Great Britain is falling behind “not just in developed economies, but developing ones as well”, despite a recent government report on the benefits of remanufacturing.
Dr. Winifred Ijomah, Director of the new Scottish Institute for Remanufacture (SIR), made the comments during a panel discussion on the ‘Triple Win’ report on the social, environmental and economic benefits of remanufacturing, created by the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Manufacturing (APGM) and Sustainable Resource (APSRG), edie reported.
Ijomah expressed her dissappointment that “all of the major industrial regions have a national centre for expertise to forward their knowledge on product recovery including remanufacture, except for the UK. Expertise to exploit these opportunities in the UK is dispersed and is therefore ineffective”.
She added: “We have got the correct mix of skills, industry and workforce, and we have a good transport network. The key weakness is our current system; it prevents access to those opportunities. We’re manufacturing in a different environment than we were last century, but our systems have not changed, and they have got to.”
The London conference was co-chaired by Caroline Spelman, who said that while people have taken on board the report’s findings, including the European Commission with its circular economy package, “barriers still remain. I recently bumped into one of the most senior civil servants at Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs], and he hadn’t even heard of remanufacturing. It’s a bit depressing”.
David Cornish, Global Sustainability Manager at AkzoNobel, which is exploring remanufacturing opportunities in the paint industry, said at the event: “The current remanufacturing regulations seem to be in place to stop bad folks doing bad things.
“Those of us, in whatever market, that are trying to turn waste into something new, see ourselves as good guys trying to do good things. The signals that come out of government about remanufacturing at least need to be consistent.”
The event coincided with a new report from waste think-tank RSA and resource firm SUEZ revealing that 1.6 million tonnes of bulky waste is sent to landfill in the UK every year, despite over 50 percent of it being reusable.