Government’s ‘whack-a-mole’ strategy is making it hard for people to cut down on waste, says report by Green Alliance (under embargo)

Embargo: 00:01 Monday, 29 March 2021

Government policies that target reduction of certain types of waste, such as single use carrier bags, or improvements to certain products, like electronic devices, need to be part of a wider strategy that helps people cut out waste and unnecessary purchases, says a new report by think tank Green Alliance. [1]

The government’s 2018 resources and waste strategy set an aspiration for the UK to become a resource efficient, circular economy. [2] But, in the years since, there has been little progress, with new policies mainly focused on tackling individual high profile waste streams, like plastic straws, microbeads and carrier bags, instead of focusing on systemic barriers to reducing waste and getting the most out of valuable products.

The government’s current approach does not address the UK’s overconsumption of resources and its consequences, which include driving carbon emissions and nature’s destruction. Examples of how the current strategy isn’t helping include:

• Charges for single use carrier bags are not reducing the overall use of plastic for bags: The government claims that its single use carrier bag charge has successfully changed behaviour. [3] But this claim is thrown into doubt by evidence that it is often not behaviour that has changed, but just the bags people are using once and then throwing away. According to research by Greenpeace and the EIA, the average household now buys 57 thicker ‘bags for life’ per year, meaning, perversely, the policy has likely driven up plastic use by weight. [4] A more systemic approach to this problem would involve requiring businesses to report and reduce the sale of ‘bags for life’, introducing higher bag charges for thicker bags, and positioning the bags away from checkouts. These steps would encourage greater reuse and genuinely reduce the problem of plastic bags ending up as waste.

• It is still hard for people to do the right thing with smartphones: The report documents ten hurdles in the life of a durable and repairable smartphone. Systemic reasons why phones do not last as long as they should include: companies pushing unneeded upgrades on consumers, perpetuating an unsustainable business model; lack of access to affordable repair services; and inadequate collection and recycling infrastructure leading to perfectly good devices being discarded before their time. The UK has fewer household waste recycling centres than any country in Europe and recycling facilities largely shred electronics, destroying their valuable components and the critical materials they contain, instead of reusing them. [5] Similar hurdles currently exist for many other products

According to the report, the UK should take the problem of pointless waste much more seriously, helped by an overarching target to cut material use at source. This could be modelled on the UK’s world leading approach to cutting carbon emissions and would focus the attention of government, businesses and consumers, leading to new incentives, behaviours, business models, and the physical and logistical infrastructure needed for more efficient resource use and management. [6]

Green Alliance will also be holding a launch event for the report at noon on Monday, 29 March. Details are available here.

Libby Peake, Head of resource policy at Green Alliance, said:

“Playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with waste, like banning plastic straws and charging for single use carrier bags, won’t get us to the sustainable, zero waste economy people want. We need an ambitious target to focus minds and genuinely start reducing how much stuff we consume, in the same way the UK’s net zero target is doing for climate change.”

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Notes for editors

Green Alliance
Green Alliance is a charity and independent think tank, focused on ambitious leadership for the environment. With a track record of over 40 years, Green Alliance has worked with the most influential leaders from the NGO, business, academic and political communities. Our work generates new thinking and dialogue, and has increased political action and support for environmental solutions in the UK. www.green-alliance.org.uk

Circular Economy Task Force

The research is published as part of Green Alliance’s work for the Circular Economy Task Force, a business led a forum for policy, innovation and business thinking on resource use in the UK. The current members include Kingfisher, PwC, SUEZ, Veolia, Viridor and Walgreens Boots Alliance. The analysis and recommendations in this report are solely those of Green Alliance and do not necessarily reflect the views of the experts consulted or the members of the task force.

[1] Targeting success: why the UK needs a new vision for resource use is available at: https://green-alliance.org.uk/resources/Targeting_success.pdf. The report will be discussed at a launch event at noon on 29March: ‘How do we stop our resource use driving climate change and biodiversity loss?’. It will be chaired by environmental journalists Lucy Siegle, and panellists will include: Dr Ashok Khosla OBE, chair, Development Alternatives, and former co-chair, International Resource Panel, UN Environment Programme; Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, director, Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations, University of Bath; and Dr Colin Church, chief executive, Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining. Details are available here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_np8330oATGikuEvXyr-1cw

[2] In the consultation version of the Waste Prevention Plan released in March 2021, it further boasted of ‘the success of charging schemes, introduced for plastic carrier bags, in achieving behaviour change’. However, the charges so far only apply to large supermarkets and do not account for the use of bags for life, which supermarkets do not even have to report. Multiple commentators have observed that the weight of the stronger bags means there is every chance that the amount of plastic used in carrier bags has actually increased overall because of England’s policy. (See, for instance: See, for instance, P Purnell and A Velenturf, 2019, ‘Our waste, our resources: a strategy for England – a response from the Resource Recovery from Waste (RRfW) research programme’; and Channel 4 FactCheck, 6 August 2019, ‘No, plastic bag sales aren’t down 90 per cent’.) This would not have happened if the policy was better designed and the bags were used as intended

[3] Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) press release, July 2020, ‘Plastic carrier bag sales slashed by more than 95% since 5p charge introduced’

[4] Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Greenpeace, 2021, Checking out on plastics III

[5] Environmental Audit Committee, 2020, Electronic waste and the circular economy

[6] The UK has established a world leading reputation for its approach to reducing carbon emissions, particularly through a rigorous target setting and review process. The report says that the UK should now repeat the success of its approach to net zero and become the first major economy with a target and clear plan to halve resource use. Evidence suggests this is needed as the UK’s use of resources is twice what the UN considers sustainable and resource use drives half of the world’s climate emissions and 90 per cent of biodiversity loss. The report also says the plan should include targets for specific sectors and critical materials to increase the resilience of the economy as industries will face different challenges, and some materials become potentially rarer or more expensive to source in future