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WEDNESDAY 29 JANUARY 2003 __________ Members present: Mr David Curry (Chairman) __________ Memorandum submitted by Waste Watch Examination of Witnesses MS BARBARA HERRIDGE, Executive Director, and MS DOREEN FEDRIGO, Research and Policy Manager, Waste Watch, examined Chairman
(Ms Herridge) Yes, w-a-s-t-e. (Ms Fedrigo) Yes. (Ms Fedrigo) If you consider the evidence that we have submitted, we have said that the Government continues to take the compliance approach to waste management, which is complying with whatever EU Directives come down the line. We have suggested the Government needs to have a more pro-active approach to waste management, mostly by linking it to a resource-use strategy. (Ms Fedrigo) Yes, if we are going to move further up the waste hierarchy, as it has been characterised, we are not going to get the waste reduction, waste minimisation, increased recycling which implies better resource use by continuing to comply with the Directives that come along. If the Government were able to apply a more strategic approach around the wider issues of resource use and see waste management as an element of that rather than in isolation, we would see a more pro-active or progressive approach being taken. (Ms Herridge) A lot of the drivers are at the end of the chain, in terms of where EU strategy is looking at compliance. It is looking at producer responsibility too, but, if we look more widely, there are other activities that are going on that we could include in that strategy - whether that is consumer information or sustainable consumption, lifestyle issues. So it is broader than saying just compliance with the Landfill Directive or any other directives at the disposal end; it is more about trying to pull us up that hierarchy as well as the management of the end process too. (Ms Herridge) Yes. (Ms Herridge) Yes. (Ms Herridge) There are two issues there. One is about infrastructure and making it simple and easy for people to do something - so that is about linking infrastructure with education and communication - but it is also about making people realise that there is a positive about what we are doing. Certainly the research that we have done suggests that people will not be incentivised to change their attitudes or behaviour unless they know that other people are doing the same and it becomes a cultural norm. Certainly there is still a general feeling that if you recycle you are somebody who is extraordinary and unusual and it is not a mainstream activity that any person - you and me - does on a day to day basis. (Ms Fedrigo) I do not really know that we can say there is such a place. It is very much, as you say, down to culture. If you look at some countries - usually northern European ones - such as Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, they have taken a different approach. In particular, in the Netherlands, even up to 10 years ago they were developing whole national environment programmes which were being communicated to industry, which generally said, A This is where we want to head as a society.@ And if you take industry with you, if you take the public with you, then they know why they are being asked to do something like increase the recycling that they do in their factories, in their households, etc, and we have missed out on that in the UK. Without wishing to go into great detail through this kind of inquiry into an environment programme for the UK, we are saying that those countries have exceeded ... They are at 95 per cent, if you are looking at Denmark, recovery and recycling. The reason they have been able to get there is because the Government has pushed for it, right across a number of sectors, and has brought the people with them. (Ms Fedrigo) Yes, absolutely. You will find in some of those countries local authorities banding together to develop, let us say, independent associations - much as what is starting to happen here with regional waste plans and local authorities being encouraged to work together through something like Best Value. One of the suggestions that comes from the Strategy Unit report is mandatory regional recycling plants, so requiring local authorities even further to work together. It is in that clubbing together really that you can start to develop something that is a bigger strategy that encourages economy of scale around things like recycling, so the costs potentially start to come down a bit and you get better planning - because that is a difficulty we have in the UK as well - of infrastructure. Mr Jack (Ms Herridge) One of the first things is that their disposal prices initially are higher, their landfill fees are higher, so there is an incentive, a financial incentive, for businesses to change their behaviour irrespective of any legislative pushes and drivers. They are linking that together. I do not know for sure but I would say that one of the other issues at which we might want to look further in the UK is the kind of collaboration between industry and local authority waste streams. Because, if you have materials, there are economies of scale to be built up, and if you have collection systems and recycling becomes viable in a particular area with a particular amount of waste, then there is maybe an argument to look at the collaboration. I do not know whether that has happened in countries like Germany, but that would possibly be another thing to look at. (Ms Fedrigo) There is also a different mentality that exists in terms of industry and investment to industry. Banks do certainly offer more products, I suppose, that encourage the introduction of environmental technologies into processes, whereas in the UK we find a much more short-termist approach to needing to show profit on every quarter. We are talking about difficult cultural changes here, in that you are not talking about Stock Exchange and return on investment. We can certainly build on some of the messages that are coming through from the Strategy Unit report that are about recognising the need to have innovation technologies funded by government. (Ms Herridge) I cannot give you a specific example but I know of references to examples where global corporates, for example, behave differently in one country compared to another. (Ms Fedrigo) Could I suggest that we provide that to the Committee at a later date, rather than trying to come up with something off the top of our heads to which we do not have access. Mr Jack: It would just be useful to have some real world examples of the differences. Diana Organ (Ms Fedrigo) Do you mean specifically in relation to producer responsibility? (Ms Fedrigo) They have implemented producer responsibility differently, a number of Member States have. If you look at a country such as Denmark, they have applied an environmental angle to their producer responsibility, so the tax that is being paid on the packaging is in relation to its lifecycle assessment based impact. Therefore, glass has a figure of 1, let us say, it is neutral, and aluminium, because of the implications on mining, etc, is somewhere around 18. We have not done that. We have gone strictly for the tonnages based. It is not just that it is mandatory or voluntary, it is also how it has been designed to try to encourage ----- (Ms Fedrigo) Yes. It is much more closely pinning their colours, I suppose, to the environmental side of things, and being able to say, A Yes, we believe, as a government, as a country, that it is better to have a glass bottle than an aluminium can.