17 Sept. 2024: Defra circular economy minister Mary Creagh has revealed plans to inject energy into increasing UK reuse and recycling rates, including potentially increasing the scope of extended producer responsibility (EPR).

At an event organised by the Green Alliance, she also announced that a circular economy taskforce, convened by the Alliance, had begun recruiting representatives from industry, academia and civil society.

She said the taskforce will advise the Government and help produce sector-by-sector plans. While it will primarily apply to England, it will closely co-ordinate with all four UK administrations.
Creagh noted that, under the previous Government, implementing EPR for packaging and a national deposit return scheme (DRS) for drinks bottles and cans had faced repeated delays, and that recycling rates had flatlined in much of the UK.

She said: “Essentially, there hasn’t been much new policy in the waste sector and it is something that I’ve pressed on very hard in opposition.”

She told the event that progressing EPR would be a priority: “It will create 21,000 jobs, stimulate more than £10bn of investment in the recycling sector over the next decade, and see packaging producers, rather than us as taxpayers, covering the costs of managing waste.”

EPR, she said, could be expanded. She also signalled that Labour would ramp up efforts to harness critical minerals from used electronic devices and mobile phones.

She assured the event that the Government was committed to implementing a DRS and was “on track” for implementing it in 2027.

Promising tougher measures on food waste, she said the UK’s food waste mountain was “an abomination in a country where we have so many children growing up in poverty”.

Creagh argued that permits for waste carriers were open to abuse and would be digitised: “Opportunities for fraud are massive and losses to the economy are huge. It’s a lot easy to defraud the waste system than it is to deal in drugs or traffic people.”

Creagh served as shadow environment secretary and was chair of the Environmental Audit Committee. She is the UK’s first minister with explicit responsibility for the circular economy and nature.

She said the Government is reviewing nature targets and England’s environmental improvement plan and would report “before the end of the year”. She promised a UK biodiversity strategy action plan “in due course”.

The minister will attend COP16 UN Biodiversity Summit in Colombia in October and COP29 UN Climate Summit in Azerbaijan in November.

The deadline for applications to join the Circular Economy Taskforce is 25 September.

by Will Hatchett, https://www.packagingnews.co.uk