Welcome to Green Alliance's podcast.

We are the charity and think tank that is all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

I'm Libby Peake, Senior Policy Advisor on Resource Stewardship.

In this episode, I'm bringing you the highlights from our recent event,

marking the one-year anniversary of the China Waste Ban.

We had a brilliant panel spanning across the recycling sector.

On our small stage sat Defer's Don Woodward,

plastic campaigner at Friends of the Earth, Emma Priestland,

Adam Reed, external affairs director at Suez,

and Caroline Laurie, head of sustainability at Kingfisher.

First up, you'll hear me me explaining the importance of the China ban

and giving a brief timeline of the key events

contributing to the UK's massive rise in plastic exports.

And then Don Woodward will take over with a keynote address

on the government's new resources and waste strategy,

the first for more than a decade.

It's been one year officially since China said that it no longer wanted the world's foreign waste, banning at least 24 types of waste in the first instance, but that's since been increasing.

That has been more than a headache to the recycling industries in the West

that have become reliant on China to take our recycling, sometimes recycling of less than

ideal quality. And I want to focus on a few key dates that sort of bookend this massive rise

in plastic exports and indeed general exports of waste for recycling to China.

The first is the introduction of the UK's packaging recovery note system.

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