Technological watch

Opinion: Paul Empson, General Manager, Bakers Basco

Paul Empson, General Manager, Bakers Basco, explains how a circular economy will never work if officials continue to turn a blind eye.

The UK Government has vowed to set legally binding targets to clean up the UK through a framework that ‘specifically supports the UK and its priorities’. It promises to ensure that all plastic packaging in the UK will be recyclable or reusable by 2025, along with eliminating ‘all avoidable waste’ of any kind by 2050. That’s according to a new report entitled ‘The Benefits of Brexit: How the UK is taking advantage of leaving the EU’, which laid out plans for ‘delivering cleaner air for all’ and ‘reducing waste to create a circular economy’.

× Bakers Basco

Paul Empson

Banning the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds, and increasing the plastic bag charge to 10 pence across all retailers are, of course, important steps in the fight against climate change. But for the circular economy to wholly work, it has to go beyond domestic waste. There’s a darker side of the plastics industry being overlooked that is preventing any progress towards a circular economy - and officials are still turning a blind eye to it.

A clampdown on plastics is key to the climate change fight, rightly pointed out by EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius, amid preparations for the UN Environment Assembly Summit starting in Nairobi on 28 February 28. Sinkevicius spoke of how restricting virgin plastic production was inevitably an important part” of a global treaty. Our baskets are made of 100% virgin plastic, If stolen plastic equipment was looked at more.

We’ve long talked about the benefits of a

Publication date: 14/02/2022

European Plastic Product Manufacturer

This project has been co-funded with the support of the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union [LIFE17 ENV/ES/000438] Life programme

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Last update: 2022-01-31