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House of Commons

Friday 19 June 1992

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Recycling

9.34 am

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) : I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the Government's recent initiatives in the field of recycling, particularly the introduction of local government recycling plans ; urges that further pressure be brought to bear on packagers and retailers to reduce unnecessary packaging and waste ; and believes that further initiatives are required to encourage the use of reusable and returnable bottles and containers.

Unusually, this is also my maiden speech--unusually, but not without precedent. On 5 February 1960, a similar precedent was set by the then new hon. Member for Finchley--subsequently the Prime Minister, recently ennobled and sent to the other place--when she made her maiden speech on a motion concerning the admission of the press to local authority meetings. Although that was the start of a very illustrious career and of remarkable service to the country, I must tell the House that I do not expect that my career will necessarily follow hers just because I follow her precedent in this.

I do, however, follow in the footsteps of another illustrious and recently ennobled Member of Parliament, Nigel Lawson. He was the first Member of Parliament for Blaby, and his distinguished record of service to the country brought the name of Blaby to the attention of the nation. In paying tribute to him and in congratulating him on his elevation to the other place, I know that the people of Blaby would agree that he has also brought honour and distinction to the constituency. His is a very hard act to follow, but I shall try to heed his advice, including that given to me publicly at a dinner earlier this year in the House. He warned me that I should avoid the snares of over-generous hospitality and the pitfalls of over-regular use of the Dining Rooms. He told me that, when he entered the House, his figure was the same shape as mine. Although trying to follow that advice, I already feel the pressures on my waistband.

Blaby constituency is a prosperous area of south Leicestershire. It is a varied area of small towns and villages, and it is an attractive part of the county. The people whom I have the privilege to represent are industrious and friendly, and they vote with great good sense. The constituency is made up of the whole of Blaby district council and a part of Harborough district council. Both councils have great attributes and Blaby district council especially is a model of an efficient local authority, showing financial responsibility and excellent organisation.

Both councils have sensible and advanced recycling programmes and are on schedule for having statutory recycling plans in place by August. Blaby has 22 bottle

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banks and Harborough has 10. Harborough has six can collection sites and Blaby has three. Recycling collection points exist for textiles, oil, furniture and paper.

I know that my constituents and, I believe, the majority of people in the country are deeply concerned about our environment and share the sentiments expressed in the motion. According to Eurobarometer, recently quoted by the European Commission, 85 per cent. of Europeans consider the future of the environment to be an immediate and urgent problem which cannot be put off for future generations. In the light of such widespread popular concern, I draw the attention of the House to the issue of recycling.

I briefly remind the House of the major problems that are faced in dealing with the vast amount of packaging and waste--more than 100 million tonnes in total--which is produced each year in Britain. First, finite resources are used to produce packaging and containers which are not recycled, which are used once, which fill our dustbins and which are finally put in a hole in the ground. Secondly, the excessive use of energy in the production of packaging increases our production of greenhouse gases. Thirdly, 97 per cent. of waste presently goes into holes in the ground as landfill. Finally, there is the very real problem of litter. Packaging waste is inevitably a major contributor to litter, and packaging and containers are some of the most visible items of litter. Indeed, as I walked here today, I saw empty soft drink cans lying at the foot of the Jewel tower in Abingdon gardens. That is a sad comment on our society and possibly on our attitude to recycling.

The Government have a target that 50 per cent. of recyclable household waste should be recycled by the end of the decade and that local authorities must produce recycling plans by August. Those are excellent plans which all concerned with our environment welcome. At this point, I want to pay tribute to the very positive contribution of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to the Earth summit at Rio. I was particularly pleased to hear his statement on Monday and especially to hear of the three new British initiatives.

The partnership in global technology mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister--sharing our information with the developing countries-- will, I trust, include recycling information and technology. In eastern Europe, because countries under communism could not afford excessive packaging, reusable and refillable containers and bottles are still in use. I understand that the arrival of western civilisation and economic prosperity may see the end of those ancient schemes. That may not be to the benefit of those countries in the long term. There is also no reason why developing countries should suffer from excessive and wasteful packaging, because they may be in a particularly good position to set up totally new environmentally friendly packaging schemes.

