The programme’s chairman Peter Stone said that his organisation intends to build on its track record as a respected facilitator in this space, working with business on collaboration and helping to research and develop practical solutions that could push forward circularity.

Writing in WRAP’s annual report released this week, Stone said: “Confidence and vision are needed to see the business case for investment, and then design business models which move us away from the traditional ‘make, use, dispose, make another’ approach”.

He stressed the need to scale up current efforts, which are being driven mainly by larger companies.

“The market is inevitably immature, and my sense is that these developments are still tentative and embryonic rather than mainstream within business strategy.”

Back in May, WRAP’s chief executive Liz Goodwin warned that the UK needed to be bolder in pushing through new business models that could extract maximum value from waste and recover and regenerate the component parts and materials at the end of life.

Over the past 12 months, WRAP has been instrumental in promoting the concept of a circular economy both with the UK and abroad. Earlier this year, it joined the Circular Economy 100 group, which is being led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

WRAP’s own work has shown that by 2020, a more circular economic model could see the UK economy using 30 million tonnes fewer material inputs, producing 20% less waste, and recycling 20 million tonnes more materials back into the industrial eco-system.

How is your business making sense of the circular economy? Take part in our survey and help inform the next stage of edie’s Resource Revolution campaign

Maxine Perella

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