Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
340-351)
MS SAMANTHA
HARDING, MR
NEIL SINDEN,
MR PHIL
BARTON AND
MR MIKE
PHILLIPS
24 NOVEMBER 2008
Q340 Chairman: Is that a resource
problem or is it an "it is a bit too difficult to do"
problem?
Mr Phillips: At the moment the
obligation is the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and now the
Cleaner Neighbourhoods and Environment Act and they put obligations
on public bodies to keep their land clear of litter and refuse.
I think there is a concern about applying that. It may be it is
enforcement powers, particularly in relation to fly tipping, but
I firmly believe that there should be stronger powers about litter
on these retail and industrial parks.
Mr Barton: We have been doing
a lot of work and I think it is still true that both local authorities
and small businesses and the public at large find it difficult
to get reliable advice on the implication of a law that does exist.
We know of examples where local authorities' own legal departments
have advised against taking action because they see dangers of
the authority being exposed.
Q341 Chairman: Why is it difficult
to get advice?
Mr Barton: It is quite a complex
picture. We run an advice line and it is constantly in use. We
have tried to bring together some of the legislation into some
easily understood guides, but still they are quite long and quite
chunky. We are very keen to make it easier to do the right thing.
Whilst there are those who deliberately exploit the situation,
I think there are still a lot of members of the public and small
businesses who are ignorant of what the rights and wrongs are.
Q342 Paddy Tipping: You have a guide?
Mr Barton: Yes.
Q343 Paddy Tipping: Can you let us
have it?
Mr Barton: Yes.[7]
Q344 Mr Drew: Is not the problem where
different local authorities do different things? My own authority
picks up large amounts of waste but Gloucester City does not so
there is a greater percentage of people coming from Gloucester
City to dump it all in Stroud.
Mr Sinden: What this demonstrates
to the CPRE is the critical importance of Defra maintaining its
strategy for disseminating what works, sharing best practice amongst
local authorities within individual regions, so that we can avoid
the problem that you are suggesting. We have been quite encouraged
by what Defra have been able to do by way of organising regional
seminars to educate and inform local authorities about what can
be achieved, but this is a programme that needs to continue. It
needs to be in place for a few more years before we can see the
full effects and achievements that the new legal framework can
deliver. I think there is a huge divergence, from CPRE's study
of the figures, between the best authorities and the poor authorities.
There are very few authorities that we would be comfortable describing
as good in terms of having made an improvement.
Q345 Mr Drew: I should have declared
my membership of the CPRE. Could I look at the issue of education
and public awareness? The public on the one hand say they are
very much in favour of anti-litter campaigns, but one supposes
it is the public who create the problem because in the main we
are all members of the public. What should be done to put some
oomph behind anti-litter campaigns which everyone is favour of,
but rarely does it seem to make a huge amount of difference?
Mr Phillips: I believe very firmly,
despite the legislation and despite being involved in these litter
programmes for quite a while, that we have a fundamental task
still in this country to change behaviour.
(The Committee suspended from 5.29pm
to 5.36pm for a division in the House)
Q346 Chairman: Mr Phillips, you were
in the middle of your answer.
Mr Phillips: I
was going to tell you that one of my pet concerns or passions
is that I believe sincerely that in this country we have got a
lot more to do to change behaviour and what is not acceptable
behaviour. It seems to me that there are significant sections
of the population that just do not see that dropping litter is
antisocial behaviour. Having worked in a local authority in an
area of the Lake District National Park, I have seen people coming
in their cars and parking up and admiring the view and then emptying
their ashtray or their litter bin into the car park, or takeaway
food. We have got a key task in this country to shift behaviour
still.
Q347 Chairman: But, given that that
is the situation,—and, Mr Sinden, do by all means respond
in a moment—from the time when you were Keep Britain Tidy
through to your new nomenclature there have been so many campaigns
and one is left wondering what else should we be doing to try
and address this. I think your analysis is correct but what do
we have to do to make a sea change in attitude?
Mr Barton: If I could just answer
that one specifically, what we now know is a lot more about people's
attitudes and within the population who it is that drops litter.
