WEDNESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2003

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Members present:

Mr David Curry, in the Chair
Ms Candy Atherton
Mr David Borrow
Mr David Drew
Mr Michael Jack
Mr Mark Lazarowicz
Diana Organ
Mrs Gillian Shephard
David Taylor
Mr Bill Wiggin

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Memorandum submitted by INCPEN

Examination of Witnesses

MRS JANE BICKERSTAFFE, Director and DR IVAN BAXTER, Chairman, INCPEN Regulatory Committee, examined.

Chairman

Good afternoon. For the record, Mrs Jane Bickerstaffe is a director of the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment and Dr Ivan Baxter, you are the chairman of the Regulatory Committee. You represent the packaging industry. In some of the documents we have read you say that the environmental impact of packaging is small compared with that caused by the production, delivery and use of goods, and that in some cases it would be better to have more packaging in order to reduce energy use in different parts of the operation. Do you think that the Government are too focussed on waste and that there are wider environmental concerns which would be better addressed?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Can I briefly say what INCPEN is, so that you are aware of it? We are a research organisation that was set up back in 1974 to look at environmental and social things to do with packaging. What is unique about us is our members are throughout the supply chain. So we have people who make packaging, who use packaging and who sell packaged goods. Is there too much focus on waste and not on other issues? No, I do not think so. I think that the problem with looking at the waste issue is that it tends to focus on the household waste stream only and often just the packaging portion of that, because the packaging inevitably is a very visible amount of it. We think it is important that we should look at the whole waste stream, everything that goes to landfill, because packaging in household waste actually only accounts for 4 per cent by weight or by volume of what goes to landfill. There are a lot of other things there that we should look at as well. Then, you are right, we should look at resources throughout the complete supply chain, and that includes energy as well.

So waste minimisation is worth doing then?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) That is the focus that the packaging industry has been making its target. If you design stuff right at the beginning of the day to use the right amount of materials, then you address 100 per cent of packaged items. If you look to recycle them at the end, that should be seen as a bonus. That should not be the driver for what you use at the beginning.

How do you draw a balance between the use of packaging as a means of presenting and making attractive a product B sometimes quite expensive B and the packaging necessarily merely to conserve and convey the package? We have had people coming in front of us implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, saying, A It= s absolutely monstrous. Look at all this fancy stuff which is wrapped all round the thing. Wholly unnecessary and simply adding to waste. We don= t need this@ . What do you say to that? Where do you draw the balance between what you might call lifestyle packaging and utilitarian packaging?

(Dr Baxter) I would go back to your initial question about waste and the point that I think we were trying to make with the written evidence, that packaging can be part of the solution, in that if you did not have packaging you may have more waste. Packaging is there to perform an important function. It is there to protect the product; to get the product from where it is made, through the often treacherous distribution chain, to the consumer. The consumer wants the goods in good condition. If the packaging fails, then the goods could themselves end up as waste and, in many cases, would end up as waste. It is a question about the fine line that is drawn about whether there is too much packaging around the product, or why is the packaging there, which is often asked. Its prime function is in protection. People expect products in good condition when they buy them. They do not want to get damaged products when they carry out an expensive purchase. So if the packaging is not right for the product, then it may be that the consumer is not addressed in the product itself. The packaging, as well as protection, actually has to fit the need of the product and the consumer demand. If it is a luxury item, therefore, then it may be packaged in a way that meets that particular demand, rather than if it is some sort of basic commodity where you will find that the packaging is there only to do the main job of protection of the product, from when it is made to when the consumer buys it and uses it.

Mr Wiggin

We have seen your Brush up on Rubbish! where you have identified the economies of having more than one person living in your house. The trouble is that the demographics are going the other way, are they not? What do you think can be done to mitigate the increase in waste?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) I think that we need a lot more lateral thinking on it. What tends to happen, looking at the Strategy Unit report, is that they have not actually identified what it is that they think is contributing to the 3 per cent per annum annual growth. We certainly believe that part of it is this trend towards living in smaller-sized household units. So perhaps there should be more thought given to these new houses that it has been announced are to be built. Why not try to make them apartment-style, like Continental living, so that you share laundry facilities and things like that? Otherwise, if we are all living in single house units, everybody buys the washing machine. That seems to be a big contributor to the increase in waste, whereas we are just looking at methods of perhaps encouraging people to change their purchasing habits. That probably needs to happen as well, but it is not the only thing that is driving it.

So there is not a lot, you are saying, that the packaging industry can actually do in relation to the change in demographics?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) The used packaging is the one part of the waste stream where a lot of effort has been put into reducing it, mainly because it is commercially sensible not to use any more than you need. It is a cost on manufacturers to put the packaging round their goods. We have seen A lightweighting@ over the last 20 years. The example I gave you on that is that yoghurt pots, when they first came on the market, weighed 12 grams; the same sized pot today weighs only 4 grams. That is a huge reduction. Whatever material you look at B glass, metals, paper, plastics B they have all shaved down the amount that they use. There is a limit to how far they can go on that. Otherwise, you have product wastage increased in the distribution chain. It is finding the balance. The Chairman mentioned the over-packaging matter. There is another point to be made on that. The sort of goods that people perceive as over-packaged are things they buy very seldom. They tend to be luxuries or gifts. The weekly groceries are pretty minimally packaged, simply because of competition between suppliers.

David Taylor

In the third paragraph of your summary of evidence you start by saying, A The fundamental flaw is that the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive 94/62/EC, sets arbitrary recycling targets for the whole of Europe@ . You go on to justify a more complicated approach which might be based on reprocessing capacity, economic climate, demand for primary materials, and so on. Is that not an attempt to make the whole thing over-complex and to collapse inwards, due to its own complexity?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) I am glad that you have raised the packaging directive because, even in our evidence, we focus just on the recycling side of it. The packaging directive is a single-market directive. The reason for its existence is to stop Member States using discriminatory measures to favour one type of packaging or another, and to put up a barrier to trade. That part of the directive has never been put into effect properly. We still have discriminatory measures which were in place in 1994 when the directive was written. The other part of the directive, you are right, is the environmental side. What happened was that the word A environment@ became replaced with A waste@ , and the cure for it seemed to be recycling. It does not take any account of the fact that you need to design packaging systems so that you can reduce the number of lorries on the road. This is a trade-off. Our aim in improving the environmental profile of packaging is to make it resource-efficient, so that throughout the chain, from the beginning all the way through to when it is disposed of, recycled or burned, you have a sensible use of resources.

