During the twentieth century many of the RSA’s environmental concerns were sparked by its own ‘Environment Committee’, formed in 1971 following a suggestion made by the RSA's President, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. The Committee identified and reviewed major environmental issues, trends and developments and provided a pool of relevant information, arranging conferences and lectures, as well as acting as a forum where issues could be discussed. Many reports were compiled from the committee’s conferences. These included a report on ‘Energy and the Environment’ published in 1974, which looked into energy as a sustainable resource. This was followed by a subsequent report in 1976 on ‘Renewable Sources of Energy and how far they might be made to meet Britain's energy needs’. Both reports sought to stimulate interest in the potential contribution of renewable energy sources to the nation's energy needs, doing so at a time when national energy policy was the subject of both government review and considerable public interest.

Today, with over one million tonnes of waste from electrical and electronic equipment going into landfill sites each year, electrical waste remains a key concern of the RSA. Most e-waste is toxic and landfill sites are filling up fast. In January 2006 manufactures and retailers became responsible for recycling electrical waste under new EU legislation called the WEEE (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment) Directive. It sought to reduce the amount of e-waste produced and encourage everyone to reuse, recycle and recover it. The RSA marked the implementation of the Directive into UK law by commissioning and installing a human-like figure out of the amount of electrical waste one UK citizen consumes in a lifetime. The WEEE Man, designed by Paul Bonomini and now at the Eden Project, remains a stark depiction of the individual's contribution to electrical and electronic waste, the fastest growing municipal waste source in the UK.

This image shows the ‘Report of a working party on Energy and the Environment’, produced in 1974. The report was compiled from an Environment Committee conference. The working party was set up jointly by the RSA, Committee for Environmental Conservation and Institute of Fuel to form a multi-disciplinary group to examine and report on the environmental implications of the development and use of the energy resources available to Britain.



This is a photograph of the WEEE Man sculpture designed by Paul Bonomini.