The policy commitment highlighted remanufacturing as a “growing industry” that “provides jobs in every region, and for every skill level.”
Labour has also said that it will undertake a review of resource security as “volatile” raw materials prices require “action”. The party claims its approach “will create confidence in the long-term demand for recycled material, encouraging more investment, boosting growth and high-skilled jobs and improving resource security”.
The party has said it wants to turn Britain into a “world leader in green technology and innovation over the next decade” and so will “develop an active industrial strategy for the green economy [and] provide the Green Investment Bank with borrowing powers as soon as possible so that it can invest in green businesses and technology.
“There are also wider opportunities to create jobs in Britain by using all our resources more efficiently and recycling waste at home rather than exporting it abroad”.
Included in the plan was a reaffirmation of the pledge made in Labour’s manifesto of creating one million new green jobs. Also pledged is an £150 million ($223 million/€209 million) investment in “better environmental protection”.
There are plans to establish a new National Infrastructure Commission to monitor government goals to “increase resource and energy efficiency” and “reduce emissions across the economy”. According to the party, implementing Labour’s decarbonisation targets will mean that “most new generation[s] through the 2020s will be low carbon”.
Letsrecycle.com criticised the plan for having “few new policy revelations […] and no mention of whether the Party would support an Office for Resource Management (ORM) within government – a policy called for last month by the All-Party Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group”. A report in March 2015 found that the UK could lose out on £3 billion ($4.4 billion/€4.1 billion) if it failed to embrace remanufacturing.