The United Kingdom is well down the league of packaging recycling proportions, are we not? The target is 60 per cent and, if we are to meet that, we need to boost the present record by approaching 50 per cent. Is that the case?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) The data is plus or minus probably 50 per cent but, in 2001, we recorded that we recycled 48 per cent of used packaging. That was the way it was measured. In reality, we expect that it will probably be over 50 per cent that we will have to be at. That is the only target that is set at the moment. The Commissioners and the European institutions are looking to raise those targets. The reason that we will have trouble meeting them is because, unlike other European Member States, we do not have the same energy-from-waste capacity. So the targets that are set in the UK are primarily materials recycling. In other countries they can get to the higher levels because they burn a lot of their smaller bits of used packaging and they can claim a credit for that.

If we, as a nation, are to reach this target B to wrap it up, as it were B what do you think the Government and those who formulate policy ought to do? Finally, what ought the industry ought to do that it is not doing or planning to do already?

(Dr Baxter) The Packaging Waste Directive, as it has been implemented in the UK, has moved packaging recycling levels beyond what they were before the directive came into force back in 1997. So we have moved forward as a result of the directive. As my colleague was saying, most of that has been achieved through recycling, because we do not have the waste-to-energy capacity in the UK to do much more than we are doing. Of that 48 per cent recovery, approximately 42 or 43 per cent is recycling and only 5 per cent is from recovery. We have regulations in place to deal with packaging waste. Business has an obligation on it to recover and recycle something like 50 per cent of packaging in places on the market currently. That is expected to rise once the directive is revised and higher targets come in. We have a situation where we have a number of compliance schemes out there: all with targets to achieve for their members, to enable them to meet their obligations. What can be done to make things better? We need to have some sort of alignment between industry and local authorities and central government to say, A What is it we want to do?@ , A How can we do it better?@ . Rather than have almost a fragmented approach, where local authorities are doing one thing and industry is doing another, what needs to happen is for the two sides to get together. There needs to be a long-term strategy, and that should be led from the Government. There have already been moves to look at that. We have an advisory committee on packaging which is looking at some of these ideas. Unless we have this forward thinking and joined-up thinking, however, we will not achieve the higher targets that the revised directive will impose upon us. It cannot just be down to industry to solve this particular problem. It needs to be all the other parts, which need to come together to achieve the higher targets that will be forced upon us in the future.

You seem to be saying, Dr Baxter B and correct me if I am wrong B that the industry cannot accelerate progress in the absence of either tighter regulation as a stick, or greater centrally funded investment as a carrot.

(Dr Baxter) From an industry point of view we have the regulation there, so it is in place; but industry, depending which part of the packaging chain you are coming from, can only play a certain part. It cannot necessarily go out there and recover waste from people= s household waste bins, for example. That is a responsibility of local government. However, when the two are not in line with each other, and if the targets for, say, packaging waste which are imposed currently on industry are not imposed in other parts of the commercial chain, i.e. the local authorities, then it will not happen B to get the higher fractions of material from, say, the household waste stream, which need to be achieved in order to get to the higher targets that will be imposed upon us in the future.

Mr Lazarowicz

You told us in your own words that the packaging industry had moved forward in the last years. Is that not a result of the regulations that have been put in place? Is that not a strong argument for the kind of, what you have described as, arbitrary targets and the European directives, about which you seem so critical?

(Dr Baxter) It could be argued that the directive has moved recovery and recycling forward. There is no question about that. We do not have a particular issue with that. With packaging, however, we are already recovering almost 50 per cent B probably 50 per cent by the end of last year B so packaging is being looked after.

Would you not accept that having a fairly easily understandable target on an EU-wide basis is more likely to get movement across the EU rather than the very complex type of action that INCPEN would like to see, in terms of differential targets?

(Dr Baxter) When you get into the complexity of differential targets that is when it becomes more difficult, because locality comes into play. It may not be so easy to achieve one particular material-specific target in the UK as opposed to, say, another country where they have a different system or a different culture in place.

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) I do think that it is the wrong target. The target should not be recycling; it should be making resource-efficient use of the materials throughout the chain. Sometimes it is better to choose mixed-material packaging B which is not sensible to recycle because it is simply not energy efficient to split it down at the end of the chain B because that will allow you to put fewer lorries on the road to deliver the same amount of goods. Recycling is just a mechanism perhaps to reduce overall resource use. It should not be the thing that is targeted. That is what happened in Germany in the early 1990s. They set targets for recycling and they pushed the market into using more easily recyclable packs which, against what you would expect, increased the amount of waste for disposal. I have some samples I can show you that demonstrate that. At that time, the Germany coffee manufacturers distributed all their coffee for a year in this laminate pack. It is a mixture of aluminium, paper and plastics, and they needed 11,000 tonnes of material to do it. It is simply not worth recycling that. It takes too much energy to split the bits. They said, A Okay, let= s look at moving either into metal or into glass@ . If they moved into metal B obviously it is bigger and heavier B they would need 120,000 tonnes more material to do it. If they moved into glass, which is even heavier, they would have to go up to 470,000 tonnes for supplying the same amount of coffee in a year. The infrastructure for recycling these two, however, was in place. So they said, A Let= s assume we can achieve 80 per cent recycling. How much material would still go to landfill from the heavier ones?@ . For the metals it would still be 30,000 tonnes B three times as much B and for the glass 10 times as much, 130,000. More importantly in some ways, you would need three times more lorries on the road if you delivered your coffee in that way. I am not saying that this is the ultimate pack. It is not that it is better or worse; it is just that, in choosing packaging, you have a host of things like shelf life, consumer acceptance B lots of things have to be considered. However, pushing the market into the recyclable ones is not necessarily a sensible way to go.

Mr Jack

Talking about responsibility up and down the chain, what was the argument about A grind your own coffee and put it in a paper bag in a supermarket@ , thus avoiding all three of those options?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) That option could be available to you, but coffee has so many essential oils in it that, if you did that, you would be all right for the cup you made when you got home but not for the one the following morning.

That is a fair argument. You could argue that perhaps it would be better not to have it all ground up in the first place and just sell the beans. In terms of getting the balance, it is quite difficult to achieve the optimum. It is a question of how you therefore decide on what is the right compromise.

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Or giving the consumer the choice. We do have a huge choice of options and most people do make a choice when they go shopping on a host of different things, from price to convenience. I am not sure that I mentioned it in the evidence, but there is some work that an American professor did for us in this area and he calls it the A fast lane syndrome@ . When we go shopping, we tend to buy basic ingredients to make food during the week but, in case we are not going to have time to do that, we also pick up some prepacked options. You can check in the dustbin at the end of the week B we have done a lot of research, hand-sorting domestic refuse at the end of the week B and the odds are that people will make some meals from scratch, but they simply do not have the time today and so they are choosing the prepacked ones.

