IMechE action plan for reuse to be commercially viable
The professional body says the UK must reform its economic incentives, regulation and infrastructure for a circular economy to develop.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) warns that engineering solutions already exist or are emerging, but businesses lack the financial incentives, policy certainty and infrastructure needed to scale them.
It calls for the government to:
- Make reuse pay. Introduce measures such as resource taxation, recycled-content requirements and circularity standards in public procurement to make resource recovery and reuse more commercially competitive.
- Give industry long-term certainty. Establish stable regulatory frameworks, clearer standards and predictable carbon-pricing trajectories to give businesses the confidence to invest.
- Build the infrastructure for circularity. Prioritise investment in resource-recovery hubs, water recycling, carbon transport networks and industrial clusters that enable businesses to share resources and reuse by-products.
Kahu Te Kani, Senior Policy Advisor at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers says, 'Practical opportunities already exist across industry, including recovering materials from decommissioned wind turbines, reusing wastewater, converting existing refinery infrastructure to process waste-based feedstocks and recovering valuable resources from industrial by-products.
'Government needs to intervene to align a new circular economy with the UK’s Industrial Strategy and Net Zero objectives.'
The report, Moving to a Circular Economy in the Process Sector draws on four webinars examining the process industries, identifies economic incentives, fragmented regulation, ageing infrastructure and a lack of consistent data as major barriers to progress.
It also highlights the importance of designing circularity into products, plants and infrastructure from the outset. IMechE says that retrofitting systems designed around disposal and virgin materials can be costly and difficult, while current decisions can lock in resource use for decades.
