Neil Grundon, Chairman of Grundon, borrows from Elvis as he says 2026 needs ‘a little less conversation, a little more action please’.
I sometimes wonder if I am alone in thinking that those ‘day in the life’ articles of various CEOs in the business sections of Sunday newspapers are rather contrived.
Yes, I do wake up early, but seldom at 5 am, and if I do, then my first action is to hit the snooze button rather than hit the gym. I certainly would not consider attending a business dinner or conference the same evening – and you would have to drag me kicking and screaming to a Coldplay concert!
These days, I am pretty short on the boundless optimism that each of these individuals seems to share as they bounce like Zebedee from meeting to meeting, drinking and eating nothing but water and lettuce, seeing as the youngest thing in our house is an eight-year-old West Highland Terrier, I doubt if I would be helping anyone with their homework.
At the risk of sounding too pessimistic right now, when I was asked about my predictions and resolutions for 2026, the best I could come up with was maintaining profitability – because at the end of the day, that is what business is all about. Sadly, it is a concept the policy ‘consultants’ embedded in our present government seem to have trouble grasping.
I am told that sometime soon, a Circular Economy Taskforce will issue a report about being more circular; later in the year, we will start using computers to track waste; and towards the end of 2026, we will start thinking about how we are going to use a deposit return scheme.
None of these policies or discussions is going to put food on the table for the many thousands of people our industry employs.
Fortunately, rather than hopping from Iron Man to Iron Man, our team at Grundon had been busy fixing the roof whilst the sun was shining (and what a lovely job they did).
As a result, our electric vehicles now purr silently into city centres, our facilities have been upgraded, new AI installed into our fleet, new shredders, balers, and we’ve welcomed new additions to our team – all whilst prepping for the business tax Armageddon that was 2025.
I know it’s early days, but 2026 isn’t working out much better with the news that our electricity standing charges are about to double and business rates are about to go through a revaluation – we all know nothing is ever evaluated downwards.
So, what would I like to see in the 12 months ahead? As a starter, it would be if the Environment Agency were to announce that perpetrators of waste crime, instead of being told to offer up a few charitable donations, were to be put in the stocks so we could throw three-week-old food waste at them.
Or even better, we would all be invited to watch as the lorries they use to transport their illegal bounty are crushed – that’s proper recycling! It all might sound dramatic, but something big needs to happen to stop organised criminal groups from perpetuating this plague on our countryside.
Talking of fires, one golden opportunity which the government seems to have ignored is the issue of waste fires, most often caused by lithium batteries that live in so many everyday items and are thrown out erroneously as general waste.
It really would help us all if household hazardous waste collections were to be introduced; at least then, we wouldn’t be 24 hours away from another Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) turning to cinder.
Also on my wish list would be if the public sector announced an extra two days at work, by which I mean actually working a five-day week – in the office (radical, I know).
Having spent eight months last year waiting for my LGV licence to be renewed, I fully understand 50-year-olds taking up conspiracy theories because they have spent a year on the sofa watching Cash in the Attic on TV whilst they wait for a piece of paper allowing them to work again.
And finally… in an ideal world, I would like to see more support – even dare I say incentives – for businesses like ourselves to employ more people. In reality, however, this seems to be so far away from a government priority as to be non-existent.