I read that in your evidence and I put it to the two single people in my office. They looked deeply shocked that they were making such a contribution to waste! Is there a limit to how many times different materials can be subject to a recycling process?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) You always have melt losses, whatever you are doing, with metals and with glass. So you do not get 100 per cent going round and round. With metals and glass it goes round a lot of times, because you are reprocessing at such high temperatures that there are not any contamination aspects to be worried about. Paper and plastics are different, because you do not reprocess at high temperatures. With paper, you eventually pummel the pulp so that you have something like an egg-box, which will not work for everything. You cannot make writing paper out of it, for example. Plastics similarly: you batter them. There are some very nice A tech@ solutions of de-polymerising it, putting it back towards the oil that it came from, but there is a limit to how much you can go round.

(Dr Baxter) Particularly with paper. A typical recycled cardboard box, for example, would require more resource.

The reason I am asking is to help me to see the dynamic of this. Does there come a point when you are merely postponing the requirement to find a non-recyclable way of disposal of the material? That you have effectively run out of steam and the velocity of circulation of recyclable material slows down to that point? What is your recommendation about what you do with the material at that point? If we are trying to minimise landfill, and in the UK we are bad on incineration, what do we do? Turn them into Pringles?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) This is an example of the use of recycled materials. Can I explain about this as packaging?

Chairman: Pringles has been held up to us as about the worst form of packaging you could conceivably imagine, because it uses four or five different materials and you cannot recover any of them, because the package is so complex.

Mr Jack

I thought that you were going to say that it gets turned into crisps!

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) You can recycle whatever you like. The question we should be asking about recycling is how much money and how much energy do we want to spend on doing it. It is an industrial process. It does not come for free. So it is probably not sensible to try and recycle this, even though you could do it. It has other advantages, similar to my coffee example. The majority of the body is recycled board, but you cannot put that directly in contact with food. So inside that there is a liner of aluminium foil and plastic. The ones they use have a very high oxygen barrier, which has an advantage in that what makes crisps and Pringle-type things go off is that oxygen gets to the fats in them and oxidises them. That barrier is good enough that these have a shelf life of 18 months, compared to your average crisps which have a few weeks= shelf life. That means, therefore, far less wastage of the goods. Shops have to throw out crisps if they have exceeded their life. They seldom do with these, because it is long enough. On top of that, they condense; they stack, as you know. To distribute them in a lorry, you need far fewer lorries than if you have crisps, which typically are in a bag blown up with air to stop them getting crushed. At the end of the day, the best thing to do with this is to incinerate it. Not only does that allow you to get some energy back from the predominantly recycled board, but there is a metal strip at the bottom and all the UK incinerators that operate at the moment B not that we have many B have magnetic extraction, so you would get that back and it can be recycled.

David Taylor

You have just said, Mrs Bickerstaffe, that the question we ought to be asking about the recycling is how much we want to invest in the process and how much energy we want to use. I am not sure that is true, particularly if you represent a constituency that is beset by landfill sites, as North West Leicestershire is. I welcome the challenging targets, although the industry sees them as broad-brush, unsophisticated and probably undeliverable B I do not know. The most challenging targets of all appear to be for glass and plastic. The record on plastic is not very sparkling at the moment, is it? In 2001, the last figures I have seen suggest a recycling rate of about 12 per cent and a target in three years= time of 20 per cent, with the rate of growth of plastic being the fastest of all packaging material, at about 3 per cent. Are we going to be in the position where the actual performance of recycling of plastic is going slightly down because the industry is not doing enough? What should you be doing to get closer to these challenging targets for plastics?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Plastics have environmental merits further up the distribution chain. If you put drinks into a glass bottle and stick it in the back of a lorry, then more than half of the back of the lorry will be the packaging B the glass bottle. That is not what you are trying to get through to people. You are trying to get the drink to them. If you put it in plastics instead, then something like 90 per cent of the back of the lorry will be the drink. At the end of the day, you have enough material in the glass to set up a recycling system, which we have, and where, provided people contribute to it, you can sensibly get it back and make further use of it. With plastics, on the other hand, you have so little material that, to collect enough together to put it in a lorry and to put fuel in a lorry to move it somewhere, it begins to make the equation more difficult. Ideally, with rigid plastics B in plastic bottles there is 60 grams of material, 40 grams of material B you can begin to get enough material back that it can make sense. For the majority of plastics packaging, however, there is not enough there to justify the additional fuel you need to use to get it back. I think that it is a wrong question. You should not be pushing the plastics industry necessarily to do more recycling; you should encourage them to continue making lighter-weight, more efficient oxygen barriers to things, and reducing the lorries on the roads. It is a wrong driver. We keep coming back to driving for recycling. We are not; we are driving for resource efficiency.

So it is not a worthwhile target and it is not going to be reached? Is that a fair paraphrase?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) It will probably be reached, but at a huge financial cost.

David Taylor: A huge Tetra Pak plant in my constituency burned to the ground last night. I have an alibi!

Ms Atherton

When you speak of the cost, are you taking it as the cost to the individual industry or the wider cost? Clearly you have to take the wider costs, the environmental costs, into the whole equation. I am not sure that you are, when you talk about your plastic versus your glass. What is your attitude towards government targets which talk about glass being recycled?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) I am talking about the broader costs and environmental costs, not just financial costs, because financial costs can be swung by all sorts of different things. No, I am talking environmental costs. If you put more lorries on the roads to shift a small amount of stuff, then that is not sensible environmentally. It is a balance. At the moment, as I say, I think that for the sake of the environment we are sometimes pushing recycling in inappropriate areas. In this country we are very concerned that we appear to be the bottom of the heap in terms of our recycling rates generally. That is not actually as true as it seems. We see that other countries recycle 60 per cent, but they are not comparing like with like. Our definition of municipal waste is different to either America or other European countries. We define it as the waste that is handled by the local authority, by the collection authority and the disposal authority. Eighty-five per cent of that is household and the rest is a bit of light commercial, office waste, corner shops B that sort of thing. In other European countries their definition is much broader. It is household waste and waste that resembles household components. So it is canteen waste from a hospital and places like that, which is much more. Their recycling rates, therefore, include things like office newspaper, film from the back of supermarkets, cardboard boxes from the back of supermarkets. We recycle those things as well. They do not appear in our figures, so our figures look artificially low. For example, Brighton and Hove report a recycling rate, on our definitions, of 10 per cent. They reworked their rate, to take account of what it would be if we were more the mainstream European definition, and they were able to come out at 40 per cent B which is perfectly respectable.

Where would we stand if you did the equation, dividing tons of landfill per head of population?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) We are high on landfill, but the difference between us and other European countries is the amount of incineration capacity they have. That is the biggest thing. That is why we are putting more in landfill. If we had the incineration capacity, we would not. One town that is always held up as an excellent example is Copenhagen. They recycle 20 per cent of their household waste; they incinerate 78 per cent of it and landfill 2 per cent. There are some places in this country B Bath recycles 21 per cent, Hampshire recycles 15 per cent B where we are getting up to the same levels as other countries. What we do not have is the incineration capacity. There are concerns that incineration will take waste away from recycling but, on the evidence in places where they have high recycling rates, they also have high incineration rates. They do not seem to be a problem.

