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Electronic Waste and the Circular Economy | Commons Environmental Audit Committee - YouTube
Channel: UK Parliament
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electronic waste is having a huge impact
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on the environment by contaminating soil
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water and even the air around us
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but there is a solution to this problem
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what if the next time you bought a
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kettle on amazon they took away your old
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one
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for free
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in the uk we actually produce more
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e-waste per person
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than any country in the world apart from
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norway
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everyone each year is producing 23.9
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kilograms worth
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of electronic waste which is more than
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you'd be allowed to take on to
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an airplane in a big suitcase and that
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compares to to a smaller average in the
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eu it's just 16 kilograms per person
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and actually the global average is only
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around seven kilograms per person so
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we're three times worse than the average
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country
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e-waste is complicated so here are three
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areas we're going to focus on and what
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we think can fix them
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repairability making recycling easier
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and wasting precious materials
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so why is it so hard to repair broken
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electronics
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yeah so i mean manufacturers are doing
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everything to lock out independent
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repairs
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by making it difficult for them to
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access information about
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certain products and how to repair it
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these are restricted from manufacturers
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but often
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third parties get them through other
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people through leaks but that's not
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ideal
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and then there's the affordability of
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spare parts where
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manufacturers are keeping the cost of
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genuine spare parts
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artificially high another issue
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manufacturers have created
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is the gluing and soldering of parts
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instead of simply screwing components
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into devices
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or using ports that components can slip
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in and out of manufacturers have opted
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to start using glue to fix components in
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place
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and solder to connect components
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together with the claim that this makes
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devices more durable
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manufacturers themselves have products
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that show
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that they can both be durable and
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repairable
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so this question of whether making
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something repairable makes it less let's
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say
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waterproof it's bogus imagine you need
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to change the tire on a car
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but the wheel has been welded to the
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axle that tire just became a lot more
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difficult and expensive to change
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you know with too much glue and with
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soldered in components
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the price of repairs goes up and diy
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repairs become much less viable
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so if electronics can't be repaired how
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are they being thrown away
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in the uk we create 1.5 million tons of
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e-waste a year
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two-thirds of that is not recycled
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of that two-thirds 155 000 tons are
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thrown out in household waste
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sending it to landfill or incineration
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the amount of e-waste we throw out every
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year weighs the same as 15
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eiffel towers so what can be done to
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encourage more people to recycle their
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electronics
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as of january 1 2021 all high street
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electronic retailers in the uk
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must take any small e-waste a customer
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brings and send it on to a recycling
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facility
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this responsibility only applies to high
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street retailers
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why do the online companies get
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exemption from this some online
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retailers have voluntarily implemented
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this into their service
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such as dixon's car phone yes we rolled
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out our small box collection service
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at the end of 2018 in its full first
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year of operation 2019 we actually saw
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an increase of 215
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of small electricals that we collected
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whenever a customer um has a home
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delivery for a
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big big item such as a fridge washing
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machine or a large screen tv
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we have a service in place where we will
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take away their old one
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in addition to that service at the same
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time they can hand over any small
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electrical item and we'll take that away
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for free to be recycled as well
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so it is perfectly possible for online
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retailers to adopt a convenient e-waste
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recycling service
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yet amazon the uk's biggest online
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retailer does not offer an easy-to-use
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service like this i think the reason
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must be very simple that actually
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it's a bit of a faff and it adds extra
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cost to them
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and so they're not interested in in
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providing that level of support and
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that's that's very
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distressing if we make e-waste recycling
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easy
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we will get higher recycling rates it's
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that simple
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imagine a world where every online
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retailer including amazon
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picked up your unwanted small
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electronics from your front door
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whenever you received a delivery from
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them
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if it was that convenient wouldn't you
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recycle more
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sending e-waste to landfill means we
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lose critical raw materials
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also known as crms so these are minerals
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and metals
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that exist in the earth in finite
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quantities and they're also things that
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we tend to need a lot of and are
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increasingly needing more of crms come
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from all over the world
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and most crucially are in limited supply
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so many of these critical raw materials
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are used in our personal electronic
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devices like our phones and our laptops
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but they're also really important for
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things like healthcare
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surgical implants new medicines and also
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renewable energy and
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electric vehicles some crms are so rare
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they are predicted to run out completely
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by the end of the century at the moment
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we're
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we're really losing a lot of value we're
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losing a lot of critical raw materials
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because at the moment still
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there's really a need to have processes
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but also the infrastructure to go hand
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in hand with that
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to extract these type of critical raw
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materials
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from our devices more efficiently
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we need to invest in the science so at
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the moment the science to extract
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the really small quantities of metal and
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separate them out from each other
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is still in its infancy so that's a
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really important thing that we have to
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work on
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so how do we fix the e-waste problem
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make electronics easier and more
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affordable to repair
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require all retailers including online
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ones to be responsible for the
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collection and disposal of small
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unwanted electronics invest more money
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in adopting more efficient recycling
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processes
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by accepting recommendations like this
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maybe we can make pictures like this
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a thing of the past
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as a house of commons committee we're in
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a position where we can actually make
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recommendations on issues like this
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directly to the government
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so we did as part of our inquiry
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electronic waste in the circular economy
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we made these three recommendations as
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well as 24 others to the government
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who are obligated to respond to them and
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they have the government response
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includes new rules for manufacturers who
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must now make spare parts available for
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white goods such as fridges and washing
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machines along with electrical goods
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like tvs
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and from the summer of 2021 these new
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rules would be a legal obligation in the
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uk
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marking the first steps towards a
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circular economy where we use reuse and
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recycle products
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if you want to read our report in full
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along with the government's response to
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our recommendations you can
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at parliament dot uk forward slash
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e-a-com
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