WRAP Outlines £330 Billion Economic Growth Potential For EU From Smarter Resource Use
WRAP’s EU 2020 Vision pinpoints food as one of the most wasted resources and calls for “concerted action” to halve UK household food waste by 2025. Business opportunities from more efficient resource use include:
* Business competitiveness improvements of £330 billion (Eur400 billion)
* The potential for an additional 160,000 people to be employed in the recycling sector
* Improved trade balance of £90 billion (Eur110 billion)
* 500 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent could be avoided
* 190 million tonnes less extracted raw materials and imported goods used
* 220 million tonnes less waste produced
* 350 million tonnes more materials recycled.
Dr Liz Goodwin, head of WRAP, is calling on businesses to work together to achieve these benefits.
“Understanding the potential for the circular economy is one thing, achieving it is something far more complex and challenging. Our challenge and opportunity today is to go one step further, and understand how we can turn ideas behind the circular economy into positive action.”
She continues: “Building a more resource efficient circular economy will help us deliver a more sustainable future and I intend WRAP to be at the heart of delivering the vision in the UK and beyond. This will deliver benefits to our funders, to business, and to consumers.”
WRAP’s work on biomass and material flows shows that food is one of the heaviest uses of resources and the stream in which most is currently wasted. Efficient food production and consumption is therefore critical to a circular economy.
Dr Goodwin calls for a collective ambition to further reduce household food waste.
She says this could be achieved by wider adoption of initiatives already underway, for example the recent roll-out of a Love Food Hate Waste behaviour change campaign across West London Boroughs which saved councils £8 for each £1 invested. She adds: “At WRAP, we think that by 2025 it could be possible to prevent up to another 15 million tonnes of avoidable household food waste. This means that food worth a staggering £45 billion could be saved. If collectively, working together, we could do this, it would mean reducing avoidable UK food waste by half by 2025, compared to when we first started work in this area, in 2007.”