The Government's environmental strategy on excessive packaging the United Kingdom is also well stated especially in "This Common Inheritance", the White Paper presented in September 1990. It states :

"The Government is encouraging industry to reduce unnecessary packaging of consumer goods."

It also states that the Government are discussing targets and measures for reduction with industry and retailers. Those policies are very much going in the right direction and I welcome them. However, I hope that the Government will feel that they can go even further.

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I should like to draw the attention of the House to the draft directive of the Council of European Communities on packaging and packaging waste. That sensible document is currently under consideration and I hope that the Government will be able to support it. In particular, it calls for

"an integrated policy of waste management covering packaging and packaging waste."

Turning from policy to the current problems about the general issue of recycling, I want to draw the attention of the House to landfill. The EC draft directive to which I have referred, when discussing targets, states in article 4 :

"Landfilling shall be relied upon only as a last resort." That contrasts with a statement made by my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning 10 days ago. When referring to the draft planning policy guidance note on planning and pollution control, he said :

"Demand for land-based facilities for waste management is growing rapidly."

While we would all agree with him that landfill will continue to have a part to play, many people believe that the true cost of landfill is not being reflected. I commend to my hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and Countryside the following comment and second recommendation made last October by the Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment to the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Trade and Industry :

"The price of landfill should be increased significantly to levels obtaining elsewhere in the EC."

I note that, in response, the Government agreed that the price of landfill is an important factor in the economics of recycling. A study in that area was to be concluded by May 1992. We await that study with interest. I commend to the Government the views of the European Commission and the advisory committee.

The next specific question relates to the disposal of sewage sludge. That has a certain urgency, given the ban on dumping at sea which will come into effect in 1998. Present and future policy, according to my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning 10 days ago, seems to lean towards landfill and incineration, neither of which is a satisfactory long-term solution.

I commend to my hon. Friend the Minister the process of recycling sewage sludge to produce envirosoil. That product can be used as a fertiliser, top soil or as a cover for landfill. It is odour free and has been approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. However, because of the danger of concentrations of heavy metals in sewage sludge, which can then leach into the water and soil, the process is not approved in this country. A standard leachate test should be developed with a particular application for envirosoil and its possible uses.

As the House will know, aluminium cans are one of the most valuable and easy waste products to recycle. There is a large new can recycling plant in Warrington. In a written reply a month ago to this very day, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and Countryside stated that 11 per cent. of cans were recycled in 1991. That figure is more than double the 1990 figure and it is encouraging. However, that still means that 89 per cent. of cans were not recycled. That is a valuable product which has been wasted, buried in holes in the ground or is still littering our countryside.

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The target of 50 per cent. of cans to be recycled by 1995 set by industry is too low. It should be possible to recycle almost all cans. My hon. Friend the Minister saw the can collection process at Milton Keynes last month. Is he aware that the large new plant in Warrington is still importing aluminium cans to recycle, apparently from America, with all the transport and environmental costs that that implies?

The bottle banks across the country are welcomed by all hon. Members. However, they produce a large surplus of green glass, as anyone who drinks wine and uses bottle banks will know. I understand that the Department of Trade and Industry is carrying out research into other uses for green glass. The Government should encourage industry to use more green glass in packaging. Consumers may initially resist that, but consumer choice is very largely influenced by retailers and advertisers who can explain the benefits of more green bottles. Such bottles could perhaps be used as milk bottles as green glass could protect the product from direct sunlight on the doorstep.

While welcoming the Government's initiatives in general on recycling, my hon. Friend the Minister will agree that there is more yet to be done and I am aware that much more is in the pipeline. I want to consider the issue of reducing unnecessary waste and packaging. In that respect, I will quote the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry), who also believes that there is more to be done. In January, he said :

"In our White Paper on the Environment we said that we were encouraging industry to reduce unnecessary packaging of consumer goods. I do not think anyone could accuse us of being hasty in imposing solutions' on industry. But I have to say that the response from industry has been disappointing."

No one who has ever bought neatly wrapped vegetables in a supermarket and watched them being placed in another plastic bag can doubt that there is overpackaging. Anyone who returns from a supermarket and fills dustbins with packaging will be aware how much surrounds our food and other items. It is not for the convenience of the consumer that vegetables and fruit, often perfectly well packaged in their skins by the Almighty, end up double wrapped in supermarkets ; it is for the convenience of retailers.

