Examination of Witnesses(Questions 140-158)
WEDNESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2003
MRS JANE
BICKERSTAFFE AND
DR IVAN
BAXTER
140. But you do not support that as a mechanism,
as a driver?
(Dr Baxter) We are not saying we do not necessarily
support it. It is happening.
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) But there are lots of other things
that are happening. Greening the supply chain; companies starting
to use more environmental management systems, as well as quality
systems. All those things improve all their operations environmentally,
and that includes their packaging. As INCPEN, we produced something
called a "Responsible Packaging Code of Practice", which
trading standards officers advise smaller companies to use. Big
companies tend to be way ahead on environmental improvement but,
because it is a supply chain, they can then put pressure on their
smaller suppliers and customers. I honestly do think that there
is a lot happening that happens voluntarily, which we probably
do not talk about enough. Lots of companies use this code. We
have always produced examples of best practice for smaller companies
to operate. We have the regulations, as Ivan says. It is difficult
to see what else needs to be done. Things are going in the right
direction with packaging.
(Dr Baxter) Plus we should always bear in mind that
the amount of packaging going to landfill, as we said at the beginning,
is only some 4% of weight. So the majority of waste going to landfill
is not packaging.
Mrs Shephard: This is not so much a question
of the witnesses as of you, Chairman. I think that this point
about statistics is a very interesting one. We are used to very
gloomy statistics in this Committee on this issue, with Britain
being at the bottom of every list. There must be some sort of
properly standardised form of statistics, which I think that the
Committee ought to have.
Chairman: I made a note as that was said. That
is one reason why we have a specialist adviser.
Mr Lazarowicz
141. It may well be that packaging only comprises
4% of waste going onto landfill, but you are not the only people
who say that their percentage is only 4, 5, 10%, whatever, and
100% is made up of lots of smaller percentages. Leaving that initial
comment aside, do I take it from what you have said that you would
not be in favour of any government measures to require or positively
encourage the reuse of containers, rather than recycling? Fiscal
measures, for example?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) We would not be in favour of it
being mandated, simply because it is too blunt an instrument.
Industry uses reusable systems, where they make environmental
sense and where they are sure they are going to come back. Just
to require them to be used means that industry would have to redesign
the supply chain and then hope that the consumers at the far end
might send them back. That, evidence shows, does not happen. The
Body Shop, for example—their customers must be fairly environmentally
aware compared to many others, and they offer a refill service
for their containers. They also offer a 10% price reduction; yet
only 2% of their customers in the UK take it up. I do not know
why. Maybe it is just that we are living so fast that nobody feels
they have the time. I have actually tried the system and taken
my container back. It comes back a bit sticky, but I have got
10% off and I am not bothered; but I have probably had to stand
in the shop five minutes longer than other people would. We can
only work in society. If we impose things—by changing the
packaging—and then it does not suit the way people want
to live, it will not work. The consumer does have a strong say
in what packaging stays on the shelves. There is nothing that
moves off quicker than something that does not sell.
142. Is it important then to make sure that
the mechanism is not blunt but as carefully designed as possible?
You have given the example and have displayed to us the comparison
of paper against metal and glass. Does that not suggest that the
key thing is at what do you put in some kind of charge to encourage
the reuse of returned bottles, for example? If you put it too
high, then the environmental consequences could be negative. Put
it too low, and it will not work. Your answer is to try to get
it at the right level: to balance the convenience to the customer
with actually achieving a real environmental balance. It requires
a bit of finesse rather than a blunt instrument. Is not that the
conclusion?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) You are absolutely right, but it
needs to be applied on a case-by-case basis. You cannot just mandate
it across the board. In Australia at the moment there is a proposal
for putting deposits on some containers, to try to get them back.
