Dr A. Michael Warhurst has been the Executive Director of the environmental NGO CHEM Trust since July 2014, working on chemicals policy and pollution.
Prior to this he had been working for Friends of the Earth in London since November 2005, and heading up their Economics and Resource Use Programme, and leading Friends of the Earth Europe’s (FOEE) work on Resources and Consumption.
His work at Friends of the Earth particularly focused on resource use and waste policy at EU and UK level, including securing a 50% recycling target in the revised Waste Framework Directive and leading the development of Friends of the Earth’s work on measuring Europe’s resource use
He was a ‘Sherpa’ to FOEE Director Magda Stoczkiewicz in the European Commission’s “European Resource Efficiency Platform”.
Previous to the Friends of the Earth role he focussed on chemicals policy, with a particular focus on the development of the EU’s REACH chemicals regulation, initially at Friends of the Earth in London, and then from 2002 at WWF’s European Policy Office in Brussels. During 2005 he spent 9 months working on US chemicals policy at the Lowell Centre for Sustainable Production in Massachusetts, USA.
He has a Degree in Biochemistry from the University of York, UK, a PhD (in the breakdown of chemicals by bacteria) from the University of Glasgow, UK, and an MSc in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh, UK.
He tweets as @mwarhurst