The House will agree with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury, with the comments in "This Common Inheritance", with the EC draft directive, with the housewives and house-husbands of Britain and with the Department of Environment recycling paper, which states :

"It is clearly better to avoid or minimise waste in the first place."

I am sure that the House would want my hon. Friend the Minister to take action to reduce excessive packaging.

My final topic is that of reusable and returnable containers. That point was also covered by the Department of Environment paper on recycling which states :

"It is clearly better to re-use a product where possible." That is also the advice given by the Department to all citizens in a little pamphlet entitled "Green Rights and Responsibilities--A Citizens Guide to the Environment", printed, I believe, this year and, I am delighted to see, on recycled paper. The pamphlet states : "What you can do--you can reduce the waste you produce by re-using things--rather than throwing them away."

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We are all in this House, I fear, old enough to recall that almost all drinks bottles used to be returnable, often with a deposit and a penny back on the bottle. Beer and mineral water in Denmark may be sold only in glass packages. They achieve a return rate of 99 per cent. and have an average life of 33 trips per glass container. Furthermore, there is a charge levied on new bottles to encourage companies to refill used bottles. Many hon. Members wish to follow Denmark on other matters, but I say only that we should follow Denmark on reusable containers.

In Germany, the new packaging ordinance will lead to much greater use of reusable containers. We in this country currently return 95 per cent. of milk bottles, which are of course without deposit. A recent study in the Department of the Environment found that a deposit of 5p would achieve a return rate of 95 per cent. across all materials and beverage types. With or without deposits, we should be moving toward far greater use of returnable reusable containers. Alas, the opposite is the case.

As we know from personal experience, the throw-away, one-trip container is now the norm. From 1977 to 1987, the percentage of fizzy drinks sold in returnable bottles fell from 60 per cent. to 19 per cent. For beer the percentage fell from 60 per cent. to 23 per cent. No mineral water at all in the United Kingdom comes in returnable bottles, and mineral water, as the House knows, is now a very popular drink. Even the milk bottle--a great success story--is under threat and usage is falling. It appears that supermarkets are using milk in cartons as a loss leader, thereby reducing the use of returnable bottles and also threatening doorstep deliveries.

Commercial interests--perfectly understandable commercial interests--have taken us away from reusable containers. Pleading consumer choice, the convenience of retailers, particularly supermarkets, has been paramount. Last year a survey found that 84 per cent. of shoppers would return bottles to supermarkets if they could, especially if there were the incentive of a deposit. The response of supermarkets to that survey was largely negative or even hostile. In 1981, the study of returnable bottles by the Waste Management Advisory Council stated :

"The stocking policy of supermarkets favours non-returnables." The marketing director of a supermarket chain put very succinctly what I believe is the logical future facing us. He said : "The way forward muct be multi-trip and refillable bottles--that is very much part of Gateway's future."

For it is not just nostalgia, me or consumers who want reusable containers. Article 13 of the draft European Commission directive states :

"The Commission shall promote European standards relating in particular to dimensions and shapes of packaging ... in order to facilitate its re-use."

It specifically mentions multi-trips. That is a step towards refillable systems and it threatens the continued use of one-trip containers. That is the logical way forward. I urge the Government to support that EC measure and to take steps to persuade British industry to move in that direction.

I draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to paragraph 14.17 of the 1990 White Paper on the environment, entitled "Our Common Inheritance", which states :

"The Government will encourage improvements in packaging design which will promote re-use. While

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the Government intends to proceed by voluntary means, it will if necessary consider the introduction of regulatory measures, such as deposit schemes."

That is a sensible policy which I wholeheartedly support. I hope that the House will support the motion and will agree that the Government's measures are an excellent move in the right direction and that yet further progress on recycling can be achieved.

9.53 am

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish) : It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). I enjoyed listening to his maiden speech as it was extremely well informed. I agree with everything that he said, except in his praise for the Government. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his speech. I think that he was slightly misled by his predecessor, who claimed that he was a thin figure when he came to the House. I must admit that I remember him sniping from the Opposition Benches between 1974 and 1979, and he was already a fairly square figure. Some hon. Members will remember him more for his effective sniping than for his ministerial roles.

