Press Release
For immediate release

Shaping Future Financial and Fiscal Policies for a More Circular Economy in the UK – CIWM Report Sets Out Lessons Learned.

CIWM has released its latest report titled ‘Shaping future financial and fiscal policies for a more circular economy in the UK’. The research, undertaken by Resource Futures, identifies clear strategies and requirements for future fiscal measures if they are to effectively incentivise a more circular economy in the UK. 

These include:

• Designing more nuanced incentives to achieve contemporary circular economy and waste management goals: reuse and reduction, higher quality recycling, and decarbonisation. 
• Refocusing policy development efforts to sectors and material streams with higher overall impacts.
• Using EPR schemes to explicitly promote reuse.
• Improving existing fiscal levers to create stronger incentives for circularity, including of inert materials.
• Ensuring strong data, monitoring and enforcement, which are essential to ensure incentives have the intended effects. 

The report analyses key policy incentives to assess their impact, unintended consequences, gaps, and interactions (conflicts and synergies) with other incentives. It identifies potential improvements for a more cohesive policy framework in support of circularity.

The research is structured around three overarching aims of resources policy: 

• Decarbonising the waste sector.
• Increasing recycling.
• Reducing resource consumption.

The research identified the weaknesses & problems associated with seven key fiscal and financial incentives, and then produced a range of options for strengthening the policy framework. One proposal is that where money is raised through financial and fiscal policies, this could be used to drive system change towards a circular economy. Another is that realistic response times to prevent unmanageable short term costs need to be factored in.

Dan Cooke, CIWM Director of Policy, Communications and External Affairs, said: “The benefits of incentivising a more circular UK economy, one where materials are kept in use for as long as possible, are clear.  It creates jobs, enables economic growth, and delivers resource resilience and carbon reduction.”

“This timely piece of research provides useful insights for our sector, policy makers, governments and the Circular Economy Taskforce. The findings can help us consider how well-crafted financial incentives and policies can most effectively move us towards a more circular UK economy.”

“The report shows that financial levers can have a powerful effect, and several have already driven positive trends to move materials and behaviours up the waste hierarchy.  It also shows that strong data, monitoring and enforcement are essential to ensure incentives have the intended effects.”

Susan Evans, Policy Lead at Resource Futures, said: “The policy incentives for a more circular, lower-carbon economy need to be adjusted and improved over time as we learn from experience what works and where the gaps are. This report highlights areas where more nuanced fiscal and financial incentives are needed to drive not just more recycling, but higher-quality recycling that contributes more to the economy, as well as reuse and remanufacturing activities which can drastically reduce the environmental impacts of our resource use.”


ENDS


Notes to Editors
The Shaping Future Financial and Fiscal Policies for a More Circular UK Economy report reviewed a number of financial and fiscal policies with two overall aims:
• Analyse key incentives to assess their impact, unintended consequences, gaps, and interaction (conflicts and synergies) with other incentives. 
• Identify potential improvements for a more cohesive policy framework.

Policies were organised into three overarching aims of circular economy and resources management:
• Decarbonising the waste sector
• Increasing recycling
• Reducing resource consumption

The research method was a mix of desk-based research and qualitative stakeholder engagement through one workshop and five interviews with waste and circular economy experts. It also draws on the existing institutional knowledge of both CIWM and Resource Futures.

For each incentive explored a number of key factors are analysed and improvement opportunities are set out.

Full report is available here and an executive summary can be found here.

Press contact:
Austen Lees
T: 01923 608 360
M: 07773 813 210
E: austen@siriuscomms.co.uk