Reimagining resources: what’s holding back the circular economy?

The Green Alliance Podcast

Green Alliance

Environment, Uk, Farming, Green Alliance, News, Sustainability, Society & Culture, Government

4.9 • 34 Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Libby Peake, senior fellow and head of resources policy, sits down with Emily Carr, policy adviser, alongside members of Green Alliance’s Circular Economy Task Force, including our chair, Dr Colin Church, CEO of IOM3, Iain Gulland, CEO of Zero Waste Scotland, Harriet Lamb, CEO of WRAP, and Dr Adam Read, Director of External Affairs at SUEZ, to discuss the circular economy and what the new government needs to do to bring about the policies we need to see to reduce resource use. In this conversation, our guests discuss where previous administrations have failed and what the new government must do differently to avoid past mistakes. They explore the benefits of embracing circularity, including its potential to boost economic growth. They highlight the urgent need for policy interventions that will best enable businesses to innovate and embrace circularity. A linear system has no future, and transitioning to a circular economy is the clear path forward- our guests dig down into exactly how the government can lead the charge and make this crucial shift happen.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We are the charity and think tank that is all about
0:07.5	ambitious leadership for the environment. I'm Head of Resources Libby Peak and I'm here to talk
0:12.5	about the circular economy and what the new government needs to do to actually bring about the
0:18.1	policies we need to see to reduce resource use.
0:23.1	And there's been lots of really positive developments.
0:27.6	The Labour manifesto committed to reducing waste by moving to a circular economy,
0:32.1	which was the first time that they ever mentioned the word circular economy in their manifesto.
0:36.2	And since the election, Environment Secretary Steve Reed has had real ambition when it comes to this long-neglected area of
0:38.6	environmental policy. He's made it one of his top priorities as Secretary of State for the Environment,
0:43.8	and he's launching a circular economy task force of the government's own to create a new circular economy
0:50.1	strategy for England underpinned by roadmaps for high-impact sectors. So this is great news and
0:55.7	something that we, along with our business partners in the original circular economy task force,
1:00.2	have been calling for for a long time. It also, it has to be said, is something that has been
1:06.3	theoretically embraced by previous administrations and secretaries of state, notably Michael
1:11.3	Gove, who oversaw the creation of the 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy for England, which promised
1:16.2	that the plan would see the UK become, and I quote, a world leader in using resources efficiently
1:21.1	and reducing the amount of waste we create as a society. Since then, though, the policy delivery
1:26.5	has been checkered, to put it mildly,
1:28.9	with the National Audit Office concluding that Defer does not know what it needs to do to achieve
1:33.3	its ambitions over the long term, and the OEP similarly in a very scathing vein, calling its
1:38.3	efforts on the waste hierarchy largely ineffective. So that's all a bit gloomy, and at Green Alliance, we don't want to dwell on the
1:45.5	past and we're solutions focused. But we think that to understand what went wrong and the why
	...

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