Deposits are an expensive system to administer. The administration
charge, hidden from the consumer, is more than the cost of the
deposit. Even if it comes back, what they are doing is generating
a dual flow of the used containers. They have a recycling system
in place—as we have for many of our drinks containers. If
you put a deposit on some of them, then you have those containers
going back via supermarkets or via a special collection centre
because, to refund the deposit, you have to do that. So all you
are doing is, again, duplicating the lorries on the road to deliver
the same amount of material. Deposits seem attractive at face
value but, when you look at how they operate, they are expensive—financially
and environmentally.
143. On that point, eight other EU Member States
do have some form of government legislation to encourage reuse
of drinks containers. We are told that there are return levels
as high as 60, almost 100%. If it has worked in these countries,
could it not work here?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) I am not sure that it does work
there. On 1 January Germany has introduced deposits on a number
of containers. They have had deposits on their refillable containers
and, despite that, the public in Germany have moved away from
refillable containers. They have now brought in deposits on other
containers and there is not any evidence that it is actually going
to increase the amount of recycling. They are already recycling
their metals through their "Green Dot" system, up to
70 or 80%. It is just duplicating the transport system again.
Ms Atherton
144. Some years ago I spent a fair amount of
time in Norway, where on every bottle of wine there was something
in the region of a £5 to £10. You would open colleagues'
cupboards, and out would spill six months' worth of bottles which
had been saved up to be taken back. Every few months, the car
was loaded up with empty bottles galore—very worrying from
a safety point of view—and they would then be taken to the
depot and transferred. I always thought that quite a good idea,
because it was so financially punitive. The deposit was two to
three times the price of the wine and therefore a real mechanism
to return the bottle. You did not drop a bottle of wine—not
because of the wine inside it, but because of the cost of the
bottle in which it was contained. You took great care to take
it back—and you are still saying that is not a strong enough
incentive?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) In those days, the refillables
were more widely used; but it was only on containers for certain
drinks that they imposed a deposit. In Norway now they have a
recycling system set up for all their glass bottles. They are
targeting getting more back for recycling, more efficiently. Also,
the size of the deposit is a big issue. When we still had refillable
bottles for beer in this country, one of the arguments that was
looked at then was that the deposit was 5p or 10p, and it was
reckoned that was not sufficiently high to be enough of an incentive.
They looked at what might happen and trialed putting the deposit
higher. All that happened was that kids would take the bottles
back to the pub; then, when the publican put them out in the backyard,
they jumped over the wall and brought them round to the front
door again! It is a complex issue and there are not any simple
answers. It is important to look at the unintended side effects
of some of these things.
(Dr Baxter) On the side effects—I am not saying
that this is an overriding one—with refillables you have
to wash and clean them. By doing so, you are using a lot of water
and a lot of energy to heat that water. In the end, you have to
do something with that waste water. You cannot drink it; it has
to be treated before being returned to the environment. It is
just another issue to bring to bear. It is not seen as solid waste;
it is liquid waste that you are generating there. So you have
to be careful that you are not moving the problem from one stream
to another.
Mr Drew
145. It is always difficult, coming in halfway
through a debate, so I apologise for that. I am afraid that, hearing
the example of kids taking back refundable bottles, I am reminded
of taking back Corona bottles! What you seem to be saying to us
is that, because we have such a centralised food and distribution
chain, in reality it is very difficult to move away from that
if we even wanted to put more realistic costs on waste disposal.
In a sense, should we be looking more directly at the nature of
a centralised distribution chain and put the emphasis much more
on industry—which is obviously why you are set up—to
come up with creative solutions? Government can do that in a number
of ways: by direction, by tax, or by exhortation. Should we be
looking for alternatives, in terms of more localised distribution
chains? In other words, through this wonderful notion of contingent
liabilities, you put the true costs in terms of environmental
degradation. Many of the things we have grown used to are just
taken for granted when, in reality, there are costs that are just
not borne and we try to bring those costs down. It is a bit depressing.
Here we are, talking about how do we deal with waste. I am not
an incinerator fan, because that is an easy way to go, as far
as I can see. We just replace landfill with incineration. It has
its own inherent dangers. I would welcome your views on what the
industry feels it ought to be doing.