So I take it that you would not support government-led targets on recycling at all?

(Mrs Bickerstaffe) Not unless they were going to deliver environmental benefit, and I think we need convincing that they would.

(Dr Baxter) Going back to the packaging, we already have the targets in place and we are moving forward. One way or the other, we are going to be increasing recycling rates of packaging due to the future higher targets from the European directive.

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 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 per cent 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

It may well be that packaging only comprises 4 per cent of waste going onto landfill, but you are not the only people who say that their percentage is only 4, 5, 10 per cent, whatever, and 100 per cent 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 B 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 per cent reduction; yet only 2 per cent 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 per cent 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 B changing the packaging or something B 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.

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 B 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 B financially and environmentally.

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 per cent. 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 top of that, 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 A Green Dot@ system, up to 70 or 80 per cent. It is just duplicating the transport system again.

Ms Atherton

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 B very worrying from a safety point of view B 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 B 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 B 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 B I am not saying that this is an overriding one B 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

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 B which is obviously why you are set up B 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.

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 B 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 B we are here talking about packaging, because that is that visible part of the waste we generate B we should be looking back. What are we buying at the beginning? We get a number of calls to INCPEN B not that many, but with people saying, A 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, A Can= t they 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 B we should improve the packaging and there is room for improvement B 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 B 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 B 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

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, A 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 B which now is coming through B 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 B the retailer, the manufacturer and the packaging B 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.

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 B 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 B 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.

To come back to the Pringles= container, are you aware, for example, as to whether Procter & Gamble do sit down and say, A 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 B one of our members at INCPEN. All our members, but they more than most companies, do what they call A 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 industry, and particularly the packaging chain, are 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. A 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 B perhaps taking it back and using it again. He may not be able to take it in and make new Pringles= boxes B although there is recycled content in there B 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

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 B 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 them to design it 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

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.

With Pringles B our famous Pringles B in comparison with your Walkers Crisps, for instance B 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 B 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

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 B 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 B 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 the papers. In America they looked at their recycling rates and they realised that the average for the whole country was 28 per cent. In areas where they have incinerators it is 33 per cent. 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.

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 B if you are looking at recycling and incineration as the two eventualities B 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 B 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 B and I do not really want to get into B 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 recycle 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.

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 per cent; burned, 78 per cent; landfills, 2 per cent. In Berlin, 17 per cent 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.

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.

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 B as we do in some parts of the UK where we have incinerators. However, it is to make people aware of it.

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.

Memorandum submitted by London Borough of Southwark

Examination of Witnesses

MR PHIL DAVIES, Head of Waste Management and Transport, MR SIMON BAXTER, Client and Enforcement Manager, MS MARY MORRISSEY, Contracts and Strategy Manager, examined.

Chairman

Good afternoon and thank you for coming. You have given us a little bit of a briefing and one of the things you emphasise is the level of social deprivation in the borough. Without saying that waste is a class issue, clearly there are differential rates of collection, different attitudes to packaging, which depend a bit on the sociology. How do you go about persuading people that waste minimalisation is important when, as you have said by your own admission, many people in your borough perhaps have what would appear to them to be rather more pressing things to be bothered about?

(Mr Davies) We take that on a number of fronts. It very much depends on which part of the borough we are speaking to. It is a very diverse borough. It runs from Dulwich in the south, through Peckham, Camberwell, all the way through to Bankside in the north. There are various areas of housing tenure. We very much have the target of recycling, waste minimalisation programmes based on the schools; based on whether it is an estate property. There are different forms of collection. On estates a lot of the flats are supplied with chutes; therefore, residents just place everything down one chute. There are no facilities on estates currently. That will change from April this year to having some facilities on estates. It is very difficult. The socio-economic make-up of the borough is diverse. It makes it very difficult. It means that the funds are limited and we have to target in the most appropriate way. There is no easy answer to it. We do try to take a holistic approach. We try to incorporate waste minimalisation in making people think about their waste. That is part of the approach we take in terms of enforcement as well. We have poster campaigns around the borough. If you have been through Southwark, you have probably seen them on the lamp-posts or on dustcarts B encouraging people to be responsible about waste. We are trying very much to target the responsibility element, before we move on the waste minimalisation. We first need to get people to think about waste. For years in Southwark waste has been something that you just put down a chute, or you put in a black sack in your garden, or you stick in your wheel-bin. There are very few recycling opportunities, or there were until recently, within the borough as a whole. Therefore, it is very much targeted at the moment to the responsibility for waste, down to the lowest level. That is, each and every resident, so that it is not just the local authorities. Listening to the previous speaker, it is right that everyone thinks it is the local authorities= problem. We are trying to make sure people understand that it is their waste; they need to deal with it, and it is a real issue within a place like Southwark.

Ms Atherton

What are the benefits that you have found with this particular approach? How can litter and dog fouling campaigns link into recycling among your residents?

(Mr Davies) The issue of enforcement and the issue of educating about litter and dog fouling do raise awareness within the community. Simon, who is the enforcement manager, has had a number of successes in terms of prosecutions, with people saying, A I didn= t know it was illegal. What do I do with my waste?@ . Then we start introducing the issue about the different kinds of waste. A You deal with your waste in a different way. Have you thought about recycling?@ If it is a trader, A Have you thought about recycling your trade waste?@ B linking into our voluntary sector groups who go out and do business audits and try to encourage traders to deal with their waste in an appropriate manner. So it is really an A in@ to raising the awareness of the waste that we generate across the borough B amongst residents, traders and the visitors. Southwark is a very well-visited location in London. It is a central London borough. You sometimes forget about us. We have got the Tate Modern, the Globe, the GLA building. We border the London Eye.

Chairman

We will not forget you when the congestion charge comes in!

(Mr Davies) You will get us then, yes!

Ms Atherton

How big a problem is the environmental crime that you are facing?

(Mr Baxter) Touching on a few things that were said earlier, we try to think about recycling as going for a three-course meal. That is why we take this holistic approach. Are we encouraging everyone to go into the restaurant, i.e. waste management, or just going in for the pudding? We see recycling as the A pudding@ . We want everyone to take an active role in the whole waste management regime. In terms of awareness of recycling, it is very difficult. How do you encourage a single parent living on the fourteenth floor of a tower block to think about recycling? That is where the home environment and waste minimisation comes into this. I think that we mention the video Southwark Slimes in the brief. We want to make recycling sexy but, before you can do that, you have to raise the profile of waste generally. That is part of the challenge. Enviro-crime does impact. It focuses people= s hearts and minds B that your tin can does not get thrown out of the car window because, if it does and if it happens in Southwark, we will come after you. We will issue a fixed penalty notice. We need people to start thinking about that, and then we can start to think about recycling.

