Examination of Witness (Questions 1 -
20)
TUESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2000
MR ROBIN
MURRAY
Chairman
1. Mr Murray, can I welcome you to the Committee's
first session on the inquiry into Delivering Sustainable Waste
Management. We have printed the evidence that the Committee has
received. It is a fairly substantial amount of evidence. It will
also be available on the Parliamentary website for anyone who
wants to look at the evidence that other witnesses put in. It
is there for everyone to see. Could I ask you to introduce yourself
for the record?
(Mr Murray) My name is Robin Murray.
I have spent most of my life as an academic, in industrial development
and industrial transformation. I also like to test out whether
what we teach is right and so I have been a Director of Industry
both at local and state level, in the UK and in Canada. I got
into waste because I was asked to look at its industrial and employment
potential. That was in London. I have worked on waste for the
past four years. I am currently associated with the Centre for
the Study of Global Governance at the LSE.
Mr Olner
2. Good morning. Could you tell the Committee
what you think the key components of sustainable waste management
are?
(Mr Murray) I think there are two key elements in
the vision of this industry. One is resource productivity, which
is set to become as strong a dynamic force in the next 50 years
as the drive for labour productivity has been in the past. We
talk of factor 4 or factor 10. This is what people at the heart
of waste are talking about. The Japanese have, at long last, clicked
on to this and are pouring resources into the development of eco-design.
Recycling and waste management is a part of increasing resource
productivity. That is one matter. The second is the safety of
materials. Modern materials have been found to contain hazards,
(which were not seen at first), not only in their production and
use but also in their disposal. The safety problems of disposal,
both in landfill and incineration, have risen. That must also
be a key part of the idea of sustainability.
3. You obviously looked at the document Waste
Strategy 2000, do you think that has taken us forward in the objective
of sustainable waste management?
(Mr Murray) I think there are two important steps
forward it has taken. One is this statutory target of aiming at
33 per cent recycling within 15 years. The second is the establishment
of WRAP, the body which promotes materials markets, (amongst other
things). Those are the two key steps. I am not talking about words,
because words are cheap in this field. Those are two very practical
things. The third one, which is new, is that in the Chancellor's
spending round, and all the things that fell out from there in
July, £140 million has been allocated to recycling for the
first time.
4. Do you think the document is optimistic or
pessimistic?
(Mr Murray) I want to be positive about that. I and
all those who were working for maximising what I would call sustainable
waste management and recycling were very disappointed because
what it leaves in place as the central driver of policy in this
country is not the maximisation of sustainable waste management
but the development of a programme centred around incineration.
If you work on the ground, the fact is that the main drivers for
incineration are still centrally in place. The people who take
the decisions, which is the waste development authorities and
the waste companies, are still driving towards an incineration-centred
transformation of this industry. I think that actually puts a
great block on where we are going. If you think that the targets
in the strategy would bring us up to, basically, where the Americans
have got to today, we are still well behind the leaders. In 15
years we are looking at a target which is actually lower than
what, if you like, our competitors have achieved now. You would
never set the target so low in any other industry. Worse still,
we are actually proposing to build up a programme of incinerators
which will actually block the development of the things I am talking
about and make the problems of hazards worse. The problems of
incineration—which you will no doubt discuss on another
day—are firstly there are serious hazards associated with
it. Secondly, from my point of view, a lot of the equipment is
imported and it wastes all the industrial and development potential
of recycling, reuse and eco-design. Thirdly, it is very, very
unpopular. A lot of the time which should be spent in switching
our waste industry over into a modern 21st Century industry is
spent in rather pointless arguments about things to do with the
promotion of incineration and trying to stop it.
5. You mentioned recycling, do you think the
targets in the strategy are achievable?
(Mr Murray) The 25 per cent and the 33 per cent? Not
only are they achievable but you could achieve them very rapidly.
Some places have already achieved them within 18 months. I think
they are far too low.
6. A lot of local authorities who recycle sometimes
suffer a great deal of pain because the market gets glutted with
recycled secondhand materials. How do you propose in the strategy
that that does not happen?
(Mr Murray) This is a major change that I am describing.