(Dr Baxter) On the first part of your question, about
the distribution chain being the reason for why we are not able
to recycle more waste, I am having some difficulty in understanding
why you think that.
146. It is quite simple. The whole basis of
the way in which we operate now is convenience. Unless I have
got this completely wrong, the most convenient way to do it is
to have more and more economies of scale, from a centralised distribution
depot; pump it down to the consumer, who then does not have to
worry because somebody else gets rid of the waste, and so on.
We can carry on like that until, basically, the earth collapses
under the weight of waste—because whatever we are doing
in this part of the world now, the underdeveloped world will follow
soon afterwards. How do we grapple with that?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) I absolutely understand where you
are coming from. You are right. We should not just be looking
at waste, because that is the end of the pipe. We should be looking
at what we are using at the beginning of the day. The trouble
with looking at waste is that—we are here talking about
packaging, because that is that visible part of the waste we generate—we
should be looking back. What are we buying at the beginning? We
get a number of calls to INCPEN—not that many, but with
people saying, "I bought this and it had a box, and then
wrapping round the box. It was too much packaging". A lady
recently was quite irate about it and said, "Can't you do
something about this?". I asked her what it was she had bought.
She had bought an electric nail polish drier! You are right. We
look at the packaging. Fine—we should improve the packaging
and there is room for improvement—but we are not looking
inside the box, and we really should be doing that. We are doing
some work on waste minimisation at the moment—prevention
at source. Somehow we have to find cleverer ways of persuading
people to buy an appropriate amount, not buy more than they need.
The wastage that comes through into the food chain of perfectly
edible food is frightening, compared to when we first did a waste
analysis in 1980. We did not see that sort of food waste then.
Things like books. We never saw books thrown away. We do now.
It is much more going back to basics, seeing what we need. We
did a study called Towards Greener Households. The 25 million
households in the UK buy 100 billion goods a year. That is where
the thought process has to come in. Rather than giving people
things like electric nail polish driers for Christmas, we should
encourage people to give theatre tickets or tickets for a football
match—things that do not have resources attached to them.
That is the real issue.
Ms Atherton: You have to use your car or something
to get there.
Mr Jack
147. I want to pick up on your evidence at page
3 where you talk about producer responsibility. You make quite
a lot of play at the present time about the careful thought that
should be given by manufacturers to the material that they use
for their packaging, and you have given us a through-life analysis,
to give us some feel as to the balance of the environmental impact
of various decisions along the packaging chain. That is all well
and good but, at the end of the day, as far as certainly the domestic
waste stream is concerned, local authorities currently take the
sole responsibility for managing the waste stream. Help us to
understand where the incentives for manufacturers/producers to
do the things you advocated earlier in your evidence come from,
when somebody else takes responsibility for the end-game. You
have advocated a voluntary system, a system which relies very
much on responsibility; but sometimes market mechanisms involving
price also play their part. In terms of this, however, there seems
to be a disconnect between the voluntary, producer responsibility
line and who is actually responsible for dealing with the waste
stream.
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Packaging is the first area of
this producer responsibility. When it was first discussed in the
European Commission, going back 10 years ago now, our attitude
to it was, "Fair enough, provided everybody takes responsibility
for their goods once they end up in the waste stream", and
that is liquid waste and solid waste. It seemed artificial just
to take packaging which, as I have explained, is a byproduct of
consumption; it is not the thing that is being made to be delivered
to people. It is not what people want to consume. They get it
because they cannot have the goods otherwise. It was probably
the last place to start, by trying to experiment with this idea
of producer responsibility. If you applied it to something like
a fridge or a washing machine—which now is coming through—then
that makes sense, because there is some value in that when it
is finished. Packaging has a tiny value when it is finished. You
have the logistic difficulties of collecting enough of it together
to do something with. Putting the responsibility for doing something
with it after landfill on the manufacturing chain will not make
any difference to what they do. They still have to protect the
goods. It does not drive them to design it any more lightweight.