I am glad that I did not wait to make my maiden speech until I won the ballot for private motions, having entered, not every time, but fairly consistently since 1974 and never coming first. I can understand the hon. Gentleman's pleasure in winning, I suppose, not quite at his first attempt but so early in his career. I congratulate him on choosing the subject of recycling. I hope that many Conservative Members will speak on the subject. The sad thing for me is that, since I came to the House in 1974, I have heard many good speeches on recycling, but very little action has occurred. I fear that the hon. Gentleman may have to recycle his speech before he gets some action by the Government. Their record is not good on making progress on this important subject.

I fear that the Government's belief in capitalism and the monetary system is part of the problem ; we cannot expect companies whose main aim is to make a profit to be concerned about protecting the environment in the long term. Just as I appreciate the way in which coal mine owners in the previous century sold their coal to pay for the cost of producing it, but took no account of the cost of clearing slagheaps, cleaning towns, or the damage to health that they caused, so I fear that too many of today's manufacturers take no account of the environmental impact of their products and the cost of clearing up the mess. We must have a means of imposing regulations on manufacturers. That must be done through the democratic process in which we discuss the merits of certain regulations or, if the Government prefer, a tax policy that ensures that the polluter and the misuser of resources pay. I fear that in the Government's White Paper and their exhortation for action there is no clear programme which will force manufacturers to take account of the environmental impact of their products.

I agree with the hon. Member for Blaby that the first culprit is the packaging industry. Ever since I came to the House, I have received glossy brochures telling me that companies are doing their best to reduce packaging and to make it more environmentally friendly. That is rubbish. The packaging industry has not made one jot of effort to be more environmentally friendly.

I give the House an example of the way in which we waste resources. Yesterday, I slipped into a shop and

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purchased a shirt. The shirt was beautifully wrapped. I opted for a cheap one, otherwise I could have had a shirt in a cardboard box. The manufacturer had wrapped the shirt in polythene. One has a job ripping off the polythene. Inside the polythene is cardboard, pins and paper clips. People say, "Shirts have always come like that." Of course they have always come like that.

Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) : Not in that colour, they haven't.

Mr. Bennett : As my hon. Friend says, they may not have come in that colour.

Women's blouses are sold on coathangers. Blouses and shirts are basically the same types of garment. Women's blouses have traditionally come with virtually no wrapping around them, yet men's shirts are over-packed. Three quarters of the packaging ends up in the dustbin. There is a good chance that a couple of pins will prick the person who is trying to get the shirt out of the packaging. If not all pins are removed, there are further problems. Manufacturers continue to wrap shirts in that way and produce much rubbish--plastic, paper and pins which are not easy to recycle. It is absolutely amazing that shirt manufacturers cannot find a way of selling shirts without that great waste of packaging and resources.

But there are small ways in which resources are wasted. A few years ago London Underground announced great plans to introduce new automatic ticket machines. There was much criticism of those machines. Some people described them as rottweilers. One of the interesting things about them was that they doubled the size of the ticket. I cannot understand why that was necessary. Again, it caused the misuse of a great deal of extra paper or cardboard.

The House of Commons is not entirely without blame in the matter of wasted paper. When one wanders round the building one notices all the material that comes in from outside, such as unsolicited advertising material. It seems that when public relations firms and PR departments of companies have leaflets left over they wonder where to send them. Instead of sending them directly to be recycled they post them to Members of Parliament.

We are all guilty. We all go to the Vote Office and pick out a copy of Hansard, flick through for our own speech or a question to which we want to refer, tear it out and throw the rest in the bin. The ridiculous thing is that the Hansard writers now put speeches into a computer so that it can go to the printers. But can we obtain a print-out of the parts of Hansard that we want? Of course, we cannot. It is still easier to waste the paper.