We know that something like 80% of the population when asked know
it is something that they should not do but we also know that
a significant proportion of those then, when you go on to talk
to them, have dropped litter in the last month or two months,
depending on the particular survey. What we also know is that
we can do very successful campaigns focused on particular target
groups which have really quite a big impact in that they will
reduce the amount of littering over the period of a campaign in
an area by an average of about 25%, but it is not sustained. We
have been doing a major piece of work. We run the Eco-Schools
Programme and approaching 11,000 schools in England are members
of that programme. We focus very much on litter as one of a number
of aspects of citizenship around sustainable development, and
again we know that young people going through the school system,
until they get to about their mid teens, are very alive to that,
and then they go AWOL from the system and come back to it in their
mid twenties. We understand a great deal more about the problem
now but as yet, I have to be perfectly honest, we have not come
up with a solution. We can focus on it for a period in an area
and make a difference but self-regulating behaviour all the time
within each individual is something that still escapes us and
we are particularly interested in working to try and tackle that
because obviously we do not want in another 50 years' time to
be saying we are in the same position that we are in here with
the problem still being a major one.
Q348 Chairman: Mr Sinden?
Mr Sinden: I was just going to
say that CPRE was actively involved in the creation of Keep Britain
Tidy campaign 50 years ago. Looking at the situation in recent
years, we saw both an opportunity and a challenge, an opportunity
with the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act to raise the
game and a challenge, given, as I was saying earlier, the perception
that these problems have been growing quite significantly in many
rural areas. CPRE has launched the Stop the Drop campaign in order
to enhance and support the ongoing efforts of Encams and Keep
Britain Tidy and to work through our branches and field network
to try and raise awareness of the problems and the solutions,
through schools and all sorts of other local groups—parish
councils and so on. I would like to make two points, coming back
to David's question. One is that it would be wrong to distinguish
as entirely separate the issues of public awareness and enforcement
by local authorities. I think we need to address these issues
hand in hand precisely because of the problem that David drew
attention to, that local authorities' performance varies quite
widely even within one region. Therefore you need to look at both.
Also, I think there are opportunities, in view of the latest evidence
that Encams have uncovered about the growing problem of cigarette
litter, to develop targeted campaigns focused on particular forms
of litter and people who are involved in littering in that way.
Sam will have something to say about the cigarette problem.
Ms Harding: There was some research
by Encams which showed that litter from cigarettes, or smoking
materials, as they are termed, were found to be at 78% and there
was additional research that showed since the smoking ban had
come in instances of smoking-led litter had doubled. If the Committee
is asking what could be done to catch that zeitgeist, there is
a specific litter campaign that could be run focusing on the fact
that cigarette butts are actually litter. We have some anecdotal
evidence coming through the research report we are working on
with Policy Exchange that indicates that many people do not consider
cigarette butts to be litter. They may not drop a cigarette packet,
they may not drop a crisp packet, but they would drop their cigarette
butt without thinking about it.
Mr Barton: We run a regular series
of campaigns focused on different issues and we have run two now
on smoking and smoking litter, and I can certainly feed through
if it would be helpful the results of those two campaigns. It
is an expensive activity. We agree each year with Defra through
the grant that we receive from them the areas that we will campaign
on, but each of them costs about £200,000-£300,000 and
for that money we can only run it in about 10 to 12 local authority
districts, so when you take the £300,000-odd around the country
it is clearly only touching a part of the problem. The advantage
of those local campaigns is that we then can monitor them very
carefully and we know the difference they are making. The disadvantage
is that for the resource that is available to us we can only reach
a very limited part of the population. We would be keen to do
more of this campaigning and we know that it works but we would
want to try and tie it in with what we were talking about before,
which is trying to make sure that the messages stay internalised
in people's behaviour going forward.
Ms Harding: I would just like
to add to that that there is evidence through the Chewing Gum
Action Group which Defra chairs on which there is a combination
of NGOs and government and corporate involvement where they are
able to run, via funding through the corporate sector, localised
awareness campaigns around what you should do with your chewing
gum when you have finished with it, and they have found again
that the rates of response are very good but then, of course,
their funding shifts to another area the next year so it is very
difficult to have a sustained presence, if you like, to encourage
behaviour change.
Q349 Mr Drew: Given that we know
that about 15% of litter comes is connected to cigarettes; that
was a figure, I think, in a parliamentary question some years
ago—
Mr Barton: It has probably gone
up a bit.
Q350 Mr Drew: Okay, so it has gone
up since then. Given that we know who causes it, should there
be a levy on the cigarette manufacturers?
Mr Barton: In a whole number of
littering areas there is a question as to whether that should
be the case. I am always quite taken by the fact that the producer
responsibility legislation applies to white goods and computers
and the like but it does not apply to packaging and waste and
I think there is something in there about the responsibility of
those who produce packaging, not just those who then subsequently
mistreat it. We have been doing a lot of work with the pubs and
the restaurant industry and so on to make sure the right receptacles
are there again to make it easier for people to do the right thing,
and certainly our hope is that the pattern will be similar to
Ireland where they introduced the ban somewhat before us, that
you have a big peak after the ban and then it has been slowly
falling, and I believe it is partly educational and it is partly
giving people the facilities at the point they need them to stub
their butts out in the right place.
