Exporting Opportunity? Putting UK waste to work at home and abroad

10th January 2014

The UK has made huge improvements in how it manages its waste in recent years, and the waste management sector is a real 'good news' story for UK plc: providing many thousands of jobs to the economy and showing sustained growth throughout these challenging financial times.

As the process of managing our waste has developed and become more sophisticated, there has been a growing awareness of the vital importance of treating our waste materials as a ‘resource’, and reflecting this at all times in the way in which we handle them.

This report considers the export of both recyclates and waste derived fuels. Both have developed as exports due to a range of different factors, including energy and labour costs, as well as available domestic reprocessing and treatment capacity, and these exports have been important in helping the waste management sector meet ambitious new recovery and recycling targets, as well as landfill diversion targets.

A report by the All-Party Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group (APSRG).