Waitrose Bans Mags with Disposable Plastic Toys; Collaborative Initiative to Launch in June
On the 23rd March, Waitrose made a statement that it would no longer sell magazines with disposable plastic toys.
Products of Change has been working with Wastebuster and the Children’s Magazine Forum for the last year and a half to build a new circular infrastructure for UK toys. The initiative will launch in June of this year.
Katy Newnham, Founder, Wastebuster, made the following statement: “We [Wastebuster] have been working with children’s magazine publishers for the last 2-years on a sustainable solution for their products.
“The Recycle to Read programme has been developed by a not-for-profit environmental education and recycling campaign platform, Wastebuster and The Pod in association with EPPIC and Products of Change, in response to the call to action from the publishers.
“The programme will build a new recycling infrastructure for hard to recycle plastic toys, collectively funded by the industry, and will promote waste reduction, reuse, and recycling with a schools and consumer-facing environmental education campaign, whilst rewarding participating schools and communities with books and reading materials to improve children’s literacy.
“In alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Recycle to Read is a collective impact initiative between industry, government, and consumers to promote responsible consumption and production. That will unlock considerable social, economic, and environmental benefits for the societies in which it operates.
“The long-term aim of the programme is to provide research to industry to support the transition to more sustainable product design and circularity in the UK, with a view to global replication.’
For more details visit www.recycletoread.org
EPPIC (Extended Plastics Partnership for Innovation in Circularity) is a new nationwide initiative that aims to create the infrastructure and mechanisms for the collection and recycling of ‘hard to recycle’ flexible and hard plastics. By bringing together a critical mass of key stakeholders the programme aims to deliver a functioning and profitable recycling system that benefits retailers and brand owners, publishers, recyclers, citizens and most importantly, the environment.
EPPIC was created to facilitate a cross-sector, joined up collective impact approach to creating new circular economy infrastructure for hard to recycle plastics. The initiative created 2-key work streams. The first, focusing on flexible plastics led by Ecosurety and the second, focusing on hard plastics, led by Wastebuster. The board and management infrastructure of EPPIC has been devolved into both work streams, to support delivery of each respective programme.
Wastebuster is an environmental education company specialising in national action campaigns and recycling reward programmes. The not-for-profit has an established network of over 24,000 schools in 94 countries, on its education platform, The Pod. Wastebuster deliver well known national campaigns such as ‘Switch off Fortnight,’ ‘Waste Week’ and ‘What’s Under your Feet’.
Products of Change brings together a strong community of brand owners, retailers, content creators, innovators, manufacturing partners and marketing experts who by learning and connecting through the platform can drive sustainable change within their respective businesses while maintaining a commercial footing.