It might push them into the more easily recyclable ones but, as
I hope I have explained, that is not necessarily good for the
environment. It is an artificial thing that is not improving the
environment.
148. Let us take a motor car. I appreciate that
it is not in the waste system on which I opened my questioning,
but there is a paradox here. With cars, for example, if you want
them to be lighter and therefore to use less fuel, you perhaps
start replacing heavy metal components with items made of other
materials—if you are going to go right down the route of
the aluminium car. On the other hand, you may be creating a situation
where, from your point of view of the energy costs in making the
new lightweight materials, those costs go up, and it may be infinitely
more difficult to recycle a redundant piece of metal than simply
to melt it down. How does the manufacturer, in the world of producer
responsibility, decide what they ought to do—if they start
from the point of view of the end result? In other words, what
happens when the item is redundant? That seems to me to be where
it is. It is not necessarily how can we make the most energy efficient
car, but what do we do to get the ultimate disposability at the
end of its life?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) That is what is restricting the
debate, is it not? You cannot just look at the tail end; you have
to look at the complete life cycle. The big environmental impact
of the car is not its production or its disposal; it is its use
phase. If we can do something to reduce the amount of energy while
we are driving it round, that has to be the big saving. It is
a trade-off then. If that means that there are parts of it which
are not more easily recycled, then that is not a great loss.
149. To come back to the Pringles' container,
are you aware, for example, as to whether Procter & Gamble
do sit down and say, "We're going to do a calculation. We
will come to a position and we will look at all of these factors.
Here are some numbers. This is our decision about what we are
going to do"? Do people like that do that?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) You are right, it is Procter &
Gamble—one of our members at INCPEN. All our members, but
they more than most companies, do what they call "life cycle
analyses", which are huge studies, looking at the different
options. They have considered every variable you can think of.
I honestly do think that packaging industry is more aware of environmental
things, take more time, and pay more attention to the life cycle
impact than many other parts of industry.
(Dr Baxter) With the concept of shared responsibility,
assuming that we are going to have packaged goods, then the responsibility
of the packaging user should be to ensure that the packaging meets
with consumer acceptance, and does the job that it is supposed
to do. We do not have a debate with that. It then passes along
to somebody who is using the product and has a decision to make,
having taken the product out of the packaging. "What can
I do with it?" They can either take it to be recycled, if
the facilities are available, or put it in the bin and the local
authority will then deal with it. If the facilities are available,
then the consumer needs to be encouraged to take it along, so
that it will hopefully be recycled. It then has to be handled.
Someone has to have the capacity to do something with it and to
be able to get some value from it. It is very often the packaging
manufacturer, who actually makes the packaging in the first place,
who will be able to offer a solution there—perhaps taking
it back and using it again. He may not be able to take it in and
make new Pringles' boxes—although there is recycled content
in there—but he may be able to use it for some other use.
That is what we mean by shared responsibility. It is no use saying
that it is only someone else's problem. It has to be shared by
the different parts within the chain.
Mr Lazarowicz
150. Accepting the rule that all of your members
do their best to look at the whole life cycle analysis, I am sure
you would agree that there will be some occasions when manufacturers
do not do that. In the case of the car, it may well be a factor
which has to be taken into account but beyond the control of the
manufacturers themselves. In that case, what is the mechanism
in trying to ensure a whole life cycle analysis actually happens
in a product, other than having some kind of state approval? You
presumably have to have some measure. It seems to me that one
might be some sort of fiscal measure, which requires people to
factor environmental costs into the overall costs of production.
How would you encourage that life cycle analysis of the environmental
costs, without some form of intervention—be it through a
fiscal measure or in another way?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) It is happening now. Companies
like Procter & Gamble, like all our other members, do it.
I think that it is driven by lots of different things. Environmental
management systems are widely used by big companies in this country.
That means they look at all of their systems in terms of their
environmental impact. Packaging is automatically scooped up in
that and is improved as a result. Plus we have the regulations.
