OPINION: How can we achieve the UK’s circular economy ambitions by 2040?
This is one of the critical questions members of the Environmental Services Association (ESA) will address with peers and policymakers at our annual one-day conference next week.
The ESA is currently working up its “Vision 2040” position paper setting out an ambitious but pragmatic pathway for the future for the UK’s circular economy. By 2040 we want to have doubled resource-productivity from the national baseline and eliminated all avoidable waste, which will be achieved through a range of interdependent interventions across the spectrum of policy, research and development, service delivery and infrastructure investment.
We believe that our circular economy aspirations will be achieved through five broad themes:
- Reducing waste arisings.
- Maximising the recyclability of waste that cannot be avoided.
- Increasing participation across the value chain.
- Improving recycling and waste treatment processes to maximise material capture.
- Preventing waste from leaving the closed loop by minimising “leakage”.
This will require fundamental changes to societal consumption patterns alongside significantly increasing the prevalence of reuse and repair for products and packaging before they are discarded. Designing-out waste by considering the real-world lifecycle impacts of products and packaging will also play a key role in reducing waste arisings, and this includes considerations around appropriate material usage – ensuring materials are used appropriately and efficiently within the circular economy system.
We believe that all materials placed on the market should have a circular economy solution, which the ESA defines as meeting a clear end-of-waste specification as a product, construction material or low-carbon fuel with a viable end market. Achieving this will necessitate a design focus on the post-consumer journey of materials and may require measures such as switching materials or formats, or greater use of mono-material constructions, particularly for packaging. It will also be essential that markets, and corresponding demand, for secondary materials are incentivised and developed in order to close the loop.
For the circular economy system to function in synchronisation, it will require the participation of all across the value chain, which will necessitate consistent and comprehensive recycling services across the UK alongside communications campaigns to engage consumers and businesses to use them – not just as a one-off but in perpetuity.
Limiting residues arising from the post-consumer journey of waste material will also play an important role in reducing avoidable waste to zero. To do this, the recycling and waste management industry will need to focus on measures to reduce process losses; minimise sorting inefficiencies; create and deliver standardised outputs from waste materials and deploy technological innovations – such as AI and robotics – to support these goals. Energy from Waste (EfW) equipped with carbon capture will continue to play a vital role in maximising the circular economic value of the remaining residues as we virtually eliminate landfill.
Once all of this is in place, we must prevent waste material from leaking out of the loop once it has been closed. This means eradicating waste crime and ensuring that any and all post-consumer material destined for export has already undergone domestic processing to achieve an end-of-waste specification.
Our members have an enviable track record of delivering significant infrastructure and essential services across the United Kingdom, and the billions they have invested in the UK has played a central role in moving millions of tonnes of waste material up the waste hierarchy over the past 25 years. We stand poised to invest a further £15 billion in the UK’s circular economy to achieve our Vision 2040 – creating 40,000 new jobs across Britain in activities such as reuse, repair and material reprocessing, but this will require investable conditions achieved through a strong policy and regulatory landscape.
We look forward to further working with government, other stakeholders and the Circular Economy Task Force to develop a roadmap for the waste sector specifically in 2026, and we view the work currently underway on our Vision 2040 position paper as offering a head-start on this process – with our conference providing the most immediate opportunity to discuss, not just the more immediate delivery of the Collection and Packaging Reforms, but also the long-term trajectory towards a more circular economy.
Want to learn more about the Vision 2040 report and the work of the ESA? Join the association and its members at the ESA Conference on 4 June 2025 at the Royal Horseguards Hotel in London. Find out more and buy tickets here (ESA members can attend for free).
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