@ If you look at what Denmark has tried to do, they have tried to ban the use of cans in beverages. Just to come back to the whole mandatory versus voluntary or how producer responsibility is implemented, there are also things like landfill values that are being introduced in those countries and in other countries. They have less of, let us say, a market-based approach and are more comfortable being prescriptive, saying to industry, A We expect you to do this.@ (Ms Fedrigo) They have much better recycling rates and one would assume that, yes, they do. (Ms Fedrigo) Yes. Chairman: That is a useful piece of intelligence, anyway! Mr Wiggin (Ms Herridge) Good question. (Ms Fedrigo) I tried to do some research into the Strategic Rail Authority, and how it relates to the service providers, I suppose. Part of the difficulty with waste that has been identified within the Strategy Unit report is that it cuts across a number of different departments: it primarily sits within Defra, but it also has influence from DTI, particularly through negotiation phases, as well as ODPM in terms of funding. If you were to bring it into one body - and what we have suggested in our response is that it is either led by the ODPMs or Defra - then it relates to that specific government department. We would suggest that it continue to be Defra. It would, as a single authority, bring together the different elements that currently cut across that number of departments. Innovation sits, right now, in DTI and there is not very much relationship between DTI and Defra, so the innovation side of recycling, let us say, gets lost quite easily. I am not sure, without knowing, quite how independent authorities, let us say, relate to their government departments. The steer does come from Defra but the wider strategy, I suppose, comes from the authority. (Ms Fedrigo) Suggesting a resource authority rather than a waste authority is about the different levers for change or the different areas of influence. It came out of the last World Summit on Sustainable Development that in the last 10 years since Rio we have seen an increase in resource use and therefore environmental degradation and an increase in consumption. Consumption and production directly relate to waste management. One of the ways to get better production, I suppose, or more sustainable production, is via innovation. If you continue to cut across a number of those departments where that focus is, you continue to get the disjunct or the disconnect. (Ms Fedrigo) It is hard to say. Since its inception it has been focused on market development, because obviously that was seen as a barrier to increased levels of recycling. Following the Strategy Unit report, its remit has been broadened to delivering. Therefore, without wishing to plough too much into WRAP, thereby making it too unfocused a body, I would suggest that something like a resource authority is possibly a body that guides - something like we were talking about earlier - the whole approach to resource management and to where are we trying to get as a nation, as industry sectors, as local authorities. Then WRAP= s role is, I suppose, in the long run, to continue to help to deliver on those. Mr Jack (Ms Herridge) Yes, certainly. I think as individuals a lot of it is down to what people buy, because what you bin is what you buy. Specific examples: think about the packaging for the food items you buy, whether it is packaged or not. Are you talking about waste minimisation in terms of true minimisation, actually producing less, or whether you are talking about what is collected by the local authority? They are two different things. Certainly at the moment people would class home-composting as minimisation, because you are not then putting that waste out for collection by the local authority. Other examples of the things people can do is to reduce junk mail through signing up to the mailing preference service; to use re-usable nappies instead of disposable items. There are a number of small measures that combined can add up to make a difference in terms of what an average person does generally throw away. And I do not think it is necessarily about being a threat to people= s behaviour and lifestyles; it is about being able to offer them a choice in what they buy that actually still fits in with their kind of lifestyle. Today= s re-usable nappies are very different from the terry towelling things that you had to wash and spend loads of time doing. (Ms Herridge) Exactly. (Ms Fedrigo) Partly this comes down to what we were alluding to earlier, a national environment programme, let us say, or a programme of activities around which discussion can happen with the public, because, you are right, central to what Waste Watch does is awareness raising to the public. If you explain to them why they need to reduce the rubbish that they produce and how, people are quite willing to take part, not least because it is an easy activity to put, let us say, a can or a bottle into a recycle bin instead of your rubbish bin if that is somewhere very close to home, usually in your home or by your front doorstep. If you look at the increase in inquiries that we get through our national help line, they have increased six-fold. We are up to 33,000/36,000 inquiries a quarter from the public, usually saying, A Why can= t I recycle this? Why doesn= t my local authority recycle this? Where can I recycle this? What can I do with ...?@ whatever. There appears to be a general perception - yet again we come back to changing culture - that people are just not interested in recycling, whereas we are seeing otherwise. If we are looking at environmental issues, recycling is much easier to do than getting out of your car and taking public transport, so we should, let us say, as government be encouraging them to do those positive things as a means of feeling better about themselves rather than putting themselves out unnecessarily in their views. (Ms Herridge) I guess as well you are asking me: At what point do you say we have to charge people to make them actually change their behaviour? At the moment, until we have got universal easy access to recycling facilities and people understanding what they are throwing away a bit more, I think it is too difficult - well, not difficult, but I think we should be looking at the voluntary approach first and then at what impact. There will be a percentage of people who will say, A I= m really not interested in the environment, I am not going to be motivated by environmental arguments.@ Or there is peer pressure. Certainly I would say that another part of this is making it become a cultural norm. That takes time. Once it becomes a cultural norm, people just do it and do not think about it. At the moment, I think people feel a bit out of the ordinary if they do it, so you have to provide them with alternatives and options to doing things, and make it easy, and then you can say, A Right, how far has that got us?