How concerned are you that increases in landfill and the new directives, such as end-of-life, are going to lead to an increase in fly-tipping?

(Mr Davies) It is certainly pushing people to dump more on our streets. Prior to, let us call it, the A fridge directive@ , 70 per cent of fridges went back through retailers. Following it, no fridges go back through retailers. We saw a significant jump in the number of fridges dumped on the street, not only by residents but also by traders. We are very concerned about the end-of-life vehicle directive: that again this will lead to more vehicles on the street. The rising costs of landfill tax and of landfill means that, in terms of a lot of developers B and there is no other way of putting it B we get 40 tonnes of spoil, soil and rubble, dumped on our streets regularly. It can cost us , 3,000 to , 4,000 per load to have that removed. It is very difficult material to remove, involving shovels and skips to take that material away. They can dump it in two seconds and it will take us two days to deal with it. We are finding more and more arriving on our streets. There is not an endless funding stream. Local authorities do have funding pressures. We are not politicians; that is for our politicians. However, every penny that is spent on matters such as the removal of spoil off our streets cannot be spent on recycling or on waste minimalisation programmes. We really have to look very closely at our budgets every year, to see what is the most appropriate way for us to spend that. It is certainly why Southwark invested in a new waste management team B Simon, Mary and myself. We have all been there six months, focussing on issues such as enforcement against these people who are dumping on the streets. Waste disposal costs are only going to go up. What we have to do is stop people dumping on our streets, and therefore focus our money in the best way. That is what Simon and the team are doing. We have had a number of wins so far. Within the brief you will see there are some legislative changes that we would like. We are very pleased that the duty of care, Section 34, was changed within the Strategy Unit paper and that will be effective from 20 February. However, we would wish more powers for us to be able to take stronger enforcement action and to deal with people driving through our borough. We know that they are going to dump. We follow them and they drive away, but we know that they will be back. We would like to be able to stop these vehicles, to seize them if we can, and to take some of the Environment Agency powers. I am sure Simon could go into some more detail on that.

That would be helpful. It would be interesting to hear how you work with the Environment Agency.

(Mr Baxter) It is really the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

That would help.

(Mr Baxter) I formerly worked with Lewisham up to seven months ago. I have been speaking about these plans for a number of years now. I get frustrated with the people you are talking to about it. If you catch someone doing a fly-tip B and I am not talking about a man in a van, but someone with an eight-wheeler who drives down a cul-de-sac and dumps 15 tonnes of inert material B if you are lucky enough to catch them and put a trace on the vehicle, you find the vehicle belongs to Fred= s Services, 127 Essex High Street. A Where did you get the vehicle from?@ , A Oh, it= s John= s. I= m only driving it for the day.@ These people are ghosts. You go to 127 Essex High Street, only to discover that it only goes up to number 90. There is no correlation between the DVLA, council tax, or any other sorts of checks. The vehicle does not particularly exist. Half the time, the people you are dealing with have involvement in criminal activity. I can give you a case history on the people I have dealt with over the years. If local authorities had the power to stop vehicles driving through B an unregistered waste carrier with no waste transfer note B and had the power to seize the vehicle, they could then say, A I haven= t got these details. I know that you are only driving for John for today and you don= t know anything about it. Unfortunately, you are committing an offence@ . The Environment Agency do not do that at the moment. We spoke to someone called Roy Watkinson. I asked him how many prosecutions they had brought for fly-tipping and how many prosecutions for unregistered waste carriers. It was minimal, to say the least. This was happening in Lewisham. We tried to get a secondment to work with the Agency, to have one of our officers work with them. It was resisted all the way. It is very difficult. I think that it is fairly regional. I have colleagues in Newcastle who get on very well with the Environment Agency. I think that is fine and dandy but I can only speak from the London perspective, and it is very difficult. They are overstretched. Probably a lot of resources have gone into the rivers, which is fair enough. Local authorities do have the knowledge. I do not see what the problem would be in sharing these powers. If I was an unlicensed waste carrier and I knew that at any time you could stop me with a police officer and I would get an instant fine of , 1,000, I probably would register and comply with the duty of care. But there is a lot of criminal activity there, and we are spending in the region of , 300,000 each year, clearing inert material. I recently picked up some material taken from a tanning pit, and it was being tested for botulism. That is the sort of thing you are up against. Luckily, it tested negative, but these people have no conscience. Some action needs to be taken. Unfortunately, the Agency do not do that.

Mrs Shephard

I am very struck by what you say, because I think that what you are describing is very much an urban matter. I am not saying that fly-tipping does not happen in rural areas; it obviously does. Nevertheless, the way you have described it is alarming. You have also said in your evidence that there is a correlation between deprivation and problems with waste management. Are you aware of whether or not there is, in the local government funding formula, some sort of recognition of the fact that there are particular problems of waste management in the kind of urban area in which you work?

(Mr Davies) I am not 100 per cent on that. Whilst funding is allocated on a specific formula, it does not recognise some of the pressures that we find, such as the influx of visitors. Whilst it does reflect the deprivation within the borough, it does not reflect some of the issues in terms of the increase in waste generation. It is fair to say that, for people who may be living hand to mouth on a housing estate, recycling and waste management are the last things on their mind. They are looking at whether they are going to get their kid to school; where the next meal is coming from; where their next pound note is coming from. Therefore, the management of waste is clearly not high on their agenda. With many of the tenant residents= association forums that we go to B and we do go to many B when we talk to these people they say, A That= s fine, but what about my tap? My tap isn= t working. What about my heating? What about the stairwell? What about the crime on the estate? What about the graffiti on the estate? What about the cleanliness of the estate?@ . I am not saying that it is symptomatic of the whole of the UK but, in Southwark, council housing and street cleansing are very much problems in terms of net importance of what our residents see. If you look at recycling, it is less than 5 per cent in terms of net importance. That is a very clear message. This is a MORI survey; it is independent; it is done in exactly the same way as all other MORI surveys. Those figures are even less when you look at the tenant residents= association surveys, and where it is only dealing with estates. Mary worked for the housing service and is working with them, because we recognise the issues that we have on housing estates. Of our 114,000 properties,64,000 are estate-based. We are the largest landlord in London, and the third largest in Britain.

(Ms Morrissey) You were saying earlier about us taking an holistic approach. A lot of why we are taking that holistic approach is that people are not interested in recycling. We are all aware of that, and the MORI survey shows it. It shows that they are very interested in street cleansing. Joining the two together and making it that recycling is inextricably linked with street cleansing, it then raises the profile of recycling B which we obviously failed to do through independent means.

I do not doubt for a moment that there is this link between deprivation and additional waste management problems. Of course, that must be so. It makes absolute sense. What I am trying to get at is if there is any recognition, as far as we can see, of that link in the public funding arrangements. It could be something that might come out as a recommendation from this report, possibly. It really is a factor. We have heard it from others. Now here you are, giving very concrete examples of your day-to-day professional experience.

