With War raging in the Middle East yet another geo-political event begins to impact the supply chains which support our economy. This new event so soon after the impact of the Ukraine War and Covid brings sharply into focus our need to rethink how we insulate the UK from future shocks.
With growth a key ambition of the Government, and yet so difficult to achieve, we need more than ever to map the critical resources needed in the longer term and develop a cohesive strategy which delivers lasting supply chain resilience. The Government has begun this task with the publication of the “Critical Minerals Strategy” where key material supply chains are mapped allowing a focused approach to building alliances with Nations where these materials are located.
The delayed publication of the “Circular Economy Growth Plan” will I hope form part of this cohesive thinking and contain a set of key policies that can deliver change. Focusing as it does on six key sectors for the UK, Chemicals, Agri-food, Built environment, Textiles, Electricals and Transport and aligning these with the Government’s “Industrial Strategy” and “Critical Minerals Strategy” will give for once a more joined up approach to managing our future material need.
Joined up thinking on resources begins to become obvious in the shadow of a wider geo-political battle ground to gain greater control of materials which are critical to both manufacturing and defence. China now controls 70% of the earth’s rare minerals and evidence of this struggle for material supremacy played out recently with the imposition of tariffs by the USA and the subsequent deal agreed between the Nations for the USA to gain access to these said minerals.
So, what can the Government do to rebalance this loss of critical resource resilience? Clearly to keep and gather the valuable materials we have circulating in the UK must form part of any solution, but we have a long way to go. Circularity in the UK is only at 7.5% with some 90% of materials we use coming from virgin sources and 80% of these extracted from overseas. So presently resilience is out of our control.
To counteract this, we need to stop accepting the loss of materials to the waste stream. With 56% of the domestic residual waste still predominately going to Energy from Waste and WEEE waste being heavily exported, the loss of significant volumes of critical materials is obvious. If you add “clean technology” equipment that will reach “end of life” status and contains many of the critical minerals we need, then action cannot wait.
The UK as other Nations that continue to live in a “linear” economy need to act quickly to protect supply chain resilience from the inevitability of future geo-political or weather-related shocks and recognise and support the part our sector can play in capturing these “lost materials”.