@ and then, A Let= s look at some other sticks,@ if you like. (Ms Fedrigo) We would probably argue both. (Ms Fedrigo) It is a difficult question to answer because on the one hand you do not have enough, let us say, data on the level of resources used by different industry sectors, so we do not know where those resources come from. There is one waste management industry that through the landfill tax credit scheme has created a suite of projects that are better meant to identify the resources coming through the UK and, therefore, where you can better manage them or how you can better manage them. If you are talking about recycling or getting industry to recycle products or make their products recyclable, you are probably further down the line, or it is easier to get further down the line, because we have bodies such as WRAP and because we have recycling, I suppose, on an agenda, on a government agenda, in that we do have to meet landfill targets. That does limit you to those materials that usually relate to a typical kerbside box - so glass, paper, card, aluminium, things like that - and industry uses a lot of other materials. Apologies, but it is not a simple question to answer really. It probably does need a mix of both really, getting industry to use fewer materials and more that can be recycled. (Ms Fedrigo) Producer responsibility has implications. The way it has been implemented in the UK is very weight based: industry, the companies, the retailers, are focusing usually on light-weight materials, which usually means going to plastics and other materials that cannot be recycled, designs that cannot be recycled. I do not know specifically about Pringles but you certainly find in other countries deposit return systems and things like that which are not just about recycling, it is about returning the product to shop because the price signals are there. (Ms Fedrigo) One of the things that has developed over the last, let us say, five to 10 years is the national distribution system for companies, for retailers, mostly because the pressures were around transport and trying to minimise the cost of transport, as well as light-weighting of the materials that were being transported. So that system works against deposit returns until you start to break them down to, let us say, the regional level. That to me, yet again, is a government signal really in terms of price. If it still costs less to transport a sandwich from south-west England to north-east England because the packaging is not required to be, let us say, collected again by the producer, then you will not get the subsequent changes in behaviour. I mean, this is quite interesting because there are some retailers - and it is probably worth talking to them - who operate in other Member States and they fit into the system quite easily and can work it, whereas the perception here is always that it will not work or it cannot work until, I suppose, those correct price signals are there. Maybe that is something on which we need to be working more, showing how that regionalisation can happen. Mr Mitchell (Ms Fedrigo) I suppose I would argue that one of the things that has been identified through the Strategy Unit report is that we do not have enough of a robust economic market, I suppose, or signal from government on encouraging sustainable resource use and sustainable waste management. If there were other carrots and sticks that existed that better reflected the true cost, I suppose, of transporting the materials across the country, then you are fixing the market, in essence, you are changing the market, rather than just working to it based on a national economy of scale. If we want to move towards regionalisation and more local markets, then the Government has to signal its intention to want to do that by encouraging that level, I suppose, of economic activity. (Ms Fedrigo) If we want to look at responsibility - because that is one of the issues, I suppose, that we need to deal with in terms of the culture that we have here - if the responsibility lies with someone like the manufacturer of the product that is being focused on or targeted (in this case packaging) the responsibility for delivering the objectives of the legislation ultimately lies with the manufacturer but obviously will be shared down the line to incorporate local authorities. Here industry does not pay for the packaging that ends up in the household, so local authorities get it in the neck really by having increased levels of packaging that they cannot really recycle, because their price signal is not there for things like packaging, and yet industry is not paying for the increased production of packaging. (Ms Herridge) You will start to see things like this happening anyway with things like the implementation of a re-Directive, in that you have national distribution through big electronics manufacturers and there is going to have to be a mechanism, whether that is local or regional, to collect that material back. Certainly, if you look at what some of them are already doing, if you buy a new cooker or a new fridge some of them will take it back. There is beginning to be that mechanism there because of producer responsibility. (Ms Herridge) Yes, it does. In that case it does. (Ms Fedrigo) The argument therefore is what is the responsibility for? What is the objective of the legislation? The Packaging Directive was about minimising the packaging being produced and increasing its recycling. What we see happening in the UK is more plastic packaging, very little of which is actually recycled in the UK because the price signal is not there. If it comes down to industry deciding that they want to use plastic in their packaging, then they have to somehow fund a recycling facility at a national level, let us say, if that is where the economies of scale are. (Ms Fedrigo) Yes. And I have also said that it is one of two Member States to not have met its recycling targets. (Ms Fedrigo) But that is if your main driver is the economic one. We are talking about sustainable development and we are talking about what is an environmentally driven directive, so does it make environmental sense to export our plastic to China for recycling? (Ms Fedrigo) My question is: Who finances? Where does that money come from? (Ms Fedrigo) One of the suggestions is that we at least double the cost of waste management in the UK. If you look at the Packaging Directive and how it has been implemented, in that it is weight based, it encourages industry to move more towards using materials such as plastic in their packaging. For those of us going into the shops, that means that we have quite a selection of plastic bottles to chose from but very, very little option for recycling that plastic, so they work against each other in the implementation of those two pieces of legislation. (Ms Fedrigo) Terming it the A compliance approach@ means that it is just in reaction to the directives which come from Brussels, so it continues to have a fragmented approach in terms of just looking at which wastes are being focused on. We will also soon be having an Incineration Directive. There is no cohesive waste management or resource use approach that will develop until we move away from just complying with the Directives which come down. (Ms Fedrigo) I am not keen to suggest that it is going to be identical. If you think about it, there are fewer numbers of vehicle producers, so it is likely to be easier than the Packaging Directive, but I am not sure that you will necessarily get the most efficient or the most effective legislation. If you look at some of the delivery mechanisms at which the Government has looked, they have included charging the final owner of the vehicle for ---- (Ms Fedrigo) Who will just dump it. I suppose, ultimately, you are trying to change the behaviour, so you do that through the price signal. If, instead, the final owner were, let us say, paid for returning its vehicle to a dismantling centre, then you would end up with people not dumping it and valuing that product, and not necessarily making money on it but having more of an incentive rather than a stick. (Ms Herridge) But there is no reason why we are different, other than that we did not start educating young people years ago. Other countries have had programmes in schools, and had legislative signals a long time ago. It is going to take time. If you look at our attitude, say, to drink/driving, that has changed over the years. Ten, 15, 20 years ago, you maybe would have said, A People drink/drive, it does not matter, people do not care about it,@ whereas that culture has very definitely changed but it has taken a generation to happen. I do not think it is fair to say, A We are different, we cannot do it.