The hon. Member for Blaby referred to the problem of supermarkets. A tremendous number of packages are wrapped. The manufacturers tell us that packages must be superwrapped and super-superwrapped to prevent tampering on the shelves. That really means that they cannot look after the shelves so they prefer to wrap things many times to stop tampering. I suspect that overwrapped packages contribute to a large number of accidents in households. Increasingly, people find it difficult to pierce the wrapping. I have come across several examples of elderly people with arthritic hands who find it difficult to pierce wrapping. They attack the wrapping with a sharp knife or other implement and end up cutting themselves.

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I should much prefer to see pressure put on the supermarkets to make greater use of many-trip bottles, as the hon. Member for Blaby suggested. I teased the Minister slightly at Question Time on Wednesday about what washing-up liquid he used. I am not sure whether he has worked out which washing up liquid he uses at home. A product called Ecover makes great claims to be environmentally friendly. [Interruption.] I am not sure whether the Minister just said that it does not work but I think that it does a good job.

Interestingly, the last claim on the back of the Ecover bottle is that the bottle is recyclable. It can be turned into fence posts and carrier bags. I am not certain that we are all that short of fence posts in Britain and I cannot see any sense in which we are short of carrier bags. I should have thought that it would be far better for a product which claims to be environmentally friendly to encourage people to reuse the plastic container. It should be easy for people to go back to the supermarket and simply have it reloaded with washing-up liquid. That should be simpler than taking it to a recycling bank where plastic material is collected. As the hon. Member for Blaby said, a considerable amount of energy is used in turning plastic collected at a bank into some other plastic product. The Prime Minister has told us that he intends to ensure that all the bottles from No. 10 Downing Street go to bottle banks. It would be far better if he ensured that No. 10 purchased only bottles that were returnable and reusable. Tht would be better than sending bottles back to be smashed up. A great deal more energy is used to recycle bottles than it takes to reuse them.

So I am on common ground with the hon. Member for Blaby. I should like to see far more bottles make many trips. British manufacturers keep telling us that that is impossible, but it happens in many countries in Europe. I remember making a speech early in my career in the House a little along the lines of the hon. Gentleman's speech today. I was invited by a manufacturer to see a machine that would take back bottles and refund the money in the supermarket. People could simply put the bottle on the machine, wait for it to go through and receive the refund. He never managed to have those machines placed in British supermarkets but they are fairly commonplace in Europe. I firmly argue that we need to use many-trip bottles, with a deposit if necessary, rather than returning so many bottles to bottle banks to be smashed up and reused. Even more bottles are simply left lying about.

We must also examine products to ensure that they can be repaired rather than thrown away. I understand that the Department of the Environment is working hard in Europe on eco-labels or green labels. I understand that the Department has a responsibility for washing machines. One of the problems with washing machines is what happens to them at the end of their life cycle. I make a plea to the Minister to ensure that the life cycle of the washing machine is as long as possible. Washing machines should be designed to use the minimum heat and water to do an efficient job. They should use the detergent or washing powder that is most environmentally friendly. But will the Minister also ensure that washing machines can be conveniently repaired on a regular basis and that they are fitted with parts that can be replaced rather than, as happens so often with consumer products, having to be thrown away after a relatively short life? One of the saddest things is that while the Minister goes along with the idea of local authorities recycling by

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separating out materials, there will be a problem with the guaranteed price for those materials. During my time in the House I have noticed that it becomes fashionable to collect waste paper or bottles, everyone starts doing it and the price of waste paper or glass drops. Certainly, many voluntary groups find that they cannot raise enough funds by collecting the material so they stop doing it. The whole thing falls into disrepute.

The only way that I can see of tackling the problem is for the Government to set a price below which the price of collected waste cannot fall. If it is reasonable to set a floor price for agricultural products, the Government could create a floor price for such a serious matter as recycled products. I understand the Minister's reluctance. He has just come from a Department that had to deal with butter mountains. I am not sure that a mountain of cans or waste paper would be any easier to deal with. However, if recycling is to be a success over a long period, the Government cannot let the bottom fall out of the market each time that a scheme is put in place so that the viability of the scheme collapses.

I was interested in the comments that the hon. Member for Blaby made about compost. It is a great tragedy that so much of our peatland is being destroyed. If we had an effective composting system a great deal of that peat could be preserved and we could also avoid much of the landfill that currently takes places.

