92% globally, delivering more than 70 zero waste to landfill sites and around $20 million in savings and revenue per year from reuse and recycling programs. Before this, he developed a Life Cycle Inventory computer model for Integrated Waste Management systems and has compiled case studies on the potential environmental and economic advantages of using life cycle tools to optimise these integrated waste management systems. He also wrote the 2nd Edition of the book “Integrated Waste Management: A Life Cycle Inventory” (Pub. 2001). This 2nd edition provided a user-friendly computer model (IWM-2) for waste managers. IWM-2 was designed to be an "entry level" LCI model for solid waste, appropriate to anyone starting to apply life cycle thinking to solid waste systems. The book was written for policy-makers in local, national and international government, and for waste managers and professionals in industries concerned with solid waste management. The book has been translated into Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.