I am describing what has happened elsewhere. Britain is one of
the great laggers in all this. I think it is very important in
looking at this policy to see why the previous policy, (which
is still basically—with the exception of the things I mentioned—reflected
in the current strategy) has failed and why Britain remains at
such a low level. When you have an industrial transformation of
this kind, let us say you were changing over the paper industry,
you have start-up issues. One of them has been that in order to
get a new system of supplying what we call "secondary materials"
there is the question of markets. You want to try and get the
market developing at the same time as the supply. On the whole
you will not get the market synchronised. In some cases we have
the market moving ahead of supply. In aluminium we are importing
tin cans, because the aluminium plant in Warrington has been set
up and the supply has not been forthcoming. In paper there has
been a very substantial expansion, led by demand, which has drawn
in some of the waste paper.
Chairman
7. You are taking the easy ones. What about
glass, green glass? Can you really see there being a market for
green glass?
(Mr Murray) Yes. What I would say about green glass
is, if you go through all of these materials green glass is a
problem. It is a problem if we want to make green glass bottles.
We should do what the people who are leading in this have done.
When the Japanese are changing an industry they send people abroad
to see what is happening and then they get the best people in
the world to come and advise them. Washington State, which had
various problems, set up a specialist agency and they have developed
18 different uses for glass. There are people in Britain this
week who have plans for new glass tile manufacturing, which can
take multi-coloured glass. As with anything, if you have a problem
like that then that is a challenge for innovation. It is not an
argument against the broad strategy proposal.
Mr Olner
8. Could you tell us where you think recycling
is not always the best practical environmental option?
(Mr Murray) The broad goal of sustainable waste management,
as I have mentioned, in the long run is discontinuously the best
option. In the early days you may find—if you take a static
picture, a case of drawing paper from the Orkneys down to Kent.
This will not make sense. Some studies which have been done, usually
with historic data, can show that this is not as good as some
other options. If you take the long-run view, when you have actually
established the paper mills or the reprocessing close to where
waste is produced—and very often that is in urban areas
where you need the manufacturing jobs—you will find, from
all the evidence that I have seen—and there has been very
extensive work on this, the US is notable on this—that recycling
is environmentally preferable, and economically preferable, to
incineration. I think you have to take the long view, not the
short view, and you have to take the innovator's view. In terms
of life cycle assessment, which is the way in which you can analyse
environmental impact, the way I look at it is not, "Should
I do this or should I do that?". That is not the way anyone
developing industrial strategy looks at it. The way he or she
looks at it is, "I will use that as a management tool. If
it is not making sense in this case through a life cycle assessment,
how do I reorganise the life cycle so that it does?" It is
a prompt to innovation. That is what it should be.
Mr Brake
9. Is there scope for any incineration in a
really sustainable waste management strategy?
(Mr Murray) The answer to that is the following, in
my view: I think our main problem, and it is a problem of debate
in this country, has been between landfill, incineration, recycling,
reuse or whatever. The main problem we have however, is that we
have mixed waste, and when you mix waste up not only do you put
hazards into it, but it brings the worst out of the other items.
That is the problem with landfill. It is not that landfill is
bad, for things like glass or rubble. In fact it is ideal because
it restores the land. But it is bad if you mix plastic with biodegradables.
That is why the EU wants to get biodegradables out of landfill.
The same is true of incineration, but in a different way. If you
burn certain items those are the things that produce the dioxins
and the other hazards, and it is difficult to keep them back if
they are in a mixed waste stream. So the drive in all the advanced
ways of dealing with this is to separate waste. Our policy in
this country at every level should be to develop separate waste
streams. What that means is that you can recycle, reuse and reprocess
them according to what is best. You never reprocess a mixture
of paper and glass in a paper factory, you separate it into paper.
If you have not fully reused it you can then dispose of it in
the proper way so that the inert matter can go into the landfill.
If you took paper with ink at the bottom of it after its six useful
lives, what happens to that? What actually happens is that in
Aylesford in Kent it is incinerated on site in a specialist incinerator
which only takes paper. It has combined heat and power, which
actually saves considerable power and is probably its best use
and can be closely monitored. That is entirely different from
mixed waste municipal incinerators.
10. So, providing the waste is properly separated
you would favour incineration for certain types of waste?
(Mr Murray) I would say that it may be appropriate.
We would have to look at that.
11. As a result of this Government's waste strategy
what increase do you expect there to be in incineration?
