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Job title: chief executive, Recovered Materials Foundation

Richard Lloyd's fascination with recycling began more than eight years ago on the border between Israel and Lebanon.

An Army engineer, he was about to return home after a tour of duty as a United Nations peacekeeper and was looking for gifts for his family. He found some beautiful glass objects, made by reshaping and recolouring existing glass rather than starting from "scratch".

Lloyd was so fascinated by the process that he resigned from the Army and set up his own business, making practical and artistic glass objects.

Rather than buying expensive glass from overseas, he found the recycled local material he was practising with gave just the results he wanted, and was much cheaper.

He also began using other recycled materials, and a thriving business, Waitaha Glass, was born.

Lloyd, 38, takes up his new role next week and is looking forward to encouraging the public and other companies to realise the practical, financial and environmental possibilities of recycled materials.

"At the moment, everyone sees recycling in isolation," he says. "Not enough people are thinking 'What could I do with this material?'

"I want to show people that, really, all it is is another material in another form - they shouldn't even be thinking of it as recycled."



With more than 50 staff, Lloyd will work to expand the use of recovered materials in Christchurch and the foundation's work into the rest of Canterbury.

The foundation also hopes to work with other regions to establish organisations promoting use of recovered materials.