Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR MICHAEL
ROBERTS, MR
DAVID NORTH
AND DR
PAUL BROOKS
WEDNESDAY 15 JANUARY 2003
Mr Challen
80. If we are looking at sustainable waste management
policy, how would you rank things like simply trying to reduce
the overall waste output as opposed to trying to ensure that throughout
a product life cycle or packaging or whatever you have a very
comprehensive environmental policy to follow it all the way through?
Would you say there is one thing there that is more important
or more significant than another?
(Mr Roberts) In broad terms, I think logically we
would support an approach which is trying to reduce the incidence
of waste in the first place by, for example, a smarter approach
to the design of products and services, rather than waiting until
the waste is generated and then trying to find ways of dealing
with it. The agenda which is usually referred to as the resource
efficiency or resource productivity agenda is one that we very
much sign up to. Having said that, I think there are some very
real challenges to policy makers and businesses in taking forward
that agenda. What exactly does one mean by resource efficiency?
What is the nature of change in the productivity one gets for
a certain amount of resource use? There is a debate about whether
we should be moving towards a factor ten situation in the world
or some lesser factor, four for example. There is a big difference
between what you need to do between those two ends of the spectrum.
I do not think collectively people have answered some of those
challenges.
(Dr Brooks) Two points, one on life cycle. Certainly
as a sector we are very keen to encourage a life cycle approach.
There are certain examples, for us examples in construction, where
we see a lot of commercial and competitive advantage in a life
cycle approach, steel buildings that you can take down afterwards
and use somewhere else, rather like a Meccano set, compared to
a concrete building which is much more difficult to move. So we
would support a life cycle approach. It is a waste hierarchy,
which is something to which you are alluding, and we support a
waste hierarchy as a principle. I would suggest that it is a little
more complicated when you think of things like proximity and distance.
There are some examples where lower down the hierarchy it is perhaps
better for the hierarchy overall, so I have a few concerns about
taking the hierarchy too rigidly in that sense.
(Mr North) Again, we would not question the logic
of the waste hierarchy but as a retailer we tend to look at these
issues in a more practical way and try and be effective in all
the areas that are set out in the hierarchy. In terms of minimising
or avoiding waste we try to be active on that where we can. For
example, we introduced a scheme quite recently to replace cardboard
and non-reusable plastic trays in what we call our secondary packaging,
the material that we use to transport goods around and then into
stores, with what we call reusable green trays, and the effect
of that has been that it saves us 46,000 tonnes of cardboard a
year and that is roughly equivalent to 320,000 trees. That is
one area. Then there is recycling and again we try to be active
on recycling where we can be most effective, in terms of packaging
before it reaches the customer, and in the debate on transporting
goods around the country and food miles and those sorts of use,
it is not commonly recognised that we try to get that as efficient
as we can and that when our lorries are transporting goods one
way into stores they are also used, almost without exception,
to transport packaging waste, for example, back to recycling from
our stores. Again, last year we recycled more than 70,000 tonnes
of cardboard and 12,000 tonnes of plastic from our own operation.
The third bit of that is encouraging customers to recycle through
the banks that we have in our car parks. Again, we are trying
to get much more active on that and again that is an area where
we think that government incentive schemes and regulations can
be changed to give it a push and to help the Government on municipal
and domestic recycling targets.
81. Do you think you are going far enough? To
give an example, if I return to Tesco's with all my egg boxes
I am not going to be able to use them again because you do not
provide loose eggs. How much further should you go with your purchasers
because it is not just supermarkets, it is the whole food chain
through the life cycle of a product? How much further can you
go to get a much more comprehensive approach to sustainable waste
management?
(Mr North) It is a complicated issue. To take the
example that you have given about eggs, there are questions of
practicality, then there are food safety and other regulations
that need to be complied with. I think there are issues. There
is clearly further to go on waste avoidance, both in the areas
that I have been talking about in terms of secondary packaging
and on primary packaging. That is obviously something that we
will seek to take forward. Even in the areas in which we are already
active there is further to go. If I give the example of encouraging
customers to recycle, at the moment we have, I think it is 9%
or 12% of the recycling banks for customers used by local authorities
in our stores and we are trying to enhance those quite significantly
by making them more user-friendly for customers by extending the
range of products that can be recycled through those banks, but
the incentive structure and financial structure for that is one
that we find does not provide an incentive at all for commercial
operators like ourselves to get more involved because the payments
for recycling are entirely channelled to local authorities who
in some cases find it very difficult to enhance the speed and
effectiveness of their recycling. That is one area that we think
could be looked at to drive a much greater degree of participation
between the public and private sector.