@ It is a case of, we need to start somewhere and we have not started. That is why education in schools is important and that is why as adults we should be starting to set examples. Mr Mitchell: Thank you. Chairman: I have three supplementaries and then we must move on. David Lepper, Michael and Bill. Mr Lepper (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. (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 (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 (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 ----- (Ms Herridge) No. (Ms Herridge) No. (Ms Fedrigo) That, again, is about cultural change, is it not? (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 (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. (Ms Herridge) Yes, totally. (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, A 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, A 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, A 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, A You take it back,@ then the retailer and the industry would say, A 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 (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 A Do not buy so much.@ We have to get away from the hair-shirt image. (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. (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: A If you want to do it, do it.@ A 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, A Well, it is down to government to tell us what to do,@ and no one wants really to grasp the nettle and say, A Right, we are in the driver= s seat and we say this is what we will do.@ The voluntary aspect just continues that mentality. (Ms Fedrigo) That, to me, I suppose, is what government is for. (Ms Fedrigo) Yes. Diana Organ: Is that what we should do? Mr Breed (Ms Fedrigo) In my view, yes. Diana Organ (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, A 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, A We want you to recycle everything, and we do not care how you do it, you do it,@ and industry is willing to say, A 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 (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 (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, A 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, A 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. (Ms Herridge) Yes. Ms Atherton: When you first heard that this Committee would be doing this inquiry, what was the one thing about which you said, A They= ve really got to do this. They= ve really got to grasp this@ ? Chairman: Kettles apart. Ms Atherton (Ms Fedrigo) Personally, for me, it was the whole strategic approach, to move from waste to resources. That is a very nebulous response, I suppose, because what does that mean? But it is about the behavioural change, the cultural change and stopping just looking at waste and how we deal with it. (Ms Herridge) I would agree. That is exactly what I thought. I thought the Committee should be looking at all aspects of it. It is not just: This is a waste review. It is a broader issue, and trying to get the impacts on different departments in government looked at and to work together. Chairman (Ms Herridge) Thank you. Thank you for your time. Memorandum submitted by Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) Examination of Witnesses MS JENNIE PRICE, Chief Executive, and MR RAY GEORGESON, Director of Policy and Communications, Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), examined. Chairman (Ms Price) Yes. (Ms Price) In so far as what we need to do that is concerned, I think there are two things. I think we need a very clear steer as to where they are going, what the objectives are. Certainly in our market development work we have tried to be quite target driven and quite output focused, and so I think the fairly crystallised targets, like reducing waste growth by one per cent, are suitably output driven and suitably crisp. As long as we know where we are going, that is one of the pre-conditions. The other thing we need is the resources. They have to give us the money. (Ms Price) Yes, I do. (Ms Price) Yes, so that we can develop the projects that we need to in order to achieve those objectives. (Ms Price) The Strategy Unit has some fairly high figures in the report for the areas of work that we might do. In order to make some good progress in those areas, I think we can do it for quite a lot less. It is difficult to put a precise figure on it. I would say it is less than we currently get for our market development in its first year. We currently get for market development in this year just over , 20 million, including money we get from aggregates. I think a first year programme to do something like waste minimisation plus advice to local authorities plus education and awareness, does not require as much as , 25 million. As you start to ramp up the programmes, it probably starts to approach that sort of level, but not in year one. (Ms Price) There is a risk, that is absolutely right, and it is a risk to which we and our board in particular are very alive, because I think the reason we have managed to make some progress in the first two years is because we have been very sharply focused on market development, and certainly if they had given us a very wide role, if they had said, A You are responsible for getting up to 45 per cent recycling,@ or A You are responsible for sustainable waste management,@ then I think I, as chief executive, and the board would have been extremely concerned about that. I think that risk is manageable because the tasks are specific. A number of them, for example the organics programme for market development, build exactly on what we do now. I just think we need to be alive to those risks and make sure that we manage them very positively, and, in particular, to draw a sort of circle around the market development work that we currently do and say that, whatever new work we take on, we have to make sure that we continue to give that a high profile as well, that we do not disturb the structures and the resources, the people essentially, that we have built up to do that work. (Ms Price) Yes, I think they are. I think the challenge will actually be doing it. I think measuring things like a reduction in waste growth is just statistically, as your previous witnesses were