Press releases

• Recycle Now launches theme for Recycle Week 2022
• Coca-Cola GB, Danone, innocent, McDonald's UK and Ocado announced as first sponsors, with more on the way

The Accelerating Growth Fund Ltd (AGF), a subsidiary of climate action NGO WRAP, today announced a first key investment made on behalf of the Future of Plastics Fund, a new Circular Economy impact fund being established by Archipelago Eco Investors to focus on the interlinked issues of plastic waste and climate. 

This first investment on behalf of the Future of Plastics Fund is into Greyparrot, a cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) Waste Recognition System and Analytics Platform which will enable better sorting of plastics and other waste streams.

• WRAP develops world’s first methodology to accurately measure and report food and drink GHG emissions consistently in a huge advance in the fight against climate change.
• 15 Courtauld 2030 signatories, from suppliers to high street retailers, testing protocols to accelerate progress on scope 3 accounting across the sector.
• UK pioneers work to inform international approach to consistent measuring and reporting of scope 3 GHG emissions.

• In just 10 months, Textiles 2030 has commitment on environmental targets from retailers and brands making up almost two thirds of clothing placed on the UK market.
• Latest signatories eBay, River Island and Oliver Bonas represent three key parts of industry - home textiles, circular economy innovators and brands pledging to reduce carbon and water footprints and accelerate circularity in the UK.
• The updated Textiles 2030 Footprint tool now measures the environmental impact of home textiles products. 

• TV presenter JJ Chalmers joins Recycle Now and Clear on Plastics to encourage people to recycle plastic bags and wrapping at front of store in a new nationwide ‘Repeat the Cycle’ campaign, launching today.
• 4,000 supermarkets across the UK now collect clean, used household plastic bags and wrapping for recycling at front of store.
• One of the ‘last plastics’* in our bins - plastic bags and wrapping make up 22% of plastic packaging but unlike many other plastics are not widely collected at kerbside, meaning only 6% is recycled**.

• Two of the leading global plastics organisations to work together to end plastic pollution

• Welsh trials find new uses for ‘difficult to recycle’ items by turning ‘waste’ into new products.
• Coffee cups and crisp packets become decking, recycled polypropylene goes into food waste caddies and medical containers.
• Industry standards updated as a result of the successful incorporation of recycled plastics in sharps containers.

On day two of the UK’s annual Food Waste Action Week (Tuesday 8 March), Resources and Waste Minister Jo Churchill joined Vince Kelly, culinary lecturer at Westminster Kingsway College and Guardians of Grub Ambassador and Catherine David, Director of Collaboration and Change at WRAP for a special tutorial to tackle the most wasted foods in the home

• With UK households wasting on average the equivalent of eight meals a week, (87,000 tonnes of food waste across all households in seven days), TV presenter Gregg Wallace joins Food Waste Action Week to help households get on top of food waste and spread the message Wasting Food Feeds Climate Change.
• To launch the week, Love Food Hate Waste will be revealing a shocking new installation showing the scale of UK household food waste from one single household over one year in the form of a 10ft food waste planet.**
• New survey finds the UK freezers contain UFOs (*unidentified frozen objects) with over a third of people admitting their freezer is sometimes a total disaster, and extremely hard to work out the contents. 19% of people threw away something frozen in the past two weeks because it has laid dormant for too long.
• Food Waste Action Week goes global with Weeks running simultaneously in Canada, the USA, South Africa, Australia and Mauritius.

• New research and recommendations from WRAP signal the end of unnecessary plastic packaging and Best Before labels on a wide range of fresh uncut fruit and vegetables in the UK.

• Evidence shows that selling fresh produce loose and removing date labels could prevent 14 million shopping baskets worth of food from going to waste and 1,100 rubbish trucks of avoidable plastic simply by allowing people to buy what they need.
• WRAP calls for removal of more unnecessary and problematic single use plastic items under The UK Plastics Pact, including wrapping on multi-packs of tinned food and sauce sachets in restaurants.