According to a recent report the UK must concentrate more on recycling and recovering materials, and it must also improve resource efficiency and the durability of consumer products.

The report Reinventing the wheel: a circular economy for resource security published last week (October 5) by the Green Alliance. The study examined the advantages and disadvantages of using pricing to improve the circulation of three crucial major resources – metals, phosphorous and water.

The Green Alliance says there needs to be a more circular use of these resources in the economy, which it claims would avoid some of the damaging, environmental impacts of extracting them as well as avoid the negative impacts of generating waste.

Using information provided by the Designing out Waste consortium, the report makes a number of key policy recommendations. This include improving collection rates and incentives for recovery of materials and introducing recycling rates that focus on specific materials and their quality, rather than simply on tonnages.

It also says that the product must be designed to make recover and reuse easier to prolong its life span. Measures to avoid leakage of valuable materials through exports should also be taken.

The Green Alliance argues that a multi-pronged approach is needed to improve product design, drive up the capture of products at end of life, and ensure that good substitutes are available for materials that will become more difficult to access in the future.

It is calling on the Government to promote economic incentives that encourage the waste and recycling industry to adopt a ‘whole life’ approach to products and materials.

Recipro certainly supports this new report and sees the construction industry playing a huge part in making this happen, with 13% of all construction materials been disposed of before ever being used there is certainly room for improvement.

Recipro sourced this article from Edie.