saying, extremely difficult. But I think the sorts of messages that they have chosen seem to us to be sensible. Mr Lazarowicz (Ms Price) I think it is one option but I do not think it is absolutely essential. I think the three things that you need are a really clear policy steer from government that these targets are important; that recycling is the primary way to get there; and this is broadly how we are going to do it. I think you then need either one or a group of bodies charged with delivering that. You have got the appropriate resources and you have got the appropriate skills, I think it is then a choice as to whether you put those into a single authority or whether you have a series of organisations focused on particular areas. The advantages of having a series of organisations is that you do get a degree of specialisation, and this is not a problem that will ever be solved by the generics; you are always going to have to get down into the specifics. I think it could be argued that it is easier to do it actually with a group of specialist organisations, provided you have that critically strong policy steer at the centre and a government department, essentially, which is capable of stitching it altogether. (Ms Price) Yes, I think it would. (Ms Price) I think you need an organisation to concentrate on markets, obviously. You need people who are capable of working with waste minimisation; you need somebody very coherent to manage the role that local authority are playing because they are absolutely the frontline deliverers; and then you have to have a very strong, enforcement and regulatory regime sitting there as well - the part of the role that the Environment Agency plays at the moment. That is absolutely critical. I do not know if my colleague would add anything to that. (Mr Georgeson) To be honest, Jennie, I think you have summed that up quite well. Really, just to reference back quickly to the issue that the Chairman raised there, because we must not lose sight of the need to monitor and track our progress carefully, the Strategy Unit identified quite strongly that there was a need to beef up the resourcing available to Defra, particularly the Environment Agency, for data management in resources and waste. There was plenty of evidence form the many bodies who are concerned about this that we have gone for many years without a sufficiently strong knowledge of or handle on what is happening in the waste stream and in the resource stream. You heard from our colleagues earlier, Waste Watch, that some work has been done through landfill tax credits on researching resource flows, but there is no systematic and comprehensive approach to that owned by government. The Strategy Unit recommends that that should happen and we would certainly support that. (Mr Georgeson) I would say the Government has the primary responsibility there and should take it. (Ms Price) I think it needs to be in one place - that is absolutely critical - and the logical place would probably be Defra. Mr Drew (Ms Price) As far as I am aware, there is certainly no other market development organisation in Europe. There are several back in the US and in Australia but nothing in the EU. It is certainly essential that we look at what is happening in Europe and that we do not treat the waste and the resource issue as though it is confined by the sea that surrounds the UK, because clearly it is not, and it is very cheap and easy to ship both waste and the resources backwards and forwards. So you have to take a European approach to the problem. There are organisations - and they are often government-based organisations - which are very pre-occupied with this issue in those countries and have really taken it on as a priority. We have liaised quite extensively. For example, we visited Milan and Switzerland, and we have been to various places where they have made real strides and there is a lot to learn from them. Interestingly, often, though they have made real strides, they have done it on a very local basis. In Italy, for example, they have made a massive step forward in waste management where in the area of the Milan they have gone from about 12 per cent recycling up to 65 per cent. The amazing thing is that they have done it in about four years, which is a very, very short time, and it seems that sometimes the local solutions work best and the local focus will actually deliver you a very fast result. Mr Breed (Ms Price) It sits there in the Strategy Unit report, that the markets are very important. I think at the moment government is treating it as a waste management problem and certainly from a local authority perspective it tends to be: What do I do with this material that is being delivered as waste and what are my disposal options? Recycling is treated like a disposal option. I think local authorities need to start thinking: What can I collect that a reprocessor is actually going to be able to use to make a good product that somebody wants to buy? That is a complete switch round. I think that we have a big role and responsibility to work with them to help them do that, and I think they need the signals from government and resources from government to enable them to move in that direction. (Ms Price) They being local authorities, being the people with primary responsibility for the collection of waste, talking in the municipal context. (Ms Price) Yes. (Mr Georgeson) Sadly, not sufficiently widespread so far. There are a small number of Remade-type organisations in the UK: one in Scotland, one in Wales and three or four in England, but there is no universal coverage. We, at WRAP, as you would expect, are working increasingly closely with the Remade organisations because we have common objectives, not least of which is to embed the understanding that we are dealing here with resources and materials, and when we talk about recycling we are not just talking about the collection of materials for recycling but we have to continue to look at the market, to look at ways in which materials can be used in products in the future, through research and development, through grant support and other types of investment. We can see some real benefits from the localised approach that a number of the Remade organisations have delivered, because they have people on the ground in the county or in the region that are working very directly with a number of businesses on their patch. A lot of the work we are doing is assisting them through national support, for example on product standards, where we are doing rather unglamorous but essential work to change standards and specifications that enable recycled material to be used in products, including compost, for example. So we add a layer of national strategic work to their local delivery. It would be in our interests, I think, to have greater contact with more businesses at a local level. It is certainly in our aspirations to extend the reach of those organisations through supporting them through good projects that they may bring to us in the future. (Ms Price) Not a very positive one, at the moment. (Ms Price) The difficulty is that the main entry point now for clearance of aid of this kind of investment is through something called the Environmental Guidelines, and they have been written with a very specific type of environmental improvement in mind which is essentially an individual firm taking steps to improve its