I am aware that the Government encourage local authorities to encourage consumers and householders to separate materials at home for collection. There are schemes in Sheffield and elsewhere under which people are asked to put cans, bottles and paper in separate containers and either return them to collection banks or leave them to be collected by the authority.

A scheme was introduced in Greater Manchester in which the local authority collected all the waste in one waste cart and separated it later. Greater Manchester waste disposal authority had an experimental plant at Radcliffe which demonstrated that the authority could separate for recycling almost all the products from the household dustbin. Unfortunately, the Government were never prepared to give the authority the money to develop the experimental plant to one which could operate on a large scale. I have received brochures from people trying to set up such a plant elsewhere in Britain, but no one seems to have managed to operate post-collection separation effectively.

Much as I appreciate schemes in which the householder sorts refuse, they can only sort about 30 per cent. A post-collection system would be far more effective, but some Government investment is required to encourage the setting up of a plant to do the sorting. The Government must guarantee prices so that a substantial plant may be set up in the knowledge that one can get a reasonable price for the plastic, paper or compost which is separated from household refuse. When the Minister for the Environment and Countryside replies to the debate, I shall be interested to hear what he has to say about whether there should be pre or post-collection sorting. Whichever system is chosen a guaranteed price is important if we are to create long-term stability for recycling.

My plea to the Minister is along the lines of that of the hon. Member for Blaby--to be tough with the packaging industry and to insist on minimum packaging to eliminate the creation of unnecessary waste ; to ensure a guaranteed

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market for recycled materials ; and to take some initiatives and consider whether pre or post-collection sorting is more effective and if post-collection sorting is decided upon, to provide investment to build the necessary plants. We plead with the Government not to be side-tracked into thinking that it is environmentally friendly to find ways to burn refuse. I understand the arguments for producing power from waste, but that is a waste of resources. We do not need dramatic new sources of energy. We need to conserve and to use far less energy.

The Government must intervene ; they cannot leave it to market forces. They must decide whether to ensure that the polluter and the waster of resources pay, through a tax system or possibly through regulation.

I welcome the opportunity for debate and will listen with interest to the Minister. I shall also be interested to find out how many Conservative Members follow the debate and whether this is merely an example of one Conservative Member coming up with the right ideas or whether the idea of recycling has now spread to the Conservative Benches.

10.12 am

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : I suppose that it ought to be a question of de mortuis nil nisi bonum --one should not speak ill of parliamentary colleagues departed. However, truth to tell, I was not an admirer of the style or content of Nigel Lawson and I sat through far too many Finance Bills with him to be other than candid about the matter. I would say this of few political opponents, but he was a politician who did great harm to this country for 20 years. There has been a great improvement in the representation of the Blaby constituency. In all those years, I never heard Nigel Lawson make such a constructive speech as that made by the new hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). Like my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), I listened to him with great interest and attention, and I hope that what he had to say will be taken seriously by the Government. I also thought that his remarks were well structured and I congratulate him on his maiden speech.

The hon. Member for Blaby referred to Rio. Although there is a debate on Rio next Thursday, one question follows from the hon. Member's remarks : the Minister for the Environment and Countryside had the good fortune to be at Rio and I suspect that he may be in a position to answer it. I preface my question by saying that I support the Darwin initiative. As the Minister knows, I have intimate contacts with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and with the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. My question for the Minister is one that my colleagues on the biological sciences advisory committee of the university of Edinburgh will ask me at our next meeting on 3 July. The question is, what new resources will be available as a result of what happened in Rio? Statements of intent should not be discounted, but I hope that the Minister will deal with the subject of money and resources which will now be available and which were not available before the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Minister answering the debate went to Rio. Will new scientific contacts be available? What is new? I sincerely hope for a constructive answer.

I deplore what the Danish voters have rightly or wrongly done in their referendum, but I must repeat the question asked by the hon. Member for Blaby. Denmark

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has been innovative in recycling. It is said that each bottle in Denmark has 33 trips. Therefore, have we anything to learn from the Danes and is the Department doing anything to find out how they are conducting their recycling operations and the costs? I understand that that operation is more expensive than it has been made out to be, but it is worth studying and I hope that the question of the hon. Member for Blaby will be answered.