(Mr Murray) Well, I say it both from the strategy
and from my experience on the ground. I work with something like
50 local authorities, mainly collection authorities, so I have
a good feel about what is actually happening. In the Strategy
itself on, I think, page 194 of Volume 2 is the model about what
they think is likely. There are four possibilities. They think
that the growth rate of waste is going to be 3 per cent. If 3
per cent growth does take place in municipal waste—and plans
are based on that, (not that it actually does take place, but
plans are currently being made on the basis of 3 per cent, plus
or minus 1 per cent growth, by most waste disposal authorities)—they
reckon that they will not get away with, I think, 166 incinerators,
because they say it will be difficult to find sites. I think is
a very apt judgment. I do not think there is any way that they
will be able to persuade 166 places to accept incinerators. The
most likely one that fits the model is 112 incinerators. If you
think that there are just over 130 waste disposal authorities,
from my experience of disposal authorities, particularly the non-unitary
ones, the great majority are going for plans that are reflected
in the Strategy, which are incineration centred. That is what
the battle is about. In some places they have already advanced,
like Surrey. Hampshire is putting such a strategy into place.
East Sussex is trying to do so. East London is. North London has
it already. West London threw it out, so the incinerator is to
be built just over the border in Slough. There are very few disposal
authorities which are not going for what they call "the balanced
option". The waste contracts and everything about them are
determined by the building of incinerators.
12. Do you agree with Michael Meacher that incinerator
plants are the source of serious toxic pollutants, dioxins, gases,
particulates and heavy metals, and that some of the emissions
are carcinogenic, and we know that there is no safe threshold
below which we can allow such emissions?
(Mr Murray) I have to speak as an economist rather
than a scientist. As an economist who has studied different types
of economy, the discussion of incineration reminds me of some
of the discussions of Soviet type economies, which is, how they
should work and how they work in practice? Those who lived in
Soviet economies coined a phrase called "actually existing
socialism" to describe what it was actually like on the ground.
There is a great difference, even with modern incinerators, between
what is said to happen in incinerators and what I would call,
"actually existing incinerators".
Chairman
13. Is that simply not because the old incinerators
reach very poor standards and there are very few incinerators
now operating at the standard of which it is alleged would be
the first class standard for incinerators?
(Mr Murray) It is very rare to be able to get at this,
but when you can do the results are quite horrific. This is, I
think, the importance of BYKER. Some of you will have read the
press reports in May on BYKER. Since then more has come out and
it has come out because the workers in BYKER have been talking
about their experience of how that incinerator was run. The residents
have been testing the ash and the consequences of the ash. Blood
tests have been taken and the results will shortly be known. It
is the description of how that plant operated that has been hair
raising, because it is entirely different from how it is described.
The results of the tests—some of them have not yet been
published, but I have seen them—show that the levels of
dioxins are 10 times those of Agent Orange in Vietnam. When international
experts have been called about this they have said it cannot be
the case, and yet it is the case. The samples have been tested,
significantly, in independent laboratories in Germany because
the testing here has not been trusted. When the testing is undertaken
by private companies who work for these various incinerator companies,
you begin to lose confidence in the results that come out. For
example, in Belgium, when there was the dioxin scare, they started
testing on a continuous basis for dioxins, as against the three
monthly tests, and what they found was that once you started continuously
testing dioxins were at 10 times the previously stated level.
I do not think that we are aware of what is happening with modern
incinerators—not the old ones, but the modern ones. We know
that the fly ash is dangerous, but also the emissions. I think
Michael Meacher is probably right, I have just recently read a
survey article on incinerators by bio-scientists, which I can
recommend to you and pass to you later. What I would say as a
non-scientist is I would never develop an industry on a basis
which had all those problems and which, if they prove to be true,
will, lead to litigation and, to the public sector, or the public,
bearing the costs of hazards and risks. There is such unpopularity
surrounding incinerators. You cannot develop an innovative sector
when you are under siege right from the beginning.
Mr Blunt
14. Mr Murray in your works and publications
and the views you are putting forward are the changes you are
suggesting going to cost extra money over and above that which
is already available?
