The recycling industry in the UK could lead to the creation of 10,000 new jobs by 2020, along with net exports of over £20 billion. These are some of the findings contained in the ‘Going for Growth’ report published recently by the Environmental Services Association (ESA) and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), and reported in The Guardian.
It also suggests that outside the recycling sector, businesses could reduce their costs by £50 billion a year through savings made on energy and raw materials. And things could be even better than this if other activities are included, such as developing new design techniques to reduce the need to recycle, which could see 50,000 new jobs created and a GDP boost of £3 billion a year.
The report also highlighted that 395 million tonnes of material that is able to be recycled will go through the waste management sector in the UK from now until 2020. However, only 255 million tonnes of this is going to be recycled based on current rates. By recycling the rest, we could see a huge boost of £1.4 billion to economy.
The focus of the report is how we need to not only focus on recycling, but on how the design of products will also have a huge impact over the coming years. It also suggests that the UK could become less reliant on raw materials such as rare earths in the future by focusing more on reusing and recycling used materials rather than treating it as waste.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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