The UK economy stands to get a £25bn boost should the government act on the opportunity to kick-start the circular economy.

A cross-party group of MPs and peers said that by using resources more efficiently the UK would also become more resilient to global instability.

Ahead of the government publishing England’s first circular economy strategy, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Environment has launched a six-step plan to make better use of resources.

Key asks from the group, which is supported by businesses including Suez Recycling and NGOs like Zero Waste Scotland and Green Alliance, include giving consumers a “right to repair” to ensure products can be fixed when they break, embedding reuse of critical minerals into the government’s clean energy mission to boost energy security, and setting a goal to bring the UK’s resource use within planetary boundaries by 2050.

In the plan, the group noted how the UK’s economy remains predominantly linear, meaning raw materials are extracted, processed, manufactured, used and then thrown away. “The only sustainable route to growth uses fewer natural resources, through an economy designed around reducing, reusing, repairing and recycling, to keep materials in use as long as possible,” it stated.

Previous attempts to reform resources policy have often become stuck on specific areas or have placed too much emphasis on household waste, according to the group. This misses the opportunity to deliver a £25bn boost to the UK economy by 2035 by transforming resource efficiency across a range of industry sectors.

MPs urged the government to work on reform across the economy, not just add recycling onto the end of wasteful processes. One of the criticisms of the government’s approach to tackling packaging waste – encompassing a deposit return scheme, extended producer responsibility and simpler recycling – is that policy levers to encourage reuse are largely absent.

The group welcomed the government’s intention to provide roadmaps for key sectors alongside its forthcoming strategy and suggested priority sectors could include agri-food, textiles, electronics, energy infrastructure and packaging.

“For many of the questions facing us, the circular economy provides some answers,” said Andrew Pakes MP, chair of the Environment APPG. “How do we make the UK more resilient in a fractured world? How do we bring skilled jobs to our high streets and industrial heartlands? How do we clean up our streets, rivers and seas? Making better use of precious resources holds a key to all of these.”