The sites with the worst numbers had no plan

A list of projects is not a plan

Six group targets, four business segments, and a population of site level initiatives that had been collected but never consolidated. The question was simple and had not been asked: if every one of these initiatives lands as its owner expects, where does the group actually end up.

Answering it meant standardising how each initiative is measured against each target, then building the group number bottom up from the sites for 2021, 2022 and 2023, then extrapolating that rate to 2030.

Coverage is stated rather than glossed. Of the initiatives reviewed, 35 were left out because their owners provided no usable data or because the change was negligible. Every projection here is therefore a floor built on what could be evidenced, not a complete picture.

Two targets move, four do not

Waste to landfill improves, from 19.89 per cent of total waste in the baseline year to a projected 16.45 by 2023. Renewable electricity more than doubles, from 3.84 per cent to 7.78. Those are the two.

Recycled non hazardous waste moves from 69.97 to 70.71 per cent, a change of about a third of a percentage point, against a 90 per cent goal. Renewable or recycled materials move by four hundredths of a percentage point against an 80 per cent goal. Certified fibre does not move at all, because the only two initiatives touching it turned out not to change the measure.

None of that is a failure of ambition at group level. It is what happens when the target lives at the top and the projects live at the bottom and nobody has multiplied one by the other.

Concentration cuts both ways

One site accounts for 68 per cent of the entire projected improvement in waste to landfill, by burning a waste stream as boiler fuel instead of sending it to landfill. One site accounts for 37 per cent of the renewable electricity gain, by procuring certified green power through a joint tender with a neighbouring plant.

That concentration is a risk as much as an achievement. The largest contributor carries a note that its later year numbers are unclear because the initiative had a setback. Take that one site out and the headline target stops moving.

The same concentration appears on the other side. On every measure, a handful of sites carry most of the problem, and on most measures those sites have nothing running.

The finding that changes where to spend

Seven of the ten worst sites on waste to landfill have no initiative at all. On the current projection the group lands at 16.4 per cent. Fix those ten and the analysis puts it at 4.4.

On renewable electricity, the ten largest consumers of non green power account for 52 per cent of the group total and nine of the ten show zero movement. Converting them takes the group measure above 50 per cent, from 8.

On emissions, the ten highest emitting sites are 42 per cent of the group projected total, and moving them to renewable energy is put at a 40 per cent reduction. On certified fibre, non compliance sits at exactly seven sites, and not one of them had submitted a fibre initiative.

All four of those are identified opportunities conditional on action nobody had taken. They are not savings and they are not results. But they redirect the effort from where the enthusiasm is to where the tonnage is.

The 2030 arithmetic, stated plainly

Four targets were extrapolated to 2030 at their current rate of improvement. None reaches its goal.

Waste to landfill lands at 10.6 per cent against a zero goal, and would need roughly a 41 per cent annual improvement rather than the 6 it is running at. Recycled non hazardous waste lands at 72.5 against a 90 goal, needing 3.5 per cent a year against 0.35. Renewable electricity lands at 45 per cent against a 100 goal, needing 45 per cent a year against 28.

Those gaps are the deliverable. A target with no arithmetic behind it is a statement of intent. A target with the required annual rate written next to it is a plan or an admission, and either is more useful than the statement.

What the client was left holding

A consolidated projection for six targets built from the sites up, a ranked list of 32 sites tiered by how many measures each one is among the worst on, and the required annual improvement rate for each target against its 2030 goal.

Plus eight site initiatives written up as replicable practice, because the useful thing about a group with many plants is that somebody has usually already solved it somewhere.

There is no measured result here. One year is actual and everything after it is a projection made from initiative owners own estimates. What this produced was the first honest answer to how far the current plan actually goes.