processes to reduce its environmental impact. If you are talking about reducing emissions, they understand that perfectly, and that is the sort of thing that goes through very easily under the Environmental Guidelines. There are actually some very clear words that make it clear that a wider environmental benefit is also permissible under the guidelines, but persuading the Commission that recycling can deliver those wider environmental benefits and is in fact exactly what the guidelines were designed to cover is proving to be an uphill struggle and that is why we have a phase 2 investigation on the grant to Shotton. We have had a lot of very strong support from industry and from government and from other influential people, like Forum for the Future, pressing the Commission to say that really if we cannot use the Environmental Guidelines to allow aid in these circumstances it will have very detrimental environmental effects. So the debate is not over by any means but it is not proving to be particularly easy. (Ms Price) I genuinely do not think it is. I think the reason we are running into the type of resistance we are is because of two things. One is that a lot of European countries have very specifically targeted this type of investment into assisted areas and so they have been able to get it through in that way. The other thing is that they have tended to subsidise collection and so the European Union understands that type of approach. The more market-driven reprocessor approach is something they ally with aid to industry, and that is where the hackles go up and they start to express concern. Mr Lepper (Mr Georgeson) Specifically in the wood business or in general? (Mr Georgeson) I could not say that there is one all-encompassing piece of work t hat would provide that picture. We have recently conducted a piece of work which for the first time has tried to capture the size, in turnover terms, of the recycling industries in the UK. Our first estimate around that is around , 12 billion turnover a year. It is a big business but very dispersed into many sectors and many individual companies. A slight caveat on that figure is that a fairly large chunk of that is the steel and metals recycling sector, so I would not want to exaggerate the impact there, but in a number of particular sectors, we are getting more detailed market survey work in identifying where companies exist and where opportunities do exist for increased recycling. Wood, for example, is a specific sector on which we are doing some further work. (Mr Georgeson) I think it would certainly help us because they ought to be geared up to be more fully in touch with their region and I think there is a little work for us to do in developing the relationship that we have with RDAs. I would say right now it is mixed and some RDAs are more pro-active than others. In a period of rather rapid movement, we have tended to respond to those who are pro-active rather than seek out the gaps at this stage. I think I know the project you are talking about in your constituency. There are some great opportunities for expansion in the wood recycling sector. The other thing it might be worth us mentioning is we do now operate a business development service at WRAP and we have a very small team of people, in fact it is about 1.5 people at the moment setting up a business development service right now which is out there directly assisting businesses. In about nine months of operation they have handled over 300 enquiries, they have dealt with and made very detailed changes to about 60 business plans with businesses and they are actively supporting about a dozen of those businesses in generating new investment. In a few months and with a very small team we think that is fair progress but it also feels like it is the tip of the iceberg, because if we have touched that amount of business in a short time it leaves us optimistic about the prospects of expanding the recycling sector, which of course is necessary and one of the Government's targets. Mr Jack (Ms Price) It is a standard that applies primarily to commercially available material and it essentially stipulates the sort of feed stock you use, the processing that you subject it to and the standard it must comply with when it comes out the other end, so it is not really home composting. (Ms Price) The standard does focus on green waste and it does deal with pathogens, etcetera, yes, it goes into that level of detail. (Ms Price) At the moment we are not doing anything because it is just a proposal in the Strategy Unit report. Our work on composting so far has been confined to the standard and to the commercial composting industry, helping them get accreditation to that standard. If ministers decide to accept that recommendation in the Strategy Unit report we would put together a delivery plan for what we would do in relation to home composting. (Ms Price) Essentially it turns on three things. First of all, making the bins available to an increasing number of people, but we already know that if you simply distribute compost bins widely everything other than compost tends to get put in them. Along with the bin you need to give a really comprehensive and very accessible list of instructions and guidance as to what to do with it, what to put in it, what you can use the product for, but even that is not enough. Then you need some real people to back it up, people who are situated in gardens centres, in local authorities. I would like to see one at the end of every road but I do not think we can afford that. You need people who you can actually go to and say what can I compost, what can I use it for, it smells, it is too wet, too dry, what can I do next, to give that sort of hands-on assistance and advice and that is the basis of the programme which has been designed along the lines of a very successful programme in America called the Master Composter Programme in Washington state where they have managed to make some very good progress by using that sort of three-pronged approach. (Ms Price) Garden waste is about 20 per cent of the 28 million tonnes of municipal waste. (Ms Price) Yes. The more of that you take the easier it is to reach the targets. It depends on the extent to which you assume home composting is going to contribute to the achievement of the Landfill Directive targets because the approach taken at the moment is that because it is very hard to measure it does not contribute certainly to local authorities' recycling targets and I think we may struggle to prove that it contributes to other targets. What it does do, of course, is it does contribute to diversion and it does contribute to waste minimisation. It depends what targets it is bearing on. (Mr Georgeson) I am going to say yes there are some real examples in the UK and then go away and find you one or two if you do not mind, because there are a small number of local authorities in the UK that have managed some successful home composting programmes, particularly in the South-West and South-East, but they have not done it in isolation from increasing their recycling infrastructure and in a number of cases putting in place special arrangements for green waste collection as well and there is an issue about how you find the optimum mix of provision for an area that enables as much compost to be sent to be used as possible. (Ms Price) I would not say both, but I do not