(Mr Davies) There is not any correlation between deprivation and the funding stream.

Yes, there is, but the measures are to do with the numbers of free school meals, juvenile crime, and so on. What I am asking you is, is one of the measures this? We do not know, but we can find out.

(Mr Davies) I think you would have to find out, or we would have to pass and let me find out.

Mr Jack

In your evidence in paragraph 6 you say, A However, we are concerned about the inadequacy of funding that is allocated by the Government to environmental management@ . You have an impressive series of initiatives which, against a background of difficult conditions, you are, to use your own words, A striving to achieve@ . I think that is a very optimistic way of describing it. Could you give the Committee some indication of the financial deficit? In other words, if you were given a free hand to define the programme to deal with all the issues that you have described and for which you are statutorily responsible, and to do it in the best way possible to achieve targets, et cetera, can you say, A This is how much it would be@ and tell me how much that compares with what you have got?

(Mr Davies) If I could reverse that, I can tell you what I have got and then go on to what we need.

That is okay.

(Mr Davies) We are very lucky within Southwark. We have a very committed administration. They are very committed to recycling and environmental issues. During 2003 and 2004 we will have had a total of , 2.2 million dedicated to recycling. In addition to that, members are putting into street cleansing an additional , 3.8 million on top of an , 11 million budget to deal with the cleansing issues within the borough. That is split between the HRA and general fund. Of the , 2.2 million, , 700,000 is capital B again some of it is from the housing capital fund B and , 700,000 is from the general fund. London Recycling Fund, which is part of Defra= s , 140 million, have provided some of that , 2.2 million, but it has been match-funded in. That will probably get us to a recycling rate of about 8 or 9 per cent within the borough. To reach 18 per cent, you can put a lot more in there. Some of that money is there for the development of infrastructure. We could go away and give you ad infinitum costs. We have recently done a 20-year waste strategy, which identifies the disposal costs through to if we hit the recycling and recovery targets detailed in the submission. With all the funding, we currently spend on waste disposal and recycling about , 5.5 million. By 2021, with a growth of 2 per cent on waste, we will hit the targets in here and, with nominal increases in waste disposal, landfill tax and incineration, we will be looking at something in the region of , 22 million. Local authorities have to find that amount of money. That is looking at 2 per cent growth in waste. That is aspirational on behalf of the London Borough of Southwark. We are currently only at 3 or 4 per cent, and that is a concern for us.

The point I am making though is that the target is being set externally. You are not setting your own targets. Given not just the physical problems of having to deal with the various waste streams but Mr Baxter= s graphic description of some of the enforcement issues B because you do have an added dimension of difficulty where you are B I was trying to get some measure of, if it is the , 22 million that you have just given us and the recycling rate you quoted at the present time is 8 or 9 per cent, what is the level of uplift? It looks to me as if you are never going to get there B not through any fault of your own, but you are suffering from a resource deficit. Let me ask another question in that context. In your evidence on estates= recycling, you told us that you have 250-plus housing estates and that the council had recently submitted a bid to secure both revenue and capital. You told us that the bid is supported by over , 900,000 over the next two years. I divided the 250 into the , 900,000 and that gives you , 1,800 per estate per year. It is a small amount of money, compared with the enormous task you want to tackle.

(Mr Davies) It certainly is and, regrettably, we had to restructure our bid to the London fund because of lack of funds within the system. Our original bid, which was , 1.3 million for revenue and capital, was pared down to , 430,000. So you can take that figure down even further. It will probably be roughly , 1,000 per estate now, and that will be an estate of 300 to 400 properties, depending on where the estate is. The figures come down because the council can commit a certain amount of money. Effectively, it is Defra money being allocated to the London Recycling Fund, which is the London part of that, and we have been given , 430,000 I believe. I have not had full confirmation of that. Our original bid was , 1.3 million. We have had to reduce our aspirations, and therefore the cost per estate, down.

(Ms Morrissey) That will probably force us down the line of being fairly standard across the whole borough, because we do not have the money to do it any differently. What we will end up doing is buying Euro-bins, a new entry for the block, and trying to encourage people through a fairly small education programme. The full amount which we put in for was on the back of innovative solutions across the borough for different estates. We have some very different estates and what will work on one estate may not work on another. The paring-down of this budget will mean that, unfortunately, we do not have the scope to do the different things. It will mean spreading recycling across the borough. It will mean Euro-bins across, and that any innovation and any getting to the people saying, A How you can best recycle on your estate@ , perhaps goes out of the window, unfortunately.

(Mr Davies) For example, the Brimmington Estate is NRF-funded on a six-month pilot. We go door to door on the estate, using electric handcarts or an electric tow, and we have a good yield from that. We are not going to get the same yield, and therefore not the same amount recycled out of the waste stream, by the pared-down bid because we do not have the funding to be able to push that forward. Again, it is a funding issue. There is a funding gap.

I would find it quite helpful to have a back-of-the-envelope calculation as to what that funding gap is. You have worked out what you need to achieve B the nationally set targets B making the best use of the reduced amount of money you have got but, by definition, you will never get there.

(Mr Davies) No. We are happy to provide that at a later date.

Mr Lazarowicz

On that very point, if it is right to assume that you will not get the 400 per cent increase in funding that you determine as required to meet government targets, what measures do you think the Government should be putting in place to allow you to reach the targets?

(Mr Davies) It is very difficult. There are a number of things we would like to see. We have already discussed the enforcement and how we are trying to achieve that.

I do not mean particularly powers for the local authority. I mean government policy across the board.

(Mr Davies) Some of the targets were set based on the UK as a whole, rather than Southwark. Southwark were not considered when the targets were set. There is an issue in the submission, where we look at pump-prime funding, and maybe some PSA in terms of, A Give us the money now and, if we don= t reach our targets, you can claw that back@ . There is no ring fence on the environment part of the spending assessment, and members have very difficult choices to make. I understand that and we have to live with that. We make our bids as best we can. It is very difficult for us to put a great deal of context in it. The markets for recycled paper, glass and cans are not very buoyant; they are very volatile. The markets for paper and glass are fairly stable now and have been for a while. However, a minimum content of newsprint would be lovely. Making newsprint 80 per cent from recycled content would mean that there would be more demand, and therefore the price would go up. At the moment supply is outstripping demand. Whilst the Defra fund, , 140 million, is pump-priming a lot of schemes round the UK, what will happen is that, unless there is more capacity for recycled materials, I am afraid the price will go down again because there will be more supply and less demand B simple economics. That makes the funding an even smaller part, because we rely on some income to support the revenue streams to collect it. Regrettably, paper, which was , 150-, 175 a tonne, is , 20-, 25 and we have to deliver it. Both aluminium and steel can prices are dropping. It is a big concern for us. Whilst income is not a major part, it certainly assists our revenue funding allocation. It is by no means huge, but it does help B to get another ramp on the road, another recycling system in place.

