16 January 2017 Tool

Environmental and Economic Benefits of Re-use

A methodology and associated tool for quantifying the potential impact of re-use, including greenhouse gas emissions, job opportunities or financial impacts. 

Key points:
  • Increasing re-use could reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions by an average 4 million tonnes CO2 eq per year between now and 2020
  • Using this methodology WRAP estimates that UK households save around £1 billion per year and avoid 1 million tonnes CO2 eq per year from current levels of re-use

Overview

In 2009, WRAP published Meeting the UK Climate Challenge: The Contribution of Resource Efficiency. This found that increasing re-use could reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions by an average 4 million tonnes CO2 eq per year between now and 2020.

In order to better understand the impact of re-using particular items, WRAP have developed a methodology, and tool for quantifying the current and potential future benefits of increasing re-use. These are available for anyone to use in trying to understand the potential impact of re-use, including greenhouse gas emissions, jobs or financial impacts.

This can be applied to a range of products using an accompanying excel-based tool to provide a consistent means of assessing the impacts of different activities. The tool allows the calculation of three environmental indicators:

  1. greenhouse gas emissions
  2. energy demand and
  3. resource depletion

And two economic indicators:

  1. number of jobs and
  2. financial impacts, as well as where these occur in the supply chain.

Download files

  • WRAP-Final-Reuse-Method.pdf

    PDF, 543.79 KB

  • Clothing reuse_final.pdf

    PDF, 923.71 KB

  • WRAP-Office Furniture_final.pdf

    PDF, 891.06 KB

  • WRAP-Electricals reuse_final.pdf

    PDF, 815.31 KB

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