Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
WEDNESDAY 29 JANUARY 2003
MS BARBARA
HERRIDGE AND
MS DOREEN
FEDRIGO
Mr Lepper
40. Thank you, Chairman. I am sorry to have
missed the opening of your session—my apologies for that.
Austin has presented a case for the kind of logic of economics.
When we carried out our inquiry into the disposal of refrigerators,
a lot of the things that the industry there said to us was, "We
came along to government two years/18 months before the Directive
came into force and said, `Let's talk about investing in dealing
with this problem' and for various reasons nothing happened."
Are you aware, in relation to any of these other directives about
which we have been talking which obviously link with this issue
of producer responsibility, of industry in this country already
beginning to think about or making positive proposals about how
to cope with some of these issues? Could you give us an example
that reflects this?
(Ms Herridge) I think I am right in saying that there
has been a pilot trial on the collection of electronics. I do
not know which electronics manufacturer, but I think one of the
other Environment NGOs or an organisation called SWAP have been
trialing that. That is one of which I could definitely get you
details, but, if my memory serves me right, that is the case.
Certainly the other aspect is research. There has certainly been
some work done looking at the legislative drives that are coming
forward, where there are gaps in research about helping respond
to those and what the impact might be. Certainly there has been
a piece of work done by an organisation called Forward, looking
at where we need the research to be done to be responding to this
impending legislation and where it actually is being done. I think
part of that thinking, about centralising some of the work on
research funded through the landfill tax credit scheme, for example,
is in response to that—looking at: We need, as UK plc, to
be thinking totally about where that is coming from. But some
of it will be commercially confidential, that is the other thing:
business will be looking for the next market opportunity and so
we might not know what it all is.
41. What you are saying is that there is evidence
that it is not just a case of producers going for the cheapest
option, as it were, but of looking obviously from an economic
perspective but at the environmental issues as well.
(Ms Herridge) I mean, they are obviously looking at
the sustainability of their business in 10 years time, so, yes,
they must be.
Mr Jack
42. Why, in Waste 2000, did the Government,
in your judgment, shy away from a minimisation of targets in the
production of waste?
(Ms Fedrigo) I think that is mostly because minimisation
is a difficult thing to characterise. With something like recycling,
you can improve, you can count tonnages, but the direct causal
link between something like, let us say, communication and people's
changes of behaviour is difficult because there are too many factors
involved. This is something which we have been discussing internally
anyway, in terms of moving away from a tonnage-based recycling
target and possibly having price signals around waste production.
For example, local authorities pay more if there is less tonnage
being taken away for disposal by waste companies. Indeed, if that
was turned around, then the financial encouragement there would
be to communicate much more to the public about needing to minimise.
If the savings are there, then the encouragement is there. I think
it is because it is too difficult to characterise and possibly,
therefore, too easy to fiddle.
Mr Wiggin
43. Is the fundamental problem not based on
responsibility and the problem that Austin pointed out is that
the responsibility is not clearly defined between the individual
and the local authority, nor it is clearly defined between the
consumer and the producer, and nor is it clearly defined between
the type of production you do and the variety of ways you handle
that product at the end. Should we not really be looking at defining
responsibilities rather than the problem of moving away from landfill?
(Ms Herridge) I think that would be a very good first
step. Certainly, if you look at industry, they are doing things
on minimisation. It is not just an issue of responsibility; they
can see there are economic benefits in minimising waste if you
are talking about as landfill prices go up. They see that as their
responsibility, but the supply chain has been quite long, because—
44. They do not have a signal as to what they
should do.
(Ms Herridge) No.
45. They have been told to produce lighter weight;
they have not been told what sort.
(Ms Herridge) No.
46. I think you touched earlier on a sort of
rating system, between one and 18 or whatever. What can we do
to encourage that?
(Ms Fedrigo) That, again, is about cultural change,
is it not?
47. Not really. It is about responsibility.
(Ms Fedrigo) But in a very heavily market driven system,
one assumes that you take away the value judgments of things like
responsibility by having market signals.
Mr Wiggin: But I cannot choose what kind of
milk to buy, it comes in a plastic carton.
