Position: Chairman
Organisation: European Bioeconomy Bureau
Bio: David Newman lived in Europe and the Middle East until 2016 when he returned to the UK.
He was the Executive Director of Greenpeace Italy 1994-1997 after many years as a volunteer; from 1999 until 2014 he led the Italian composting and biogas association CIC and he led the Italian Bioplastics Association from 2011 to 2015. As a result of his team’s work, Italy is world leader in biowaste collections and treatment and represents the largest global market for bioplastics.
From 2012 to 2016 he was President of the International Solid Waste Association. During this time (2012-13) he was personal advisor to the Italian Minister of Environment, Andrea Orlando.
He was President of the World Biogas Association from November 2016 to July 2022.
David founded and was Managing Director of the Bio Based and Biodegradable Industries Association UK from 2015 (and retired from this in November 2023) which works to promote the bioeconomy in the UK. He founded and leads the European Bioeconomy Bureau promoting policies in favour of soil health and the bioeconomy in Brussels and develops projects for funding applications under Horizon and CBE JU grants.
He is partner in the Horizon CBEJU funded project Brillian, which studies bioeconomy models in rural areas, that started in June 2023. He is a member of the Advisory Group of the Biomethane Industrial Partnership, established by the European Commission in 2022.
He was until December 2023 a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Group at DEFRA and is a Fellow of the CIWM. Since February 2023 he assists the German company Co2Bioclean with their communications. He speaks in public regularly and lectures occasionally at the LUISS University in Rome for their Master of Circular Economy course and writes and publishes articles widely read across social media relating to ecological issues.
His e-book “Everything is Connected, understanding a complicated world“ was published in September 2020.
