Environmental Labelling - Environmental Audit Committee Contents


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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