A group of forward-thinking council staff have come up with a novel approach to encourage young people to join the waste industry, by developing Circular Economy Intern positions within individual Waikato councils. The intern positions were designed and delivered as a joint team and coordinated by Waikato Regional Council.
In the article below, Shelley Wilson from Waipā District Council discusses the project, the lessons learned, and an invitation to think creatively for positive change.
The beginning
In 2022, a group of staff from various district councils across the Waikato were sitting around and having a yarn about work.
“Do you know what would be great,” said one person who shall remain nameless, “is if we could encourage more young people into the sector, to offset all of us oldies around the table? We’re not getting any younger.”
This idea developed through time and discussion, into a fully-fledged project proposal to create Circular Economy Internships within local councils.
The plan was for each participating council to offer a one-year paid internship to one person still in tertiary studies. They would be employed by the individual council for 10 hours a week during the semester, and 30 hours during their breaks. They’d be supported to learn about zero waste and the circular economy, do some research, and then develop a waste reduction project that aligned with their council’s WMMP.
Council collaboration
The beauty of the Circular Economy Internship programme is that the development and implementation would be handled by a cross-organisational team and coordinated by Waikato Regional Council (WRC), while the interns would be employed by the individual councils.
WRC handled all the planning, recruitment preparation and stakeholder engagement, and 22 councils across the central band of the North Island were invited to take part. The leadership from WRC resulted in a lot less work for individual councils, and it gave the project the cohesion and momentum that it needed.
We decided to market the internships to a range of disciplines; if we ended up with someone coming from a communications degree, they would bring something quite different to an engineering student. We saw this as a great opportunity to see where the energy took us. We know there is never-ending work in the waste sector, so there was going to be more than enough room around the table for prospective interns from a variety of study fields.
Learnings from the project
We learned we needed to get internal HR teams on board very early, and to think creatively about marketing avenues. While a presentation and slide deck might be our normal council go-to, this didn’t cut it if we wanted to attract a varied group of quality applicants. We are still refining this but have been leaning heavily on web-based advertising and relationships with university faculty.
The Circular Economy Internships have been very successful so far. Charlotte McQuade-Wright, Waipā District Council, has been working on a plaster bucket return and reuse scheme in her district to address construction waste. Charlene Kiikoro, South Waikato District Council, is working on reducing rural waste for their residents with a robust research and education project. Both interns have brought fresh perspectives and energy to their teams, gained valuable real-world experience while still studying, and enabled their supervisors to develop their management experience.
However, it’s been unfortunate for everyone involved that there have been insurmountable internal hurdles which have meant some councils needed to withdraw from the project completely.
This has diluted the overall experience for the interns and the potential for peer support. One team was full steam ahead but couldn’t get HR on side to approve an extra role. The second council was sure they had approval for the extra role, only for someone higher up to get cold feet at the eleventh hour and pull the pin. Another team thought everything was plain sailing right up until recruitment was meant to go live, only to have the project sent all the way up to the CEO for approval. They’re still waiting to hear back.
Low risk and high reward
The intern roles are fixed-term for a year, of a comparably low pay grade, and fully funded by the Waste Disposal Levy – which means no impact on rates. It goes without saying that we all need to consider risks and mitigate them as much as possible, especially in the current climate. We also need to prioritise creative approaches to the challenges affecting our sector and get out of our own way enough to allow great work to happen. The world might not be ready for some of our bright ideas, but there is always valuable learning to be had (and to be implemented next time) if a project doesn’t roll out as expected.
Forms must be filled out, and boxes must be ticked, but we also need to try low-risk new approaches and see what happens. The end result just might be fresh energy, exciting projects, challenging ideas, and more driven young professionals starting their career in the sector – which benefits us all.
About the author
Shelley Wilson - Waste Minimisation Advisor, Waipā District Council, and member of the WasteMINZ Behaviour Change Steering Committee.
Shelley has been working within behaviour change contexts across a range of sectors for around 14 years, including community development and social work. Working within a small council, she wears many hats and is chiefly responsible for designing, delivering and evaluating behaviour change projects. Shelley also empowers and enables community stakeholders to build capacity and reduce waste.