82. Would you advocate putting an extra element
into the cost of a product to help the recycling of that product?
(Mr North) With respect, that was not exactly what
I was suggesting. What I was suggesting was at the moment local
authorities are paid £40 a tonne for the amount they recycle,
including the amounts they collect from our stores. We believe
there is a lot more that we could do in our store car parks—the
environmental argument—so that customers who come to buy
foods and other products from our stores could be encouraged more
than they are at present (and they are already doing quite a lot
at present) to bring goods back for recycling. If the incentives
structure were to be changed a little bit we could make a quite
a big step change on that.
(Mr Roberts) Along the lines of what needs to happen
to unlock the innovation within the private sector to do the sort
of things that have been suggested, one example that has come
to our attention is that of one of the mobile phone companies
which sought to set up a recycling arrangement whereby customers
bring back mobile phones that they no longer wanted to use. They
thought as a company they had secured approval from the Environment
Agency headquarters for an approach whereby all stores would be
granted waste management license exemptions and were then hoping
to go forward with the particular initiative, only to experience
considerable delays while regional offices went through similar
discussions about whether this was a good idea and whether they
would be granted waste management license exemptions to store
waste. It is a microcosm of a broader concern that our members
have that there are all of these rather small-sounding but nevertheless
in aggregate significant barriers at an implementation level to
the way in which the private sector can do things which achieve
favourable outcomes.
83. Would it be desirable or even effective
if the Government were to set quantity targets capping waste generation?
(Mr Roberts) I think it would be difficult to understand
how exactly that would work. If one takes at a broad level the
fact there are something like 400 million tonnes of waste arising
every year from a range of sources, not just commercial/industrial
but municipal and otherwise, how exactly would one enforce a cap
on the waste that arises from those different sources? How would
one enforce a cap on the domestic consumer? At what level would
one set it? It is not an issue that we have particularly looked
at in any great detail but there seem to be fundamentally important
questions about how in practice you go forward on that.
(Dr Brooks) I suspect it might be complicated by imports,
therefore somebody might import a product rather than make it
themselves to avoid generating waste.
Gregory Barker
84. Can I ask Mr North where Tesco stands on
the issue of a carrier bag tax and what price he thinks the carrier
bag tax ought to be? In terms of carrying your products away from
the stores, why is it that, on the whole, customers cannot have
cardboard boxes like they used to put product into to take and
carry away? Would that not be a sensible thing to restore?
(Mr North) Where we start from on the carrier bag
tax is looking at Tesco's experience in Ireland where a carrier
bag tax has been introduced. One of the interesting issues in
Ireland was that the Irish Government were quite clear when they
introduced it that they were not introducing it for environmental
reasons, they were introducing it primarily to deal with a particular
problem of litter that had arisen in the Republic and that—
85. That is an environmental reason, is it not?
(Mr North) Let be me more specific, it was not an
issue in terms of waste volume, it was a question of litter and
when we had discussions with them about whether they would have
introduced it as a mechanism for dealing with waste they said
quite clearly they would not have done because the impact of a
carrier bag tax on the amount of waste generated or saved was
so little it would not be an effective mechanism for dealing with
waste. I think our experience in Ireland confirms our view that
when you introduce a consumer tax you have got to be very careful
that it does not have a whole series of adverse consequences either
for commercial operation or for consumers. We have had issues
about consumers, particularly those who do not own cars, for example,
who have to travel on public transport or who walk, who have found
the carrier bag tax to be either an inconvenience or to increase
the charge on them when they do their shopping. We have also found
in our store operations there was an absolutely huge increase
in the first few months (it has tailed off a little bit since
then) of removals from stores of trolleys and metal baskets. I
simply list these as examples of adverse consequences of what
might at first seem to be quite a good idea. Our overall conclusion
is that we would not support a carrier bag tax.