The packaging directive has a recycling part of its regulation
but there is another piece of regulation in the UK, called the
Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations, which requires
companies to design packaging so that they have used a sensible
amount of resources. They have things like a code of practice
and best practice guides. They have a commercial driver, because
if they can get their goods through the market with less packaging,
then it also makes commercial sense. I do not think that they
need any more pressure. I think that is going the right way. The
fact that packaging is not increasing in the waste stream, and
has not done so in the last 10 to 20 years, is proof of that.
It is interesting that commercial and industrial waste in the
UK has stabilised, whereas household waste has not. Commerce and
industry must therefore be doing something right. Maybe we have
to look at our purchasing habits as consumers, and see where we
can be more efficient there.
Ms Atherton
151. You are saying that packaging has gone
down, and I am quite prepared to accept that. Have you done a
total energy equation of how much extra energy is required to
make that packaging lighter? When you are on a diet, you have
the calories and it works out the actual calorific value of each
item of food. I am struggling to see, in the recycling agenda,
just how many calories of energy you need for each piece of packaging.
I want to know if the whole thing has ever been equated in the
same way that you would with food and calories.
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Not all added up, because the answer
is it depends how far you are going to ship the stuff. If you
are going to collect some containers and recycle, reprocess and
clean them round the corner, and make them into something else
nearby, then it is one lot of calories. If you are going to ship
it halfway across the world, then it is another lot. Even if we
stopped today and measured exactly what is happening today, it
would be different next week. Recycled materials are like virgin
commodities: there is supply and demand, and it fluctuates so
much.
152. With Pringles—our famous Pringles—in
comparison with your Walkers Crisps, for instance—it must
be possible.
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Yes. It would come down to the
fact that they are different products, presumably, and people
have different reasons for buying them. In the work that we did,
Towards Greener Households, we looked at all the goods
that UK households buy. They are printed up each year in the Government's
Family Expenditure Survey—which has a great deal of information.
It also gives us a split by number of people in the household.
We looked at the materials that go into goods; the materials in
the packaging round them; the energy in making them, in delivering
them through the chain, and in people using them in their homes.
We are very happy to share this report with the Committee. That
is where we feel we have to look first. Then, if you can reduce
the amount of everything coming into the system, inevitably what
comes out at the end will be reduced. Then we can look at how
we handle that best. Our concern, however, as we said in our written
evidence, is that there is too much focus on recycling. INCPEN
has been campaigning for increased recycling for many years, but
we feel that it is now going too far and we are relying on it
too much. In particular, local authorities are in a very difficult
position, because recycling is costing them money. Some of them
have very good schemes operating. If we up the targets, they will
have to collect more, dirtier, cruddy bits of waste, which means
that the costs of doing it will go up. What they need is a strong
Government lead on incineration with energy recovery, so that
we can have a secure alternative to landfill.
Mr Borrow
153. I apologise for missing the start of your
presentation, but I wondered if you would like to continue the
last sentence of your contribution, in terms of the role you see
for incineration and energy production from waste?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) We think it has to have a role.
In general waste management terms, it is a proven technology;
it has operated in a number of countries for many years. We have
operated it here but to a very small extent, because our landfill
has been so cheap. When we were last involved in a waste analysis,
it was perfectly clear that there is a huge percentage of the
household and municipal waste which is never going to be reusable
and is not worth recycling. There are things that we never saw
when we did our first analysis in the 1980s, such as sanitary
products, syringes—things like that which, just in human
health terms in relation to the people who have to handle the
waste, we would be much better off burning. Then you have the
add-on: you can get some of the energy back. It is strange that
in this country we seem to have community groups which are not
happy with it, when they are not happy with recycling plants or
composting plants or landfill. Landfill, of course, was slightly
remote from urban areas, so they did not see it. Incinerators—it
is not sensible to build them too remotely and they are more obvious.
It has to have a role, and we strongly recommend that the Government
give a very strong lead. It is not up to local authorities to
have to persuade the local population. That is not their talent.
