Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
95-99)
DR ALAN
KNIGHT AND
MS SUE
DIBB
12 DECEMBER 2007
Q95 Chairman: Could I welcome you to
our Sub-Committee this afternoon and just say it is very good
of you to come along and give evidence. We are very interested
in your recent report "You are what you sell" and I
just wondered if you wanted to make a very brief statement to
the Sub-Committee before we start?
Dr Knight: Yes. It really followed
on from our previous report called "I will if you will",
which really looked at the sustainable consumption debate about
what are the effective ways we can tackle the underlying issue
to all these environmental problems, which is that we are using
an awful lot of stuff to live our lives, and arguably too much
stuff. If everybody in the world used that amount of stuff we
would have a problem. In there we actually said that consumer
products and product-related policy will have a huge contribution
to make and we introduced this phrase called "product road
mapping" and that was where you get the various businesses
involved in a particular product, the various policymakers and
environmental and social pressure groups in the same space to
talk about, "Okay, for this set of products, be it a motorcar,
a flight, a patio heater, what are the big major issues with that
particular product and what is the best solution for that major
issue, and who in that sort of triangle of citizen, government,
business, is the right person to actually deliver that solution?".
Having published "I will if you will" we recognised
that we perhaps could have given more guidance and thought and
leadership as the SDC on what we actually meant by road mapping
and what would make a road mapping exercise successful. That is
why we wrote that particular report, just to put some more flesh
on those particular bones.
Q96 Chairman: Thank you. One of the
things I was particularly interested in is in respect of the work
you have been doing in encouraging companies in respect of the
sustainability of their products, how central is the whole labelling
issue? Is it just a sort of side bit of that work or is it absolutely
core, the work you have been doing with companies?
Dr Knight: I think what we are
finding is that for some issues and for some products labelling
has made a profound contribution towards making those particular
products a lot greener. Several examples could include the graded
energy label on white goods and now on cars. The FSC label is
another example for timber products. But I think the important
thing about labelling, which both of the reports I refer to really
give quite a lot of thought to, is that in many cases it is not
actually the end consumer who is really using that label, it is
the retailers and the brands who are using that label. The well-known
example is B&Q choosing only to stock FSC timber. So they
are actually using the labelling scheme for their own procurement
decisions rather than it being a choice being offered to customers.
That is why we use that phrase "choice editing" quite
a lot as well.
Q97 Chairman: It would just be helpful
to know what kind of other mechanisms and systems need to be in
place before environmental labelling can make a useful contribution,
all the work which needs to be done beforehand. What is absolutely
integral to it?
Dr Knight: I think the first thing
is quite a lot of consultation and quite a lot of debate. Issues
like the timber debate and the white goods debate were really
because the obvious big issue with white goods is energy efficiency.
The obvious issue with wooden products is forestry. But in the
creation of something like the FSC scheme there was an awful lot
of consultation with all the interested parties and in that particular
case they had to include a worldwide consultation because timber
is a globally traded product. So a lot of consultation and a lot
of testing, but also then quite a lot of corporate support to
actually make that thing work. I think labelling schemes fail
when they do not focus on a particular issue. These catch-all
labels which are trying to do every single issue for every single
product tend to get so diluted they are actually losing their
impact. The schemes which have worked the best are schemes which
are focused on a particular issue and normally focused on quite
a concise set of products, like the MSC is for fish and the issue
is fisheries. They tend to get a lot of traction and they tend
to succeed. The other reason why they succeed is because the corporations
in particular get behind them to make them work. As I said in
my earlier answer, it is they who are using the label to make
their purchasing decisions rather than it being a consumer information
offer.
Q98 Chairman: Do you think there
is a real tension between those companies and the consumers, or
do you feel that what is good for business is also good for the
labelling aspect of it?
Dr Knight: I think there is at
face value a tension, such as would this item cost more money
if it was FSC certified, but when you actually conduct research
with focus groups, particularly with customers, where you actually
talk through the issues in quite a lot of detail what they are
now saying—and we pick this up in "I will if you will",
the research we did with consumers there—is that they have
a very, very high expectation for businesses, particularly retailers,
to lead on these issues. They do not want to be bombarded with
choice. So when you hear things like the retailers' commitment
to only buying MSC fish, the home improvement sector's commitment
to only buying FSC timber, that is what they like. That is why
I think things such as the Marks & Spencer's plan A approach
has done so well for Marks & Spencer because what Marks &
Spencer are saying is, "These issues are complex. There are
intellectual tensions between Fairtrade and Organic, and all that
sort of stuff. Don't worry, we'll handle that complexity. You
just come to us and you know that you have a good range of products,"
whereas with other schemes where you give the information to the
consumer for them to make the choice, that is when you start creating
a tension because they are saying, "Well, I'm not quite sure
what is the right choice to make here."
Q99 Chairman: Is there a big difference,
do you think, between the use of labels by those who are already
converted and who would actually go out of their way to check
something before they purchased it and, if you like, the elusive
minority (or maybe majority, I am not quite sure), the people
who really have not engaged with this agenda at all? How do you
reach out to them in respect of the labels issue?
Dr Knight: You are talking about
at consumer level?
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