#MeetTheTeam – Alice Marquet

Meet the Team Zero Waste Europe - general

It’s time to discover and learn more about the people behind Zero Waste Europe’s work and magic! In addition to the ZWE Changemakers series, where you can learn more about our member organisations, we invite you to get a closer look at our staff, what they do, and what inspires them to work for a zero waste future.

This time, we sat down with Alice Marquet, our Head of Operations, who has been at Zero Waste Europe since April 2023.

How did you come to join Zero Waste Europe?

Being passionate about the relationship between humans and how they manage their resources, I bumped into the topic of waste management in Beijing, China while working there, and it hasn’t left me ever since.

Zero Waste Europe came up as one of the leading organisations working in Brussels and tackling the question with multi-layer impact: at the EU policy level, the business level (via its spin-off MiZA!), and the local implementation level. I was very quickly conquered by the organisation’s entrepreneurial spirit, pragmatism (that’s the thing about waste management), and passionate team members.

What motivated you to work for a zero waste Europe?

Contributing to the strengthening of waste management systems and processes by ensuring that we always take people, their habits and cultures, economic factors, health, and the environment into account.

What would you say is the most interesting part of your job?

People!

What would you say is your greatest professional achievement while working at ZWE?

Cracking the nut on some complex questions.

What are the biggest challenges that you face in your work?

People! And yes, I answered this above as well. Personally, I find working with people both the most interesting aspect and the biggest challenge in an Operations role: what does the group need vs. the individual? How do we make information accessible? How do we strengthen our culture and values?

In a nutshell, administration and finances can be factually managed and forecasted. People less so. That’s what makes the role so versatile and interesting.

What is an aspect of your work that you find fun?

It’s both scary and fun—creating and delivering workshops from scratch. This is something everyone at Zero Waste Europe does. This year, we’ve focused on giving and receiving feedback and project management, and we had interesting outcomes from both sessions.

In your view, which actions are needed to ensure Europe is moving in a direction in line with the principles of sufficiency, wellbeing and resilience?

Providing regulations that are ambitious yet achievable by listening to the realities on the ground: what are municipalities faced with? What are people faced with? What resources are available to enable change?
Including prevention at the heart of major sectors: health, food, commerce etc;
Investing more in education from a young age, with a focus on conflict resolution, understanding of resources, and connection to our surroundings;
Revising major higher educational programs (business, economics, medicine etc.) to include the above instead of fast-profit models;
Investing more time in understanding human psychology for good (as opposed to human psychology for consumption): how do people change habits? How do families, people, and populations become resilient to face what’s ahead?

Looking ahead, which developments or priorities will you be focusing on in your work?

We’re finalising our next Strategic Framework as we speak, and there are exciting projects ahead: cross-team collaboration, enabling all our team members with relevant learning opportunities, and internal process adoption, all the while continuing to strengthen our values throughout the organisation, building bridges and strengthening our hosted organisations, and most importantly, being there for our amazing Ops team!