(Mr Roberts) Can I make a general point arising from
that. We as an organisation do not tend to speak for the individual
consumer, the man on the street, and clearly we are here to represent
the business community, but I think that the particular example
you cite raises an interesting question. Our natural instinct
is to suggest that policy makers either at local or national or
level ought to think instinctively about carrots rather than automatically
about sticks. There may be opportunities for changing the behaviour
of domestic consumers through, for example, reductions in council
tax in return for improving recycling rates at home, or something
of that sort, but our natural instinct would be to say to have
a look at those carrots rather than automatically assuming that
one has to penalise as a way of incentivising a change in behaviour.
86. Am I right in thinking that the proliferation
of carrier bags is a relatively recent phenomenon? We used to
recycle cardboard boxes; why does that not happen any more?
(Mr North) To answer your question in sequence, I
think if one looked at the figures there must be a significant
increase in the use of carrier bags over the past 30 or so years
as consumer habits have changed. Whether there was quite such
an extensive use of carrier bags 30 years ago is doubtful. In
terms of using cardboard or paper or other substances, what I
would wonder is if one were to encourage more use of cardboard
boxes, I think the logic of your point is that you would get reuse
of those cardboard boxes but if, however, that did not happen
(and I am not sure we would be confident it would happen) they
would not be reused.
87. The only difference is it would not have
your logo on it, it would have somebody else's logo, the logo
of the grocery supplier that delivered it to your store. Is that
the problem?
(Mr North) I do not think that is relevant to the
question of waste. I am sorry, I am not understanding the point.
88. Somebody would walk down the street and
the box would say "Andrex or" "loo rolls"
or whatever the product was that had been delivered to supermarkets
rather than lots of bags all saying Tesco.
(Mr North) Our first objective as a company is to
serve our customers and on that point one of our concerns about
something that simply penalises the use of carrier bags is that
customers find carrier bags quite a useful way of carrying their
shopping, therefore we think a tax system that makes it more difficult
for them to use that is something that goes against the idea of
helping customers. Secondly, the idea of customers walking down
the street carrying cardboard boxes, again we think on balance
would make life more inconvenient for customers rather than more
convenient and that is much more important than the point I failed
to get which is about advertising, and I do not think that is
really an issue.
Sue Doughty
89. Returning to the retail trade, I have got
one or two queries because I have got a concern. I do understand
the point you are trying to make about the fact that you are not
focusing on municipal waste but other wastes that arise, however,
a bit like VAT the final product of waste ends up with the person
who is the last purchaser of the product. It is very interesting
talking about mobile phones because it is not disposing of the
phone that is the problem but the great big cardboard box and
all the extra packaging that comes with it. What I am concerned
about—and I take your point about motivation and about moving
forward—is how can we motivate business to work with councils.
You sell me my mobile phone and I have municipal waste arising,
granted a small percentage of the whole, but consumers are very,
very concerned about this. Similarly, about what we buy at supermarkets
where we are buying packaging as well as the product. How can
we move towards a situation where this problem is shared, because
I quite understand this barrier that you see, you have got packaging
waste and things like that to worry about and the consumer has
to worry about packaging ultimately so how do we get to the point
where we share that problem about materials that move from the
supplier and end up in municipal waste?
(Mr Roberts) My colleagues may want to make their
own comments. I suspect there is no silver bullet to answer that
challenge. I would suggest that certainly one should consider
the potential role of voluntary initiatives. If one thinks of
the newspaper and publishing industry and what has been achieved
in terms of recycling waste from newspapers, that suggests there
is a way forward for taking out of the waste stream products that
would otherwise go to landfill. As a general point of principle,
in terms of business working with local government to come up
with mutually supportive solutions, there is an issue generally
about the extent to which both cultures, the private sector and
the Government sector, fully understands each other's needs, and
I think that is a much more general question than one that simply
relates to waste. There are issues of trust, there are issues
of understanding what drives the different sectors in terms of
motivation. A closer awareness of the respective needs of both
sides is a general point which is important to answering your
question. I do not know if there is anything specifically either
of you would like to add.
