For the past 30 years, ‘Alice’ Leney has been working across virtually all of the Pacific
Islands, helping them deal with their waste problems. In 1995, Alice wrote Rubbish No
More, a waste handbook for the Pacific Islands, which was widely distributed amongst
NGOs the Pacific as (back then) waste was clearly a growing—but ignored—issue. He
then set up a business operating around the Pacific offering coral reef protection through the installation of mooring buoys and solar power installations.
From 2002 to 2005 Alice worked to design and implement a deposit/refund recycling
system for Kiribati, working alongside the Kiribati government, a local NGO (FSP
Kiribati), and multilateral donors. The simple system devised (which is still operating
commercially today) became a template for other small island states in the region. He
subsequently worked across the FSM states and the Marshall Islands to set up similar
recycling systems. He also designed and implemented a pre-paid garbage bag system
for South Tarawa, 'The Green Bag', which has provided a model for other small island
and development states (SIDS) trying to build sustainable waste collection systems.
Alice has worked in a variety of consulting and technical assistance contracts dealing
with waste management and recycling issues, with development agencies including
MFAT, UNDP, SPREP, ADB, JICA & WHO. He brings many years of on-the-ground
experience of project design, implementation and management to his work. He has
consulted widely on waste oils, e-waste, atoll landfill problems, as well as recycling
systems.
Alice comes from an engineering background and, as such, takes a very practical
approach to finding solutions that must be simple, effective, and designed for local
conditions. He lives off-grid in New Zealand with a collection of vintage motorcycles kept in constant running order, and makes a point of periodically taking long journeys by vintage motorcycle, sometimes of several months across continents (where his problem-solving skills come in very handy!).