Diana Organ: Door-step delivery, in a bottle.
Mr Wiggin: That is good if you are not in the
House all the time! But there are problems with sending out the
right sort of signals. As an individual, I buy milk in whatever
sort of container it comes in—and I do not care because
there is no reason why I should: my responsibility is to pay my
rates, not to worry about my milk bottle. If you want to change
that, then somebody has to take responsibility for identifying
whether I am responsible for my milk bottle or whether I am going
to be responsible for my rates. But no one seems to want to do
that.
(Ms Fedrigo) The general perception seems to be that
the Government is loathe to tell industry what to do. How do you
get round something like that, apart from saying that government
needs to tell industry what it wants to do, what it wants and
how it wants its industry and its public to behave?
Diana Organ
48. The whole root of the problem, surely, is
that in this country we are packaging junkies. We like it. I know
that when I go on holiday and I go into a supermarket, I seem
to buy the product what I would call "raw". I buy it
in a supermarket in this country and it comes packed in one sort
of film, in a plastic wrap, in a box, in another bag and then
in the plastic bag, and I quite like it: This looks nice, it looks
good. The big cultural change of the consumer, of the citizen,
is when the consumer buying any product—buying a Morphy
Richards kettle, which comes in about six layers of packaging
before you get it home, and yet there is no reason why you cannot
take it home without it—actually says, "There is a
cost here: there is a cost to the environment, there is a cost
to my local authority, there is a cost to industry and I actually
do not need it and do not want it." How are we going to address
that? Because we are not really going to do anything about waste
management or minimisation until we actually say to the great
British people, "You really do not need to buy all your products
wrapped up 10 times over to make them clean, safe and presentable."
(Ms Herridge) Some people, when they get home realise
how much packaging is there—and part of it is an issue of
presentation. Our research seems to suggest that people feel guilty
when they get home, having bought whatever product it is, that
they are throwing so much away. On the supermarket shelf they
probably do not think about it, but when they get home and see
what has gone in their bin and realise they cannot recycle it,
that is when the guilty factor comes in.
49. I do not think guilty is enough. We need
to have a government thing. Nobody is more disappointed than the
small child at Christmas, when they open their Christmas present,
who finds that the item they end up with is only that big
when it came in a box that big.
(Ms Herridge) Yes, totally.
50. But actually it is to do with, is it not,
the fact that government has a responsibility and so do organisations
like WRAP and everybody else, and all of us to say we have to
stop this fix on packaging.
(Ms Fedrigo) But I am not sure the public is calling
for more packaged goods. We certainly have a lot of frustrated
individuals calling us to say, "Why are the retailers shoving
all this packaging on to us?" But, as has been said, if you
have no choice, you take what is available. If the signals are
not there from government to industry to say, "Why are you
transporting materials half way round the country, therefore needing
a lot of packaging to avoid breakage?"
Diana Organ: Do you not think the consumer is
king? If the consumer said to someone like Curry's when they are
buying a Morphy Richards kettle, "Excuse me, I do not want
all this. I am paying £29.99 for the kettle, you can have
all of this packaging back." If all of us started to say
to the person who is selling us the goods, "You take it back,"
then the retailer and the industry would say, "What are we
going to do with all this lot? They have sent it straight back
to us."
Mr Breed: What happens if you drop the kettle
on the way home?
Diana Organ
51. Consumers have a huge amount of power.
(Ms Fedrigo) That is one of the things which we are
certainly seeking to communicate a lot more. But consumption is
not a sexy issue. Environmental organisations do not get more
support by saying "Do not buy so much." We have to get
away from the hair-shirt image.
52. I am not saying that we do not buy; I am
saying do not take all the rubbish. This needs a massive cultural
change and the consumer has all the power here, not government,
not industry, not organisations like yourselves.
(Ms Herridge) One of the things we could do is promote
more packaging essential requirements regulation. That talks about
having heavy metals in packaging and over-packaging.
