Location Bristol
Job-type Permanent
Salary £Negotiable
Reference BBBH12436_1614332396

Common Seas is a not-for-profit organisation that exists to find, test, and facilitate solutions to our global plastic pollution crisis. Their global team works across governments, businesses, and society to leverage change by driving forward new policies, investing in the circular economy, and catalysing a cultural shift in how we make, use, and dispose of plastic.

Their work in Greece, Indonesia, the UK, and the Maldives and has been critical in spearheading a systemic approach to addressing the plastic pollution crisis and demonstrating solutions to enable the phase-out of single-use plastics; including giving the Maldivian government "the confidence to set an ambitious target to phase out single-use plastics by 2023".

Acre is leading the search for a Director of Policy and Government Engagement to join Common Seas' leadership team. The organisation is made up of a small but quickly growing pragmatic, dynamic, and supportive team operating internationally.

You will:

  • Be responsible for providing technical advice to Governments, countries' key stakeholders, and in-country Common Seas' staff, working directly with decision-makers to design, implement, and evaluate effective responses to end plastic pollution.

  • Leverage your experience, technical knowledge, and network to deliver the next phase development of Plastic Drawdown, a tool to enable countries to map their country's plastic waste flows and prioritise mitigation strategies; working with the Common Seas' team, university researchers, modellers, policy advisors, and software engineers.

  • Support and nurture an ambitious and rapidly growing globally diverse team.

You will advise across Common Seas' programmes, using your technical understanding and practical experience in designing and implementing policies to enable country partners in their transition to a plastics circular economy. You will have:

  • Knowledge of critical mitigation strategies including EPR, DRS and waste collection, aggregation, re-use, and recycling.

  • Masters or professional qualification in a related field, such as circular economy, waste and resource management, engineering, or environmental management.

  • Ability to understand a country's context, specifically working in low- and middle- income countries - including infrastructure, to facilitate the development and implementation of plastic pollution mitigation strategies.

  • Strong stakeholder engagement skills; able to identify, understand, convene, and empower partners from across municipal and national governments, industry, community, and commercial sectors.

  • The ability to effectively articulate and engage when communicating complex data, both verbally and through technical reports.

Common Seas have already successfully helped countries recognise, evaluate and put a strategy in place to solve their plastic pollution problems and are now on the next stage of their journey - turning that strategy into action. If you're interested in this exciting opportunity to be the driving force behind creating a truly global circular economy, please get in touch with Samantha Calvey at samantha.calvey@acre.com.