(Mr North) I am not sure it is an easy point to answer
really, it is a very difficult issue. What we try to do is play
our part in raising the awareness amongst consumers of waste issues.
I have talked about some of the things we do behind the store
front, some of the things we do in our car parks, some of the
things we do in our stores. It is very interesting listening to
the discussion here in that we have a very successful recycling
scheme for mobile phones which has now reached a quarter of a
million mobile phones that we have recycled. We try to introduce
incentives by offering either Club Card points or a combination
of Club Card points and a donation to charities. Over time, we
believe that is likely to raise awareness among our customers
of waste issues, of recycling issues and, in time, of waste minimisation
issues.
Joan Walley
90. I would like to get some feel for how much
you think industry and business should be in the driving seat
in all of this. I am particularly aware that the Strategy Document
2000 and also the one that has come from the Strategy Unit particularly
focus on municipal waste and household waste. How far do you think
that emphasis in policy development in respect of municipal and
household waste is right and where does that leave business? Do
you think the emphasis is justified?
(Mr Roberts) That is quite a difficult question to
answer. Ultimately, business, as one of many stakeholders in shaping
policy, is going to be driven by what the customer requires and
asks for, and I think the role of business is going to be determined
to some extent by how far customers are educated about solving
these issues and the extent to which they then act on the basis
of that information and education. Having said that, clearly there
are some obvious areas where the private sector has a role to
play, not least for example in the waste management industry.
One of the issues that particularly concerns the waste management
sector is the degree of capacity in the sector to manage the various
waste streams, whether they come from commercial or indeed from
the domestic consumer. I think they have indicated that we need
to be spending nearly twice as much as we do per year in waste
management, the £3 billion year, to be comparable with the
situation in Europe. That raises questions about how one generates
the revenue stream to finance that sort of approach, and I think
the waste management industry can speak for itself in signalling
precisely where that should come from. You could speak to the
Environmental Services Association to get a view. Those would
be my general comments in response to your question.
(Dr Brooks) I think you need to divide the waste stream
into post consumer and production. In terms of production we are
in a heavily regulated environment already and there are and will
be controls to carry on reducing waste from production. I think
the bigger issue in a way is post consumer waste. We have a particular
interest in steel packaging and we certainly encourage and promote
the recycling of our product through funding local authorities
but also through education in schools and that sector specific
education service to provide just that sort of information and
encouragement. There are some good examples in that area of how
business can encourage that particular waste stream to be minimised
and reduced.
91. I think we are interested in how you say
what the consumer wants and is prepared to pay for is then influenced
by the education which is in turn influenced by the regulations.
You see it as this virtuous circle really. In terms of the waste
streams and how they should be prioritised to achieve the landfill
reduction in commercial and industrial waste, do you think there
is scope for business to be more proactive in saying how that
can be done?
(Mr Roberts) We have certainly suggested both in our
evidence to this Committee and the consultation carried out with
the Strategy Unit that there should be an explicit strategy to
deal with commercial and industrial waste.
92. Should that not be coming from you?
(Mr Roberts) We are suggesting there needs to be one.
We are happy to assist in doing that but clearly we cannot act
in a vacuum.
93. So what kind of parameters would you need
in order to be able to put forward more constructive suggestions?
(Mr Roberts) The basic point which we have mentioned
in our evidence is that you can only take forward a strategy and
shape it on the basis of good quality information and I think
there is a widely shared recognition that quality data both about
waste arisings and then subsequently is very poor. It is not uniformly
poor but some forms of data are of higher quality than others.
I have heard anecdotally that the quality of data on construction
and demolition waste is poorer than others. We need to start with
the basics to get that right, and on the basis of that we will
be in a better position to put together a strategy. Industry is
already playing its part. For example, it already plays its part
in the Hazardous Waste Forum as announced by the Secretary of
State, which is a particular area of waste that is of clear concern.
Chairman: We will have to adjourn the meeting
for 15 minutes while we take part in the division.
The Committee suspended from 5.07 pm to 5.20
pm for a division in the House.