think there is a single answer that works across the UK. It depends very much on the type of households you have and on what the people habitually do in those areas. So if you are in a suburban area where lots of people have gardens and there is a very high interest in gardening then your home composting approach is going to work. If you are in a city or if you are somewhere where people do not have very much garden available to them then you need to collect what garden waste they do have and do it centrally. I think what is critical is that you do not try and do both in the same area, you have to make a very deliberate choice. (Ms Price) There is a ministerial group looking at it making the decisions at the moment. I think they want to start in the next financial year. If they want to start in the next financial year then I imagine the decisions are going to have to be made within the next couple of months. Mr Jack: Thank you. Diana Organ (Ms Price) It is certainly the case that home composting will not work for everybody and the city is the obvious place where it will struggle most and we are going to have other methods there. In terms of organic waste generally, particularly if you have kitchen waste in there, the key is going to be very regular collection. Where it does work well and Milan is the good example, what they do is they collect it very regularly. (Mr Georgeson) Twice weekly in small buckets. (Ms Price) Small vehicles zip up and down the streets and it does seem to work. I have to say, in Milan they back it up by having made it easy with penalties if you do not do it and they have very high adherence rates as a result. (Ms Price) I think absolute clarity particularly under the Animal Byproducts Order is a precondition to success in terms of the recycling of organic material because otherwise the local authorities are put in a very difficult position. As some members of the Committee will know, at the moment the Government is consulting on the Animal Byproducts Order and what it might do and it is coming up with a fairly restrictive regime, but at least if we get clarity and it is clear you really are collecting garden waste and nothing else then it is perfectly safe to process for certain uses. That in itself would release an awful lot of essential plans by local authorities. If we do not have that regulatory clarity then this area is going to struggle. (Ms Price) We have been liaising very closely with the Composting Association. Our member of staff who is involved in running the compost standards projects has been working with civil servants and with the Compost Association, so we are involved in the discussions and our objective is to make sure that we can get to the point where good products that have a market can emerge from the process. Mr Borrow (Ms Price) We have tended to focus on the higher value end of composting, which is producing a compost for horticulture, for example, to a degree for soil improvement, but it has tended to focus on the higher value rather than the general agricultural uses which is a massive market often self-generated by the farmers. So we have not actually done a great deal of work in that area. We are very aware of the problems with planning for many types of compost facilities and that is one of the reasons we are focussing on trying to raise standards as much as we can, because clearly public confidence is critical to getting the planning approvals and therefore the better quality the sites, the better managed they are and the better quality product that is emerging the greater public confidence you will generate, but we have not done any very specific work with the farming sector other than with the organic farmers. Mr Mitchell (Ms Price) It is challenging but there are people who do it. There are people in the States who do it; there are gardeners here who do it. If you take it away from a way to manage your waste to a way to improve your soil then I think it is the sort of thing that people might be interested in. Chairman: I have had a compost heap for years and it has been a sensible thing to do. Mr Mitchell (Ms Price) It is. I think what we need to distinguish here is between home composting, which is dealing with your grass cuttings and your rose trimmings and all the rest of it --- Chairman: You burn your rose trimmings. You will spread disease all over the place if you do not do that. Mr Mitchell (Ms Price) Yes, they could. At the moment, for example to take it out of the crank end of the market, there is a tremendous amount of pressure coming on the horticultural industry, on the nurserymen, to move away from peat-based products. When you go into your supermarket and buy hyacinths in a bowl at the moment most of what it is in there will probably be peat and most of the supermarkets are saying we want to halve it or remove it altogether. There are various different products they could use to substitute that, they could go to a coconut-based product, they could go to a wood-based product or they could go to waste-based compost. What we are doing at the moment with the horticultural industry is conducting 20 trials with different products and different geographical areas to prove two things: (a) we can make it grow and (b) there is no disease. What we are trying to do, if we can capture that area of the market, is take it right out of the personal compost heap level and into the industrial scale. Mr Wiggin: What are the 20 things? Is one of them feathers? A huge amount of feathers are produced in my constituency from the poultry industry and they are now composted which has never happened before. Diana Organ (Ms Price) I do not know. I will check and make sure we confirm that to you. Mr Mitchell: Thank you very much for that information on composting. I found that very interesting. Let me move on to the other crank issue which is the war on disposable nappies. The Strategy Unit suggests that reusable nappies can be promoted and nappy washing businesses should be developed. Is this a real starter? You are taking modern women, modern society and putting a great inconvenience on people at a huge cost. I have to announce that I am a grandfather and I am amazed at the cost of nappies when you use them in the traditional fashion. Chairman: If other members of the Committee wish to let us know how they raise their grandchildren could they do it in writing later. Mr Mitchell (Ms Price) I think that is a very reasonable question. There are two reasons why it might be. One, there are some very good schemes around the country that have demonstrated a degree of success with this. There is one in Essex where they have targeted local hospitals, health visitors, they provide a small contribution to the very high cost of buying the nappies in the first place and it does seem to have quite a high take up. So it is not an idea plucked out of the air, it is based on successful schemes. I do not know if you saw The Times two weeks ago where they did a three-page feature on the choice between disposal nappies and washable nappies and there was a perfectly legitimate debate going on between mothers and industry and different interest groups as to which was better. So clearly this issue is already sitting there on the public agenda and some people are making that choice and it is reasonable to encourage them to make it and provide the facilities like nappy washing services