The Dalai Lama made a moving speech on 16 September 1990 in Vermont and has since repeated the sentiments, not least when he was a guest of the House of Commons. He said :

"Mother planet is showing us the red warning light. She is telling us to take care of our house, the planet."

If I were giving a sermon this morning, that would be the text. Everything has to be seen against the background of care of the planet. It is one of the most telling commentaries on the nature of our voracious oil consumption that humanity is burning as much fossil fuel every 12 months as it took a million years to produce. We are facing an environmental abyss and we have to do something about environmental overloading.

I agree with the hon. Member for Blaby that possibly the best thing to do is to minimise waste in the first place. Any idea that the alarm bells are false and need not be heeded is make-believe. We must consider recycling against the background of overall strategy. Will the Minister tell the House what is being done to encourage manufacturers to design for recycling at the beginning of product manufacture and planning? The death of a product should be considered at its birth. I will not inflict the whole speech on the House, but I should like to recall what I said on 28 March 1973 on my 10-minute Re-cycling of Components of Used Motor Vehicles Bill. I asked : "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require manufacturers of motor vehicles to design such vehicles, after 31st December 1975, so that their components can be easily re-cycled, so saving the raw material for further use."

I went on to say :

"In view of the fact that there are 40 speakers in the debate on Northern Ireland I will bring in what will be a Two-Minute Rule Bill."

We were about to have a major Irish debate and it would not have been tactful to have spoken longer than was necessary to expand on the subject. I said :

"This Bill is first of all about finite resources--that is, that if at the design stage, the eventual death of the vehicle were taken into account much more metal and other material could be recaptured from used cars than would otherwise be the case on current designs. The crucial thing is that thought should be given at the design stage and that the eventual death of the vehicles should be taken into account.

I will spare the House all the technical details, and will just say that Donald Jensen, the Directors of Emission of Ford, Michigan, Chrysler and Leyland have all made the point that the recapturing of material would be much easier and of higher quality if it were thought about at the design stage, and metals made more easily separable."

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) will speak about polyethylenes. It is easily understood that mixtures of polyethylene and copper make it far harder to repossess the quality of copper that is desirable for industry. I then said : "The second point is that this Bill would give every economic incentive to people who were willing to take their

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cars to a metal recapturing unit. In a sense, it would serve also to do something about all those dumps of disused vehicles that litter the whole of Western Europe."

That remains the case. I understand from recent inquiries that not much effort is made to provide an economic incentive to recycle the waste in those unsightly dumps which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said, litter our countryside. I then pointed out :

"It may well be said that this is all very well but why on earth should legislation, why should a Bill, be necessary? For one rather self-evident reason, really, that no single company is going to go ahead and take on the extra costs of doing this at an early stage of the design, if other manufacturing bodies are not going to do the same thing, because then that company would be at a competitive disadvantage."--[ Official Report, 28 March 1973 ; Vol. 853, c. 1316-17.]

That is at the heart of much of today's debate. If that is true of motor vehicles, it is true of many other products. Given competition, it is extremely difficult to persuade individual companies to take the first step that puts them at a disadvantage vis-a-vis their competitors. It is not easy to get round that, but if we do not do so, we shall not ensure the work at the design stage that is absolutely crucial to fruitful recycling. It is a case of the chicken and the egg.

I ask the Government to reflect on that. I am not so unreasonable as to ask for a considered opinion today, but I should like a letter after the Minister has been able to talk to his professional advisers, not only in the Department of the Environment--one of the troubles is that this matter straddles a number of Departments--but in the Department of Trade and Industry and, indeed, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

An additional problem is that success may not be possible on a one-country basis for precisely the same reasons. If one country proceeds while its competitors do not, it takes no imagination to know what would happen to its commerce as a result of its being prepared to undertake a proper, enlightened recycling policy.

Mr. Win Griffiths (Bridgend) : There is good news in the pipeline. The European Community Commission is considering a draft directive to deal with the problem of vehicle waste management. In France, Peugeot-Talbot has a £3 million project under way in Lyons and in Britain, ironically, but perhaps as a lesson for our own industry, the German producer BMW is setting up a vehicle dismantling plant. As my hon. Friend said, the news would be even better if the Government were actively involved.

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