(Ms Morrissey) What is really difficult is that our targets are actually lower than a lot of other authorities, because we were starting from a low base a couple of years ago. That may be a recognition that Southwark had not done a lot and therefore the target is reasonable. But I think that, even if we had tried to do an awful lot, that is a reasonable target B of 3 per cent B as the base target. In some respects, you could throw loads of money at us and we would set up all of the infrastructure, we would have all the vehicles, all of the equipment, but it all comes back to changing people= s culture, changing people= s habits. We work with the voluntary sector and with Southwark Community Recycling, who have SRB funding, on one of our estates. Part of that is that they go and knock on people= s doors and collect the recyclables from them. They get a good response. It is that personal touch. It is the education. It is the going to the door and saying, A Hello, Mr Jones. Have you filled in your bag? If you haven= t, I can wait five minutes. Why don= t you do it now?@ . If we could do that across the board, it would be fantastic. We are never going to be able to afford it, and it is probably not a good use of government money either. It is very difficult, and an awful lot does come back to the fact that the culture in this country generally about recycling is not the same as in Europe. We have really low educational attainment levels in Southwark. It is a very diverse community. For a lot of people English is not their first language. Although we do translate all of our information into community languages, there is still an awful lot of hard-to-reach people. So it is hard to come to any conclusion. You could throw money and throw money; you could get the infrastructure; we go round, we have containers, we have the vehicles B and we still find that they are empty and people are not recycling. This summer we are moving into A street leader@ schemes. We will get local people to champion recycling, champion street cleaning, championing the environmental agenda B and also encouraging their neighbours to do so. I think that is somewhere we are spending money in a very wise manner, but it still comes down to individual choice. That individual choice for people in Southwark at the moment is not to recycle. It is also, A Where is my next meal coming from?@ , A Are my children going to school?@ . It is about getting support perhaps from the Government for national awareness and why we need to do it. There has been thought given to a tax for those who are not recycling or who are producing anything more than the standard flat-pack. In Southwark, that would mean someone nipping down and putting their extra bit of rubbish into next-door= s wheel-bin, or it would just encourage fly-tipping. It is a very hard question and hard to know where the answer is. A lot of it will come back to a culture change and education. You can have the infrastructure, but that may still not encourage people to restructure.

You say in your evidence that you are in favour of a green tax to promote alternative waste treatment methods. What do you have in mind?

(Mr Davies) The landfill tax obviously discourages landfill and, as that goes up, landfill will become more prohibitive and will push local authorities down the road of recycling. Certainly incineration in our borough B we use SELCHP through our waste disposal contract B would be cheaper than landfill. Whilst that may or may not be right B and I believe that incineration has a place within an urban waste management structure B it is certainly not pushing us down the road of putting recycling schemes in. Members do have difficult funding choices. We would like to explore things like bio-gas. We are currently working with Imperial College to put a bio-gas plant within the borough. That will be the first one in London and is being supported by landfill tax credits. It is only dealing with certain parts of the waste stream. We are very blinkered B and I was here for a part of the last speaker B that recycling seems to be the be all and end all. However, I would not say that we should incinerate all of our waste. It is a very emotive subject for residents. It is a very emotive subject for people within the borough who live next-door to SELCHP. They are constantly saying that they wish they did not. It is a big issue for us, trying to say that there are alternatives to recycling; there are alternatives to incineration. That may be bio-gas; it may be pyrolysis. There are other things that we can do. I would urge that we could explore those other issues. Certainly European countries do.

Ms Atherton

Can I go back to what Mary was talking about? You talked about knocking on tenants= doors and saying, A We will wait@ . After you have done that for a few weeks, when there is a level of knowing what you can and cannot recycle, and so on, if you then stop, is there still an increased level of participation in recycling?

(Ms Morrissey) That is what we have not quite got to yet. This is a voluntary sector, SRB-funded initiative. It will come to an end next April. We have been working closely with them, to talk about the exit strategy, where their funding finishes and it is no longer having someone knock on the door. There will be Euro-bins at the bottom of the block and you will have to walk down yourself, and hopefully remember to do so. So we have yet to do that. Our hope is that the raising of the awareness and the education through the knocking on the door will mean that it will be much higher B ultimately when we take over the containers B than it would have been had that not occurred. I would be very surprised if it was not. I would hope that the money has been well spent. I do think that this is massively linked to education and cultural awareness, and that is what they do by knocking on the doors. It is a constant reminder.

So a short, sharp culture change, of money going in, showing people what they can recycle, could actually pay back in the long run?

(Ms Morrissey) Yes.

You would not necessarily have to keep it going forever?

(Ms Morrissey) No.

Mr Jack

In your evidence you tell us that you have expanded your council blue box paper recycling scheme. It is under the heading A Kerbside collection@ . I would assume that, notwithstanding some of the difficulties you described to the Committee, you still think that the kerbside collection is a vital part of the future for recycling in Southwark.

(Mr Davies) There are two reasons that the blue box scheme is expanding. One, because the blue box paper collection scheme is easy. It is fairly cheap and it does yield a high return for your money. The other is that we are trying to get people into the habit of streaming their waste; therefore, separating out the paper, glass and cans. Whilst we are only doing paper at the moment B because we lack the infrastructure to be able to add on to those materials and, regrettably, the funding B I certainly think that the kerbside collections have a role to play, in with co-mingled collections and separation with MRFs. I worked in a local authority with a MRF.

Chairman

Can you just, for those of us who are not familiar, tell us what that is?

(Mr Davies) Materials Recycling Facility, where materials are collected together and separated. There are two kinds of MRF, a clean MRF and a dirty MRF. It was just co-mingled, recycled materials B plastics, cans, paper, card B collected in a wheel-bin. However, we found it very difficult to sell that material and the market for that material was not there. By collecting the materials separately, separating at the kerbside and then transferring to markets, we are able to sell the material at a higher price. So at the moment it has a place. Whether it will have a place in the next 10 to 15 years, I could not say. However, until we develop the markets more in this country I am afraid that, for local authorities like ourselves to be able to generate some of the revenue to plough back into the service, we will need to keep on doing this.

Mr Jack

You say until the markets are developed. We have had evidence from and have heard from people who tell us that there is a great deal of work going on to develop markets for recyclable goods. What help is available to you in that respect? Do you have to go and find your own factors who say, A Yes, we will take this from you@ , or can you draw on the resources of those so-called experts or organisations who have knowledge in this area to try and assist you?

