The European economy could be transformed by 2020 through wide-scale adoption of a resource efficient circular economy, according to WRAP.
Launching its EU 2020 Vision, WRAP has identified business competitive improvements of £330 billion and improved trade balance of £90 billion.
Speaking to UK and European business leaders at WRAP’s annual conference in London, WRAP chief executive Liz Goodwin pinpointed food as one of the most wasted resources and called for “concerted action” to halve UK household waste by 2025.
She said: “Understanding the potential for the circular economy is one thing, achieving it is something far more complex and challenging. Our challenge and opportunity today is to go one step further, and understand how we can turn ideas behind the circular economy into positive action.
“Building a more resource efficient circular economy will help us deliver a more sustainable future and I intend WRAP to be at the heart of delivering the vision in the UK and beyond. This will help deliver benefits to our funders, to business, and to consumers.”
WRAP’s work on biomass and material flows has shown that food is one of the heaviest users of resources. Therefore efficient food production and consumption is critical to a circular economy.
Liz Goodwin added: “At WRAP, we think that by 2025 it could be possible to prevent up to another 15 million tonnes of avoidable household food waste.
“This means that food worth a staggering £45 billion could be saved. If collectively, working together, we could do this, it would mean reducing avoidable UK food waste by half by 2025, compared to when we first started to work in this area in 2007.”