(Mr Murray) The new developments in waste are all
going to cost money. I sometimes think that the severe crisis
in waste disposal and county council finance that is coming about
as the result of the incineration and higher landfill costs is
underestimated. It is all falling on county councils. Many councils
are forecasting increases of two to three times their current
waste disposal costs. What this means is necessarily pressure
on other services. You already see things like libraries and swimming
pools being cut. We know that the waste disposal costs under the
current plans are going to go right up. In work that we have done
in Essex—we have spent 18 months working in one place, wanting
to get right to the root of this—we have been working with
11 local authorities who do not want the council incinerator based
plans but do want 60 per cent recycling by 2007. That is the kind
of target that I think is feasible, reasonable and they are already
making headway towards it. We brought over—in the Japanese
style—Canadians who had done recycling for 20 years. We
asked them to look at the best systems and to cost them. What
they showed, and I have looked at their own work in Canada, is
that after an initial investment you can actually save money doing
recycling and composting. I should tell you these figures were
not accepted by the waste managers of our local districts. They
said, "We cannot do this, we could not do this, it will cost
more." We did a second exercise, which we have just completed,
which is their view of it. We have to start from what they think
is possible, not what the best people say has been achieved. We
have a high and a low. On the high side we estimate it would cost
£50 million in what we call transitional costs, getting recycling
up and running. After that time the costs reduce, mainly because
markets pick up, so market prices are better, more people participate,
you gather more and they also get smarter at running these three
and four stream systems, the separated systems. This is the cheapest
waste solution. Our work in London showed this as well, again,
based on the Canadians and the North Americans coming over here
and advising. The problem is, as with any new industry, how do
you get that initial capital? In this case a lot of it is working
capital, it is start-up capital to get the industry flipped over.
That has been one of the great barriers in this country. You cannot
do it piece by piece. You are introducing a new system which at
first will be more expensive and then the costs are driven down.
For the country as a whole at the higher level of costs we would
probably be talking about a £2 billion programme of start-up
support throughout the country. You must remember that on current
levels, the incinerator based contracts, work out at something
like a £50 billion investment programme throughout the country.
This is enormous; £50 billion programme on incinerators.
Whereas the £2 billion recycling support is actually opening
up what has been a one hundred per cent publicity subsidised economy
until now, opening it up to the market and making it a new sector.
15. Do you think where the Government have given,
effectively, an incentive to Surrey County Council to go down
an incinerator requirement, PFI arrangement for the building of
capital plants that that is a wholly wrong use of resources? Do
you think the investment should be as you described in Essex?
(Mr Murray) I think all the people who visited from
overseas and who looked at this say the following. First of all,
how on earth, given you have avoided incineration in the past,
can you build up a programme which we cannot now avoid if we build
it up already? The fact that you are building it up when recycling
is expanding so wide does not make sense. Secondly, they are struck
by how much money there is in place which could be re-wired to
help this transition programme. What we have is the landfill tax.
Even its offset, let us say £100m, could easily be re-wired
to finance this change. £100 million a year for five years
is half a billion pounds. You then have the PRN system, which
varies between £50 million and £80 million per annum.
This has been geared—and people are incredulous at this—to
give windfall gains to processors, most of whom have not expanded
and do not need it, and has actually been blocked from going to
the people who are having to start the recycling schemes, which
is the local authorities. We have recycling credits, which is
a plus, though the disposal councils have to pay for it. We now
also have the £140 million Challenge Fund. What so disappointed
all those working in this field is that the Chancellor said there
was going to be £600 million plus for waste in the Spending
Review, but the majority of that when it first came out was going
to go to support incineration. You then have all of the subsidies
which incineration has gathered over time which could fund recycling,
NFFO is one, PFI is the second, rate relief is the third, and
so on. You have a variety of subsidies going there. In the Worcestershire
case £100 million out of the £500 million cost of the
Kidderminster programme is going to come from public subsidy.
From an industrial transformation point of view it is crazy. It
is like financing an abacus development programme when we have
an electronic revolution around the corner.
16. If the Government is saying that there is
an extra £1.1 billion by the third year devoted to this,
is that the sort of money you are talking about?
(Mr Murray) Yes. On finance there is a central point.
Europeans tend to have high cost recycling transitions. The Germans
have realised the industrial importance of recycling. They have
not thrown public money away because it has been paid for by different
parts of the society. They have said, "get it going".
Their packaging recycling is very expensive. That has tended to
be the pattern in western Europe. In North America they have been
smarter. They have had much lower cost schemes, often more inventive.
