WRAP has published its annual updates of its voluntary agreements for the food, plastics and textiles sectors. The UK is making progress in tackling key environmental issues, but a lot more collaboration and action is needed from businesses to achieve the level of change required, and to keep climate goals within reach.

In the last three years of reporting, the UK Plastics Pact has doubled the recycled content in packaging and driven the significant elimination of unnecessary (84 per cent) and hard to recycle (90 per cent) components in packaging.

Launched only a year ago, Textiles 2030 has convened more than 110 leading businesses and organisations and brought the UK one step closer to accurately measuring and addressing the impact of the UK’s clothing and home textiles.

But there are signs that there is a gap to required scale and pace of change needed to deliver on the goals of the voluntary agreements, and therefore to reduce emissions as required.

Catherine David, director of collaboration and change at WRAP, said “COP27 made it clear that we are not on track to mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Accelerating action by businesses is paramount. The businesses signed up to our agreements are leading the way in transforming the food, textiles and plastic packaging sectors, demonstrating what is possible, and helping inform government’s thinking on needed regulatory levers. Today’s reports show the mountain we need to climb, and we call on all businesses to join us on this journey and be part of changing our consumption systems in line with a sustainable future.”

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