May 9 2006
A new two-year Business Plan launched today at the House of Commons by WRAP (the Waste & Resources Action Programme) sets out WRAP’s strategy for making a major contribution to increasing market capacity for recycled materials, and to reducing waste generated by both consumers and businesses.
“Since 2001, WRAP has delivered 6 million tonnes extra recycling capacity through its market development work, and, at consumer level, has exceeded its target by raising the number of committed recyclers in the population by 12 per cent,” says WRAP chief executive Jennie Price.
By stimulating further recycling capacity and delivering high impact waste minimisation campaigns, WRAP is looking to eliminate or divert from landfill an additional 3.2 million tonnes of material per year by 2008, as well as turning another 4 million adults into ‘committed recyclers’.
“We have sharpened our focus to ensure that we make the maximum impact on improving the UK’s materials resource efficiency,” says Jennie Price. “We will be concentrating our efforts where large tonnage gains can be made, such as the construction industry which is the UK’s single largest user of material resources, or where there are major market or behavioural barriers we believe can be overcome.”
One of WRAP’s key objectives is to create a much larger scale of demand for the wide range of recycled materials and products now available, many of which have been developed with WRAP’s help over the last five years. A good example of this is a major project on the closed loop recycling of HDPE milk bottles, based on technology already developed with WRAP funding, which has demonstrated the potential for a major shift from virgin to recycled material use.
Jennie Price explains: “This will be the first time this particular technology has been applied on a commercial scale anywhere in the world. We already have the support of a leading dairy, their packaging manufacturer and a top retailer for this project, and I am confident that, with the commitment and expertise of our partners, it will be a success.”
WRAP has also released figures today that show how recycling can make a positive contribution not just to the economy but also to tackling climate change. The new report, produced with the help of leading researchers from the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste, shows that current UK recycling saves 10-15 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases a year compared to incineration and landfill.
“Now that more people are actively recycling, it is a powerful and encouraging message to be able to quantify the environmental benefits their actions can deliver and this report is a very positive benchmark,” adds Jennie Price.