that will make it easier. (Mr Georgeson) That is essentially it. It is not really complicated. They are small laundry services that will supply a set of nappies for a child and launder them on a regular basis, so as a family you would have a number and there would be a rota system whereby some of the nappies are being washed every week and you send one dirty lot in as a fresh lot get delivered to you. Chairman: There must be a powerful lot of detergent used or bleach. Mr Mitchell (Mr Georgeson) There is a fairly hefty piece of work on life cycle analysis currently residing with the Environment Agency which we are waiting publication on. There is a regular debate about this and you draw your line where it suits you in the life cycle analysis. (Mr Georgeson) It is a minimum of two per cent and sometimes somewhere between four and eight per cent depending on the local authority and the region. There is dispute over what an average figure might be because it is one of those areas in which there has been - we have not analysed as comprehensively municipal waste generation in the UK as we need to do in the future - some genuine dispute about the level, but there is no dispute that it is a minimum of two per cent and more likely an average of three or four, which is quite a lot of nappies. (Ms Price) I think the attitude that the producers of disposal nappies take is going to be very important because I would expect them to resist this very strongly and, to be honest, it is difficult to see where they go with it. This is not a product where you are saying we want you to make this recyclable or we want you to use recycled material or we want you to take care of it at the end of its life, it is not like cars and electrical equipment; it is actually saying this is about product choice, this is about moving away from this product range and doing something different. Sadly, I think producer responsibility will not be the answer. I think it would be a great shame if industry pressure with such an obvious commercial vested interest stopped this at least being trialed sensibly across the country. Mr Mitchell: I see from your evidence that you have turned out to be a monstrous example of something I thought New Labour abolished in this country and that is socialism. Here you are set up with public money to operate in the private sector in conjunction with the industry as a non-profit making organisation. Chairman: There are vast numbers of non-profit organisations. I have shares in half of them. Mr Mitchell (Ms Price) We are primarily a spending body at the moment, but we are looking at an investment fund provided we can persuade Europe to let us do it and the objective of that will be to generate profits. What we will not do is to distribute them in any way. They will come back in and they will either be spent as Government decided they should be spent in accordance with our broad objectives. So some of what we do is quite capable of generating further income, but quite a lot of what we do is about getting money out to industry and spending it. The way to measure the return on that is how many tonnes are we generating in terms of recycling capacity. Mr Leper (Mr Georgeson) I do not have information on the specific, but I would imagine it has had some funding from the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme through BIFFA's fund for tax credits because BIFFA has been amongst the companies that have been interested in supporting some of the innovation on sustainable waste management through the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme. I do not have the information to hand but I suspect that is what it is and no doubt my colleague in the public gallery will let us know later on. Mr Leper: Chairman, I was just going to suggest that the gentleman nodding in the public gallery might like to provide us with some information on that at a later date. Mr Wiggin (Ms Price) The nappy initiative sits at the moment within the waste minimisation programme and that is why the emphasis is on moving away from these disposable nappies altogether in appropriate circumstances where parents choose to do it. There is evidence of some parents doing it and we want to make that opportunity more widely available. (Ms Price) I think you make a good point, that is there will always be a fair proportion of disposable nappies in the waste stream and therefore making sure that they have a high recycling content and that they are easier to dispose of when it comes to disposal is equally important. (Ms Price) At the moment we are looking at a variety of ways in which we can increase the recycled content of all sorts of tissue products of which nappies are a part and we are talking to the paper sector about the best way to promote that. (Ms Price) I was taking the problem in two parts: first of all, how you get a higher recycled content in the first place and secondly, even if it is 60 per cent recycled to start with, how do you then dispose of it. At the moment we do not do any work in that area and I do not know whether we would. It is an interesting idea and it is something we would be happy to talk to others about. (Ms Price) Not yet, no, because that is another thing that is in the Strategy Unit report. It is dependent on Government approval. Chairman: There is clearly a generational conflict on this nappy business. Mr Jack and I were exchanging glances. What a defeat this new generation is. Mr Wiggin: You did not meet the nappy I met this morning! Chairman (Ms Price) The first thing is they have got to want to. I think getting it on their agenda and getting it as a specific target for them is probably the single most powerful thing we could do because they need to take a degree of responsibility for that 40 per cent figure and also the fact that 20 per cent of what you put into your trolley on a Saturday ends up straight in your bin, a fifth, that is an awful lot. In terms of what they should do, I would actually like to challenge them, because they have control over the supply chains, they have a tremendous amount of resource both in those supply chains and in their own organisations, and they are absolutely expert at persuading the consumer to do what they want the consumer to do. So if they were prepared actually to take on the challenge of reducing both the 40 per cent and the 20 per cent figure, I think that would be the single most powerful thing. (Ms Price) 40 per cent of the municipal wastebin has been bought in a supermarket. 20 per cent of what you buy in your supermarket you throw away. (Ms Price) That is right. So the primary thing is taking responsibility. The next thing has to be the packaging. Packaging regulations have started this process, have started the focus on it, but, as in previous discussions with your other witnesses, a lot of the effect is focussed on light weighting rather than volumes and quantities, and we really do need to move over towards volumes, quantities, choice of material packaging. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for coming to give evidence. It has been extremely helpful. If there is anything you wished you had said which you have not said, let us know. If there is anything you have said which you wish you had not said, it is a bit late. We may wish to be in contact with you as the inquiry proceeds, so thank you very much indeed for coming in front of us today. |