Mr Phillips: What is interesting
though is the fact that smokers have recognised the legislation
in terms of smoking in public places, et cetera, but not the fact
that they are creating litter by throwing away their butts. It
is in that area that there is a lot more work to be done, as Phil
and CPRE are saying. Encams ran a major campaign on dog fouling.
It has been an area where there has been a significant shift in
public behaviour and you ask yourself why on that subject and
not on the rest of litter? It is a conundrum, is it not? What
has made the difference on the dog fouling compared with the other
ranges of litter? I go back to my opening comments and Phil's
reinforcement about behaviours. That is fundamental. Local authorities
rightly have obligations on cleaning and cleaning to standards
and enforcement, as you say, but enforcement and education come
together. What a difference it would make if we had an attitude
of mind which was fundamentally different in this country in terms
of cost and value for money.
Ms Harding: I just wanted to address
a point that David made which is about putting a levy on tobacco
manufacturers. I am not sure whether the levy would be a good
idea or not but ironically the packaging around a cigarette box
which currently hosts a health warning could be used to promote
litter messaging as well.
Q351 Dr Strang: In June of this year
the Government announced this "recycle on the go" initiative.
Is it having an impact on recycling and litter levels or is it
too early to say? Also, are there enough bins for recycling and
litter in public places at the moment and could you say something
on the proposal for a deposit on plastic bottles which I think
the CPRE are in favour of?
Mr Sinden: We can perhaps start
with "recycle on the go". We think it is too early to
be clear as to how successful the scheme is. I think the signs
are encouraging inasmuch as we are aware of them. Our local tube
station to the CPRE's offices in Southwark has such a scheme and
it is clear just from visual evidence that it is having an impact,
which is beneficial, so we hope that when the time comes to review
those schemes they will be more thoroughly producing real evidence
that they can make a difference, not just in relation to public
transport but also in relation to events where such an approach
has been shown to have quite a beneficial impact. In relation
to the bins, the only issue I would like to raise there is that
it is important that we do not clutter our streets with unsightly
litter collection devices in a bid to solve the problems of people
dropping litter where they should not be dropping litter. That
is an important issue for us and anyone concerned about the visual
quality of the built environment, whether it is in town or country.
On the deposit law, CPRE does favour a non-reusable bottle return
scheme in order to reduce the significant problems attached to
the littering associated particularly with plastic bottles. We
use, I think, something like 15 million plastic bottles a day
in the UK. We believe, in terms of the producer responsibility
agenda and waste minimisation, that in the interests of waste
minimisation it is absolutely critical that Defra takes a much
more objective and critical look at how you can introduce schemes
which can have the benefit of reducing waste at source but also
a benefit in terms of encouraging recycling and reuse of materials.
We have not been encouraged by what we have learned about Defra's
approach to this issue in recent years. It seems to be taking
advice from people who are far too close to the packaging industry
to be coming up with objective and appropriate solutions to this
problem. We very much hope that the study that is currently under
way, which is shortly to be concluded by Defra, will come up with
a new, more positive agenda towards introducing such deposit and
return schemes.
Mr Barton: We do support the "recycling
on the go" pilot and we agree it is too early to tell, but
there are some practical issues. It does very much depend on the
member of the public actually understanding and putting their
piece of litter or rubbish into the right hole and if it gets
mixed the whole lot then has to go into mixed waste. I think there
is quite a lot of work to do on the design of these receptacles
and the messaging, again, public awareness, public education around
them. In terms of the numbers of bins generally, we support there
being a lot and in some circumstances more, but only if it is
part of a properly thought through management strategy because
there is nothing worse than a bin that then gets over-full and
the litter starts to float around the place and attracts more,
so it can only be if there are the resources there to manage the
collection properly. On the deposit scheme, we are in favour of
anything which helps the problem. We do not have a strong view
either way on deposits. There are other possible mechanisms that
might work and we look forward to the Defra study. We are keen
that all reasonable steps are taken to explore what is possible
and if it has worked elsewhere we would support a pilot here.
The evidence is not there as yet for us to take a firm view.
Chairman: I am sorry we have to stop
now. Thank you very much indeed for coming and for your written
information.
7 7 Encams guide to legislation and Government guidance
relating to litter is available at the following website: http://www.encams.org/knowledge/litter/legislation/leg.pdf Back
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