If Government gave a strong lead on it being there, it would encourage
recycling. There is a statistic included in our paper. In America
the average recycling rate for the whole country was 28%. In areas
where they have incinerators it is 33%. The municipality is then
confident that they have a mechanism for handling all of the really
cruddy things. They can invest, because they are relaxed, and
look at recycling.
154. As politicians, we have to deal with the
difficulties of persuading the public to consider recycling plants,
composting plants and incineration plants. Having had a planning
application in the middle of my constituency for a recycling and
composting plant on a site that had previously been identified
as a possible incineration plant, my local constituents are probably
happier with the recycling and composting than with the incineration
plant. The arguments are quite interesting on that. I am interested
to know from your perspective, if you are saying that incineration
should be a much bigger part of the solution, is there a role
therefore for looking at different types of packaging? In other
words, perhaps a move from less plastic packaging to more paper
packaging or recyclable packaging. Also, looking at packaging
itself—if you are looking at recycling and incineration
as the two eventualities—then we should be designing our
packaging with a view to being either recycled or incinerated,
rather than land-filled, which is what we often end up with at
the moment.
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Again, it is the tail wagging the
dog. I do not think that we should be designing our packaging
per se for which waste management method it is going to
be used in, because that will also depend on locality—where
it ends up. We should be designing it to be resource-efficient,
first and foremost. Another of my members looked at a subject
you have probably discussed in this Committee—and I do not
really want to get into—of disposable nappies. They did
a complete life cycle assessment and compared whether you recycled
them, burned them or land-filled them, and it did not make any
difference to the complete life cycle. I expect, if that is the
case for nappies, it is probably true of packaging as well. We
should design it so that it is safe, whatever system it goes in,
first and foremost, and then accept that the purpose of using
it is to prevent the wastage of the goods inside. Some of it at
the end of its life will be better off put into an incinerator,
with the energy recovery; some of it is better off recycled; and
none of it is harmful in landfill.
155. You have mentioned briefly the knowledge
you have about the United States, where there are examples of
high levels of incineration which also match high levels of recycling.
That is something which perhaps in the UK would be an unusual
experience, because we incinerate very little. Are there other
examples from other countries which would reinforce that?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Any other northern European country
has some. In Denmark, Copenhagen recycles 20%; burned, 78%; landfills,
2%. In Berlin, 17% recycling; 30-odd per cent incineration. Any
of the countries that we see as doing better than us in terms
of recycling are also doing a lot better in terms of incinerating
with energy recovery.
156. I was in Copenhagen last year, and I think
that the Committee are due to visit Copenhagen in a short while.
Obviously, Copenhagen has a high level of incineration for domestic
waste. It is a completely different culture. It is very much against
landfill and seeing incineration as a much better alternative,
which goes completely against the culture here. Have you any ideas
on what we could do as politicians?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Yes.
157. If we decided what the strategy should
be, how we could persuade the very sceptical public opinion in
terms of incineration to become more positive?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) They way they approach it in Denmark
is (a) they make sure that the consumers know that it is their
waste that is being handled; (b) they take this total resource
approach. They do not split their waste stream as we do. They
are handling the whole waste stream, which is commercial, industrial
and household all together, and construction and demolition waste.
Their big recycling rates are in their construction and demolition
area, not in the household area. More importantly than that, it
is by making the public feel that incineration is okay. They have
community heating. I think that the public in many European countries
are more comfortable with incineration because they see that they
get something back from it, and they do get district heating—as
we do in some parts of the UK where we have incinerators. However,
it is to make people aware of it.
158. Perhaps I may touch on the issue of landfill
tax and the suggestion that we should perhaps expand that, to
incorporate a general disposal tax to include incineration and
other methods of disposal of waste. Do you have any views on that?
(Mrs Bickerstaffe) I think that at the moment we do
not have enough incineration to tax it as well. I think that we
should encourage it first, and then perhaps look, when we have
enough incineration in place, at whether it would be necessary
to try artificially to push it to some other outlet. I think it
premature to discuss that.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for helping
us today. It has been most useful.
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