Learning from a circular economy pioneer

A major research programme encompassing 34 universities and 200 industry partners has been launched to catalyse the UK’s shift to a circular economy. The National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) programme is supported by a £30 million UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) investment. The programme is delivered in partnership with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), to ensure research outcomes contribute to delivery of government policy.

Several beauty and personal care majors have joined 100+ businesses in signing a statement from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation calling for recycling costs and responsibilities to be extended to industry. The public statement​​ said that without Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) – where supply chain members were mandated to take on certain costs and joint responsibility – packaging collection and recycling was “unlikely to be meaningfully scaled” ​in the future. Among the 100+ signatories, including a raft of food and beverage players like Coca-Cola and Nestlé, non-profit WWF and the European Investment Bank, several leading beauty players had aligned their support, including Beiersdorf, Henkel, L’Oréal, Schwarz Group and Unilever, among others. “For a circular economy, packaging that can’t be eliminated or reused must be collected, sorted and recycled or composted after use. But currently, the economics do not stack up: collection, sorting and recycling or processing packaging costs more than the revenues made from selling the recycled materials. We need dedicated, ongoing and sufficient funding to make the economics of recycling work,”​ the Ellen MacArthur Foundation said.

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