A real circular economy means products designed to be dismantled and reused; mandatory recycled content in all key materials (not just PET); repair and remanufacturing as the default, not the niche and 'waste' becoming feedstock, not landfill or ash.
Until it’s more expensive and inconvenient not to be circular, we’re just spinning plates - the same old plates - while our collection vehicles get pricier (now electric @ £420'000 each so we can feel good about the same journey) and yet we're still do nothing fundamentally different with the waste - link
This isn’t good enough - not for the UK, not for the planet, and not for the people working every day to fix a broken system.
Where are the mandatory take-back schemes - the regulated design-for-disassembly standards - the real-time digital tracking of waste flows - the repairability indexes on products that break the minute you glance at them and the procurement policies that ban buying the unfixable, the unrecyclable, the wilfully wasteful?
In the UK (globally) we need systems, rules, return paths and actual consequences for products that are designed to fail the planet.
Look at the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) - mandated by the EU (e.g. product passports, repairability, take-back) - whilst the UK has consulted... again and again - link
Design-for-disassembly - look at France’s AGEC law or Japan’s EPR for electronics - how circularity starts at the screwdriver - link
Right to Repair - which products actually come with parts, manuals, and affordable fixes? not many. The EU’s Right to Repair rules (adopted 2023) directly target premature obsolescence by requiring spare parts, repair information, and design-for-repair in certain products.
Procurement power - if institutions only bought circular, half the products on our company's 'Client Procurement Blacklist' would disappear overnight.
Take-back Schemes - voluntary schemes still dominate in the UK - the incinerators and landfills are very grateful for the steady business.
EPR with teeth - “Modulated fees” and “eco-design incentives” are still all talk without enforcement.
Until the UK stops circling the drain of voluntary pledges and catches up with the enforceable standards already rolling out in the EU, we’re not building a circular economy - we’re just polishing the linear one and pretending it’s round.
The last government/s kicked the cans down the road (a few feet). Several frameworks and reforms exist but without real-world enforcement - they delivered consultations over action, strategy over systems and voluntary flourishes over mandatory change - it time for action - now - the clock is ticking - more like this - link
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