Closing the Loop - Purchasing

This final section will briefly discuss the role of purchasing recycled goods. Buying recycled products helps 'close the loop', creating a demand for the materials recovered by recycling collection schemes. For recycling to work, there need to be markets for the products made with recycled materials. Buying recycled helps keep reusable material in the economy, reduces waste and conserves resources, particularly energy.

Many products contain recycled materials as part of the normal manufacturing process. These include certain types of packaging, such as glass jars, and steel or aluminium cans. There are also products where the buyer can choose a recycled product in preference to one made entirely of virgin material, such as copying paper or kitchen towels. Other products offer an entirely different use for recycled material. Waste plastic is used to make benches, waste tyres to make roofing slates and waste glass to make paving.

Making Choices

There are many words and phrases, which describe recycled products. To have the most impact, it is considered best to buy products that contain a high percentage of post-consumer waste. Such products are made from other finished products or other materials that have served their intended use and have been discarded for disposal or recovery.

The question of quality is of considerable importance when specifying a product. In addition, where recycled content products are concerned, there is much confusion regarding the terms used and what precisely is meant by 'recycled' when applied to a particular product.

There are a number of accreditation and labelling schemes that can assist in making product choices. The most comprehensive ones include a range of critieria such as energy consumption, as well as recycled content. Examples are:

EU Eco Label

• www.eco-label.com/ - contains a catalogue of products
• www.europa.eu.int/comm/environment/ecolabel/index_en.htm – information about the scheme

German Blue Angel

• www.blauer-engel.de - includes list of products & downloadable product criteria

The more recycled products your business can procure the more likely it will be that demand for recycled materials will be sustained. This in turn can stimulate further investment into recycling infrastructure and lead to less waste being disposed of into landfill in future.

Action Point Talk to your suppliers. They can provide information about recycled content of products and sometimes include this in their literature. This is becoming more common particularly for stationery products.

Recycle Resources The Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs has published a free guide to labelling called ‘A Shopper’s Guide to Green Labels’. Download it here. Buy plastics that can be easily recycled. Plastic wastes are labelled with a triangle that contains a number. These labels identify the type of plastic. Download the list. The Waste Resources and Action Programme (WRAP) maintains a comprehensive UK-wide web-based Recycled Products Guide at www.recycledproducts.org.uk/ WRAP also provides information on recycled products procurement.