They have had financial tightness put on them. America is already
up to 32 per cent recycling, (almost our target in 2015 achieved
within 8 years) on the basis of that. One of the crucial bits
on the finance side is to have a body—which we lack at the
moment—which has real expertise, drawn from people who have
already done it. We have somebody in this room who has led the
Australian drive in this. In Canberra they have achieved 59 per
cent recycling within eight years. That is 59 per cent of domestic
waste, and 66 per cent of municipal waste. They have done this
through smartness. We need people, like our colleague here, in
a body which will make sure that if you put money into it—any
money—it is very smartly spent to move us from the back
of the pack to the front.
17. Can you identify our colleague for the record?
(Mr Murray) His name is Gerard Gillespie. He has pioneered
the Canberra Zero Waste Programme, zero waste by 2010. He has
been around the country speaking about how he does it. What, of
course, happens is that people then get confidence that this is
not an abstract thing, that it is an utterly practical proposition.
Mr Benn
18. Mr Murray, could you tell us what changes
you think would do most to boost the market for recycling material,
bearing in mind the answer you gave a moment ago?
(Mr Murray) In some areas the market is already there.
Remember, you must distinguish between outlets and markets. There
are outlets for almost everything. The question is what price
you are paid. I have been involved in this and in most areas there
are not only outlets but prices. At the moment you could not sell
many more newspapers in this country but you can sell them very
handsomely abroad. The export price has been extremely good. Recycled
newsprint capacities, certainly in the south, has been static
while the northern mills have been expanding. We need a new mill
in the south. One of the failures of industrial policy here is
they did not have an expansion of the Aylesford newsprint plant
when the Aylesford management wanted it. How you do it is another
matter, but that is a key point. Either Aylesford should expand
for the south, or we need a new mill.
Mr Benn
19. What about green glass?
(Mr Murray) Newspaper is the first. I was talking
to one of the plastics processors the other day. They say there
is a shortage of plastic, for good reason, so they want more.
The aluminium firms want more. Steel? Once more there is one company
that does the de-tinning. They have said that they can handle
increases and they would actually expand plants where they were
needed if the thing was coming through. As far as green glass
is concerned, Essex has set up a programme to look at the way
in which glass can be reused. The aim of sustainability is not
getting rid of it. It is not hitting abstract targets. It is maximising
the value of all these things. There is a use that has now come
about in green glass, which is in aggregate. Both London and,
I think, Essex may well go in for this. I do not regard this as
in line with a long-run sustainability aim. What you need to do,
as with tyres, is to use the value that is already in the materials,
and think about how you can then get a higher value from recycling.
A filtration medium is one that they have used in Washington State.
They have other sorts of high value uses for glass in grades,
according to what the market is. The moment you look at it from
the point of view of industry thinking about markets and differentiating
your products and developing them, you do not get into the state
which I have had observed ever since I have worked in waste and
which I still find difficult to believe; that an industry that
is going to expand four or five fold—recycling has expanded
four fold in the United States and there are no problems with
markets there—is actually regarded as a problem. Any economic
development minister or economic development officer would welcome
it, particularly when the jobs created can be local jobs. The
more local the better.
20. What is the obstacle if the case is so clear-cut?
(Mr Murray) Personally, I think the obstacle is in
the financing of supply. I do not see it, for the most part, as
an obstacle of markets. I think the case for British policy is
the following, as it has been in Canada and many North American
States. There has been a period when you suddenly have a step
forward in supply and then you have newspaper stories about plastics
going to Argentina or wherever. Then paper companies, for example,
say, "Well, there is a secure supply. I will now invest £300
million in a plant." That phase of market adjustment has
had to be covered, in one way or another, through public, or quasi
public, funds. I think that because we are so late on the scene
and the technology is at the moment held by others, we could shorten
the phase by proper planning. That is what should happen with
the paper industry. Otherwise we must just build into financing
costs this start-up capital in the period before the processing
comes on stream. In the figures that we have done for Essex I
may tell you that the range of the market price between zero and
£50 for a package of recyclables is not the most significant
variable in the overall economics of recycling. It is the effectiveness
of your recycling systems, how many people participate, how much
you get out—that means education and advisers are very important—and
secondly, the smartness with which you organise the different
forms of collection. Those are much more important than markets.
Chairman: I think at that point I have to finish,
we are running rather late. Can I thank you very much for giving
us some very stimulating evidence to start us off. Thank you very
much indeed.
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