Mission: A clear national mission focused on the circular economy will overcome the uncertainty of the current policy environment and ensure the long-term commitment that stakeholders are asking for. This should be driven by government's overall ambition of doubling resource productivity by 2050, bolstered by a set of specific metrics to drive action, including sector-specific circular economy targets linked to business models.

Issue heard by the Review

Action recommended

Delivery of existing government waste reforms is too slow; these reforms underpin the UK's ability to move to more efficient and circular resource use. Industry engagement in extended producer responsibility work has tailed off.

Deliver urgently on commitments that the UK has already made on collection and packaging reforms, including extended producer responsibility, standardised collection, and deposit return schemes. Industry engagement must be central to design and rollout of schemes, which should focus on a strategic approach rather than isolated measures relating to individual products.

Commercially viable circular economy business models are not readily available for key sectors. Collaboration between public and private sector actors is needed to identify these and unblock any barriers.

Launch a task force to work jointly with industry to identify barriers and enablers and develop sector-specific circular economy business models for priority sectors. This should have representation from BEIS, Defra, DLUHC, HMT and DIT, and include the role of extended producer responsibility in promoting reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and rental alongside recycling, in line with the powers under the Environment Act 2021.

There is an economic opportunity in onshoring the UK's plastic processing - and concerns about whether plastic waste is properly recycled when exported

End export of UK plastic waste by 2027, and in parallel set an end date for the import of recycled plastic chips, subject to the UK's international legal responsibilities. To drive domestic demand for high-quality recycled materials, ratchet up minimum percentage recycled content targets for a range of products in consultation with industry.

Additional UK processing capacity is needed to enable ambitious reuse and recycling targets, particularly for plastics and critical minerals. There is also a need to think ahead to new or additional processing capacity for future green industries.

Delivering UK recycling infrastructure capacity in key areas. Areas to consider include:

•  plastic processing capacity (an additional one million tonnes)

•  domestic capabilities in the circular economy of critical minerals

•  the necessary infrastructure to support textile collection and fibre recycling.

In doing this, the Government should consider the expected profile of private sector investment in building UK recycling infrastructure - and explore opportunities to further enable such investment if current expectations fall short of domestic need.

Moving to a circular economy requires sharing of commercially sensitive information about supply chains between private sector actors.

Task WRAP440 with developing a report jointly for BEIS and Defra to understand the right role for Government in supporting resource matching across the private sector, learning from, for example, Invest NI and the National Industrial Symbiosis Partnership. This must ensure resource planning to achieve symbiosis rather than just waste exchange.