The data shows that the key to increasing consumer responsibility is for consumers to “really understand what recycling and the circular economy is all about”, with its 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle. This will increase their participation in the process and put an end to plastic waste.
More than half of Spanish SMEs (54%) do not yet know what the circular economy consists of, a figure that varies according to the sector of activity and that improves as the size of the company grows. Despite this, small and medium-sized enterprises are progressively moving towards promoting this model, based on reuse, repair and recycling.
In this sense, an increasing number of SMEs are adopting measures to reduce waste generation (94.4%), they come from or give their waste to other companies because they make use of it (56% %), they separate part or all of the waste they generate at source, especially paper and plastics, and they use private waste managers to dispose of the most polluting waste such as scrap metal and oil.
These are some of the conclusions of the Circular Economy and SMEs in Spain report, presented today by the Spanish Chamber of Commerce and MAPFRE, which shows that SMEs are also increasingly using secondary raw materials (recycled) in their production processes (60%), mainly paper and cardboard (71.3%). They also adopt measures to reduce the consumption of resources (80%), mainly electricity, with the main objective of making savings.