53. I will get back to this, but we talked a
little bit earlier on about other countries and their use of the
voluntary or mandatory route to encourage industry sectors to
improve their waste management practices. You are quite clear
that you do not think that voluntary producer responsibility schemes
are very effective on their own, and yet the Strategy Unit recommends
that voluntary agreement is the route to take. I wonder if you
could make it clear why you think voluntary schemes are not so
good and what is so useful about adopting the mandatory approach,
given that we are about a cultural change and flying in the face
of economics and whatever.
(Ms Fedrigo) Given that we have had quite a wide-ranging
discussion about how no one really wants to take responsibility
for their actions, to continue down the voluntary route continues
that: "If you want to do it, do it." "What do you
think you want to do?" It just gets batted back and forth
between government and industry: government says what is possible
in industry and industry says, "Well, it is down to government
to tell us what to do," and no one wants really to grasp
the nettle and say, "Right, we are in the driver's seat and
we say this is what we will do." The voluntary aspect just
continues that mentality.
54. But if we have the mandatory route, we have
nanny state Britain, we have government telling industry, and
they are saying, "We can't comply with this. We can't do
this. How can we compete with our European partners? You are killing
us."
(Ms Fedrigo) That, to me, I suppose, is what government
is for.
55. That is what we are meant to do?
(Ms Fedrigo) Yes.
Diana Organ: Is that what we should do?
Mr Breed
56. Yes, they have been very good at it lately.
(Ms Fedrigo) In my view, yes.
Diana Organ
57. Okay. The Strategy Unit has suggested targets
of two new voluntary agreements per year. Is that realistic and
is it worthwhile?
(Ms Fedrigo) I think agreements certainly are because
it encourages discussion that otherwise would not go on within
industry. I do not want to be prescriptive, to say it needs to
be mandatory, but given that the culture which does exist here
is one of, "Well, we are not going to tell you what to do
until we have to because a Directive has been foisted upon us"
. . . If you look at other countries, for example, Canada, the
government says to an industry sector, "We want you to recycle
everything, and we do not care how you do it, you do it,"
and industry is willing to say, "Okay, fine, we will do it."
Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater, in other words.
Let us keep discussion happening but probably behind the scenes
there needs to be much more of a government view, where it is
trying to take industry and the public and how it is going to
take it there.
Mr Lazarowicz
58. Do you have any examples from other countries
where the voluntary agreement role seems to work.
(Ms Fedrigo) Some research has been done on that by
an organisation called The Green Alliance—and we can certainly
provide you with a copy of that report. They have discovered that
that in itself is not enough of a measure. Some states and government
regions and countries have gone just down that route and we are
finding that it probably will take a number of measures, some
mandatory, some voluntary, some taxation, some incentives/tax
breaks, that will get us to where it is we are trying to get,
and it will be difficult to say this particular measure, this
particular voluntary approach, had whatever impact. I suppose,
also, we are intending to do some research into this because it
may serve some industries better if there are a small number of,
let us say, manufacturers of a product. It may be easier for them
to go down a voluntary route rather than a very diffuse sector
that will not necessarily work together.
Mr Lazarowicz: Chairman, certainly it would
be helpful to get the report.
Ms Atherton
59. Could you explain why you feel the landfill
tax should be broadened to a disposal tax? Do you not think there
is a risk that it could actually encourage landfill?
(Ms Herridge) That is a good question. If I may start
off, I would say that we are trying to shift waste up the hierarchy
and, if we are talking about taxing just one method of treatment,
that is really just shifting us away from landfill, which, again,
is looking at the Landfill Directive and meeting Landfill Directive
targets. If we are serious about the waste hierarchy as a concept,
we should be thinking about a whole bunch of taxation for a range
of disposal technologies. That is not to say that you could not
have that banded, which you could do on the basis of environmental
impact or something, but I think just saying, "Right, landfill
is the one we do not want" . . . If you look at the incentives,
on the other side, you are incentivising or giving money to recycling
schemes, say, through the London Capital Recycling Fund and the
Central 140 million, so you are not being prescriptive about the
type of recycling. On the incentivisation side you are being quite
broad but on the disposal side you are saying, "We are only
going to tax that as an environmental bad." I think, if we
are serious about it, we should be looking at a broad range of
disposal technologies.
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