(Mr Davies) We certainly do draw some help from these organisations. However, amongst our other roles we are salespeople and we have to sell our material. There is help. We do speak to such people. However, a lot of reprocessors do play local authorities off, one against the other. You can go to three different boroughs in south London and be given three different prices for a tonne of paper collected and delivered to the plant. I will not name any names of any of the reprocessors concerned. I have worked in north London authorities where, again, I can give you seven different prices in seven different authorities that are all part of the same waste disposal authority. Regrettably, the rhetoric is fairly good from reprocessors; the actual delivery of their rhetoric is sometimes a bit lacking.

Can I go back, because I want to be clear that I have understood you? You were talking about some of the difficulties in high-rise developments of the type of separation activity. If I remember rightly, you were basically saying that you need so much money to try to convert these high-rises with chutes and what-have-you into separate waste streams, it may not be possible to do. Is it a straightforward problem that practically you cannot do it, or resource-wise you cannot do it?

(Mr Davies) Anything can be done with money. There could be a 350-tenanted block and that will have two chutes B one at each end. They will go into 40 cubic yard skips underneath and be removed four or five times a week. Residents will walk to the chute, pull out the chute, put a black bag in and that is it B gone. They never have to think about it, and they have walked 15 yards to do that. You can change all of the chute system. However, the area that these tenanted blocks are in is very restricted. How do you change the chute infrastructure to be able to do that? What you are not regulating is the quality of the material that you get down it, because it relies on residents putting the right bag in the right chute. Again, it is culture, as Mary has said. These blocks were built in the 1950s and 1960s.

(Ms Morrissey) It is really not practical in most instances to change them. There is not the room. They do not have lifts that we can convert, or anything.

A lot of them are integral to the construction. I have seen some of them, so I understand the point you make. Is the solution then to recycle that centrally or incineration? What is the practical solution?

(Mr Davies) The practical solution is different for every block. It may be that with some blocks you just cannot do it. Some will take funding B and a lot of it B to change the infrastructure of the block. It may be that you can have different chutes. It may be that with near-entrance containers, with the pump-priming of SRB now and that funding, it will mean that we can change habits and they will bring the material down. There will be a myriad of different solutions. I suppose if I knew the solution, and it was one easy solution, I could sell it to every local authority with an urban conurbation, because everybody is struggling with the same issues.

(Ms Morrissey) We have expanded the blue box system to about 50,000 properties. That is the maximum we can expand to, because that is the number of street properties we have in the borough. Again, we have the dilemma that perhaps the more advantaged people tend to live in the street properties, and we are giving them kerbside collections where we are actually going to be collecting. The less advantaged people, living in the high-rise flats, cannot have the blue boxes because there is nowhere for them to put them out safely, because of health and safety issues on balconies. We are trying to ask those people to walk down, separate their waste and put it into a container at the base of their block. It is very difficult. The kerbside collection is seen very positively by those we have expanded it to. We get a great many requests from people from blocks B A Can I have a blue box?@ . Unfortunately, we are not able to give them a blue box.

We have touched on some of the deficits in the funding and resources which you have, in terms of your overall approach. The Strategy Unit report made a suggestion that local authorities, notwithstanding for a moment this question of resource implications, should see some introduction of household incentive schemes to encourage waste minimalisation and recycling. I just wondered what your view was as to the practicality, or even the necessity, of following a route like that.

(Mr Davies) I very much welcome it. I think it is a very good initiative. What I would ask is that something like that is trialed in a borough like Southwark. We could look at how it would work in a borough like Southwark. I know that it has been trialed, but it has been middle-class areas where everyone has a garage, a semi-detached house and a wheel-bin. That is wonderful, but we have 64,000 properties that are not like that. What we would like is that something like that is considered in a borough like Southwark, with properties like Southwark has, and we could consider how it would work. We could talk to residents about how it would work and we would work through the scenarios. We would welcome any assistance that would come with a project of that nature. We would be happy to be a test case. We would hold ourselves up as a test case. Come and test with us. We would be more than receptive to that. It is a really good initiative. We are concerned with whether it would work in Southwark. Unless we do the project, go through the project, talk to residents, look at scenarios, look at whether it would work, we do not know. At the moment we feel that it would not, because there is no culture change. However, with the funding to pump-prime the culture change, with the incentive that if you do recycle you do minimise your waste, you can get additional B whether it is money or whatever B yes, we would welcome it. It would be useful to trial it in somewhere like Southwark. If it worked in Southwark, it would work anywhere.

(Ms Morrissey) I have had phone calls from various residents, saying A I am doing my recycling; I am doing my paper B can I have a cut in my council tax?@ . Unfortunately, we have then to explain to them that recycling for us is much more expensive than just collecting their rubbish along with everything else, and that it is for the greater good of the environment. It is quite amusing that people say, A If I do this, can I have some kind of payback?@ .

You are very positive about what you are trying to do, and it comes through from the paper that you produced. Do you ever silently shout in the direction of Government saying, A Don= t they know what it is really like down here?@ B dealing with the myriad of problems you have described? Do you actually see much of central government, Environment Agency, other bodies? Do they come down on the ground and look at what you are up against?

(Mr Davies) No. I am sorry, I ought to explain.

No, that is a very good answer.

(Mr Davies) We would welcome more support. We would welcome people B such as the incentive scheme. It is wonderful trialing it in a white, middle-class area. We are not that. Southwark is different. We have a diverse community. Some of them are not used to recycling. We have diverse housing tenure. We would like things like the incentive scheme to be trialed in somewhere like Southwark, and we would really appreciate people from central government coming down to work with us. We would happily take a secondment; we would happily pay for them; we are happy to do anything. We want them to come and work in a place like Southwark. We are really positive. We believe that we can make a difference in Southwark, not only on recycling but also on cleanliness and on enforcement. Southwark has put its faith in the management team of the waste management service, and hopefully we will repay them with an increased recycling rate and a cleaner borough B but we do need assistance. The Environment Agency, with the powers it has, is an easy win and it can be done very simply. It is something that Simon has been banging on about, before Southwark; probably before Lewisham, when he was in Lambeth. It frustrates us that it is something so simple, which can be done really quickly and easily, but it is not.

(Mr Baxter) What Phil was saying about getting people to carry their bags along to the chutes on the balconies was quite interesting. What you have equally to understand is that there is an element within our estates of people who just throw the bags over the balcony. They do not even go to the chute! That is the whole thing around enviro-crime and raising people= s awareness. We do not want it to go on the grass and in the children= s play area. We actually want them to put it in the chute. Then we are educating them and pointing them to recycling. It is very challenging. It is not something that you just think of. Phil touched on this. Those who recycle are deemed to be very white and middle-class. We have facts and stats to show that. Where we are very successful in collecting and recycling goods is very much in the south of the borough. The rest, where it is quite densely populated, is very patchy. The change for us is to make recycling appealing, sexy, fun and accessible. I think we can do that in the next year.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for coming along. It has been extremely helpful. We may want to be in touch with you again. We are very grateful.