Joan Walley
94. If I could resume where I left off on the
targets that there are for industrial and commercial waste. Do
you think they will be met by 2005?
(Mr Roberts) Our understanding on the basis of information
that currently exists is that we are well on the way to meeting
those targets. There is an issue about the quality of the information
that was available when the targets were set and the subsequent
evidence gathering that the Environment Agency is now undertaking.
With those caveats, our best guess is that we will meet the targets.
95. So we are not likely to get local submissions
from regional CBIs saying it is not possible to meet the targets?
(Mr Roberts) I cannot anticipate what might happen
up to 2005. I am giving best judgement on the basis of, albeit,
imperfect information.
96. Can I pick you up on something you said
in reply to an earlier question where you gave an example that
because of the delay in legislation it was unlikely and that you
needed an extra two years to meet the Packaging and Waste Directive
because of the delay in legislation. Do you believe that you do
need this extra time? Why do you need to have the extra time for
that?
(Mr Roberts) The reason for it is because the legislation
itself has been delayed in its development and it has taken an
additional two years from the original timetable to finalise it,
yet the timetable which is actually embedded in the legislation
remained the same despite the slippage in the process.
97. My point is that there might well be slippage
in the legislation but if it is a good idea of what it is that
everyone is going to be required to do, why can you not get into
the driving seat and achieve that which is implicit and which
is embedded in that structure?
(Mr Roberts) I will make a very general point and
ask Dr Brooks to make a comment. Clearly in principle what you
have said sounds straightforward and the foresighted business
community will be anticipating what needs to be done, but in practice
there is a very, very real challenge in doing that and the debate,
for example, surrounding progress on the waste acceptance criteria
in the United Kingdom is an indication where that actually applies.
Companies have been left in a considerable amount of doubt as
to what is and what is not considered, for example, as hazardous
and that is because the process of determining the criteria has
taken far longer and it has been more difficult than anticipated.
It really does in practice make it difficult for a company to
know what they need to do to minimise their risk.
98. It might be helpful for the Committee to
know exactly which department it is you are dealing with in terms
of getting recognition of what is acceptance on waste.
(Dr Brooks) That specific point on the waste acceptance
criteria is within DEFRA. We could provide some further details
of who we are dealing with on that and we can pass that to the
Committee. I was going to say, in terms of the timescale we are
talking about, the issue for us—and I accept I am talking
particularly about steel packaging—is not for us to be able
to recycle the product once we have got it, it is getting it out
of the system, recovery from the commercial waste system. That
is hugely complex as we know through the various local authorities
and it will take a long time to get that set up and get it working.
That is one of the factors in needing more time.
(Mr Roberts) The additional point I would make is
the problem I alluded to earlier about the lack of capacity within
the UK to manage waste streams. I think you have already taken
evidence from the Environment Agency which has given you some
figures on what they believe is the gap between what we have now
and what is desirable in terms of the number of facilities in
the UK and I think the gap is significant. Given the natural constraints,
for example through the planning system to bring forward facilities
which are operational, that is another dimension to this problem
of being able to implement legislation when it comes forward.
Mr Ainsworth
99. I am interested in what it is that drives
the successes that you claim you have achieved in waste minimisation.
You claim there have been successes there and I just wondered
what you feel the balance is between regulation in terms of driving
what has been achieved and self interest, because clearly if you
minimise waste you continue to maximise the benefits to your shareholders
at the same time. Which of the two has been the more powerful?
(Mr Roberts) Generally speaking, it is extremely difficult
to disaggregate between the two and to give some feel between
the balance of the two. Certainly in listening to our members'
concerns they would emphasise the point about self interest from
the commercial benefit of reducing waste, reducing resources at
the start of an industrial or commercial process, but I think
it would be unfair to suggest that regulation has not played its
part. I think most responsible businesses acknowledge there is
a role for regulation. The issue is about the quality with which
that regulation is developed and for example we have a major concern
in that regard—and this is highlighted in some detail in
our written evidence—about the definitions of waste and
the extent to which that is actually holding back the ability
of businesses in a range of sectors to be recovering or recycling
things which would otherwise go to landfill.
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