Alex Hetherington

Head of Climate, Nature and Resources

Alex sits on the Senior Management Team as a Special Advisor, engaged in leading on a range of strategic development projects. She was previously Head of Enterprise at 3Keel, responsible for leading all our delivery teams to realise 3Keel’s mission and vision through their delivery of insightful, high-quality, inspirational outputs supporting clients’ ambitions.

She also led our Circular Economy Practice and continues to be a strong advocate for whole systems thinking when approaching sustainability issues. Having delivered myriad projects aimed at maximising resource efficiency from the very start of her career, Alex has always been passionate about retaining value and believes strongly in evidence-based decision making. She brings her expertise in stakeholder management, circular economy, sustainable materials, and LCA to a variety of projects, including LCAs, foot-printing, sustainable packaging reviews, strategy development and target-setting for clients globally. These include major retailers, brands, manufacturers, and NGOs.

As the 3Keel Programme Lead for the UK-wide coffee pod recycling scheme ‘Podback’, Alex exercised extensive partner engagement to maximise the collaboration. She honed her knowledge of practical end-of-life solutions, recycling, and circularity for difficult-to-recycle materials.

Prior to joining 3Keel in 2017, Alex ran her own small sustainability consultancy and for more than a decade, was a visiting lecturer for The University of Bath. She presented complex information in a digestible manner and designed, developed, authored, and taught courses covering LCA, Environmental Management and Sustainable Development to postgraduate students and corporate clients in the UK and internationally.

Alex is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Environmentalist and holds a BEng in Chemical and Bio-Process Engineering, an MSc in Integrated Environmental Management, and a PhD based on the use of LCA for novel technologies. In 2023, she also added a First Degree Black-Belt in taekwondo to that list!