Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
352-359)
MS JILL
ARDAGH, MR
PAUL SMITH
AND MS
JANE MILNE
24 NOVEMBER 2008
Chairman: Can I welcome our next set
of witnesses from the British Soft Drinks Association, Jill Ardagh,
their Director General, supported by Paul Smith, Chairman of the
Association's Environment Committee, and Jane Milne from the British
Retail Consortium. She is the Director of Business Environment.
Q352 David Lepper: You have already
heard some discussion this afternoon about litter associated with
drink and food packaging. I wonder if you could tell us what your
two organisations are doing to try and help reduce the huge amount
of litter that does come from those sources.
Ms Ardagh: Just to put it into
context, looking at Encams' figures for litter, the litter generated
by soft drinks containers accounts for less than 1% of total litter,
so it is a very small part of the problem. I think, as has been
discussed, it is a behavioural and social issue which needs tackling
perhaps through education. What the industry is doing the whole
time is seeking to minimise and reduce its packaging. It has been
doing so for many years, the weight of packaging, for example,
reducing materials. Bottles also on the whole carry recycling
logos so that people know that the packaging material, plastic,
can be recycled, and they also have the Encams, the old Keep Britain
Tidy, logo on them as well, so there are messages on the packaging
for the consumer. Those are the main things that the industry
has been doing.
Ms Milne: Retailers also for their
part have been, particularly on own brand packaging, following
the same approach. We, of course, do an awful lot to provide recycling
facilities in supermarket car parks, et cetera, providing opportunities
for customers to get rid of their litter on the spot as well if
they need to, and through our involvement in things like the business
improvement districts and other town centre management making
contributions towards improving the overall look of the public
realm because we know that a high street that suffers from a lot
of litter is not an attractive place for people to shop.
Q353 David Lepper: As David Drew
said earlier on, I had better place on the record, Chairman, that
I am a life member of the Association of Town Centre Management.
What about the issue of what is called "food and drink on
the go" that we have already talked about as well? You have
talked about the packaging and the bottles and the messages on
them but I think there is a lot of evidence alongside roadways
and so on, as people drop things out of cars, discard their bottles,
discard their packaging, that there is a continuing problem?
Mr Smith: A number of our members
have actively supported "on the go" recycling schemes,
in fact some are being run by individual members of BSDA, to encourage
recycling on the go, as you say, and those are happening in a
number of locations across Britain, mostly as pilot schemes, as
has been said. They are happening in places like town centres.
There are a number happening in theme parks and other places where
you find a lot of the likely recyclables that these soft drinks
containers are. I think it is true from a manufacturer's point
of view that we would like to see these recycled because they
are fully recyclable packages.
Q354 David Lepper: Also can I ask
you to say something in a bit more detail about the issue that
we also discussed earlier with the previous witnesses about the
plastic bottle deposit scheme because I think the British Soft
Drinks Association has estimated capital costs of between £4.25
and £7.35 billion for the industry to move to a reusable
packaging scheme?
Ms Ardagh: That would be a reusable
scheme. We were asked a few years ago to research the costs and
mechanics of a reusable return system and those were the figures
we calculated for that. What has arisen more recently would be,
for example, deposits on non-refillable bottles. Those types of
capital costs would not be the same. However, a system of deposit
and return would be very expensive to set up when you think about
the take-back systems that you are going to have, particularly
on the retail side, and what you would be doing is diverting waste
from, say, the household collection scheme and reducing the value
of that for local authorities. We would argue that it is better
to strengthen and improve household collection schemes and recover
your waste that way rather than have a separate scheme with its
environmental impacts because obviously you have to have transport
to collect the waste, people have got to get to wherever the bottles
are taken back, maybe they will walk but they might be using their
cars, so there is an environmental impact of having return schemes
as well as the costs of them.
Q355 David Lepper: With reusable
packaging, and I hear what you say about the costs of introducing
schemes involving reusable packaging, are there not later savings
for producers in terms of not having to source new packaging?
Mr Smith: Undoubtedly if you use
a reusable system you do not have to keep on buying the packaging,
but the problem with reusable systems generally is that you have
to have two extra systems. You have to have a reverse logistics
system, so you have to bring, say, the bottles back and that means
that you have all those bottles brought back as empties and these
days most loads that manufacturers have are not empty loads; they
are backfilled with other goods. The second thing is that you
have a transaction for the deposit which is very expensive in
itself to transact, so both of those two things are problematic.
A third thing is that in terms of distinguishing your products
you end up with basically a generic bottle or container, so it
is very difficult to create anything that the consumer really
likes to see because you need to have the same container brought
back again and refilled.
Q356 David Lepper: Are you really
saying that consumers need different kinds of bottles for different
kinds of drinks? Are you not underestimating the consumer?
Mr Smith: Consumers buy products
and consumers will make a choice about what sort of products they
want to buy. We have found that consumers will choose products
which they like the look of, so if you provide them with a generic
container which is only differentiated by a label then generally
speaking people will prefer to buy something which is in more
distinguishable product packaging. A further thing that you find
about refillable packaging is that you have to keep that refillable
packaging exactly the same for many years. It is not really possible
to change it because as a generic piece of packaging it does have
to stay the same. So you are basically institutionalising the
technology which is chosen and that tends to last for not years
but decades and therefore you tend to find that the float, as
it were, the bottles that keep going around, have to stay the
same and you cannot minimise the weight over time.
David Lepper: So you cannot persuade
people to buy more by changing the packaging rather than the contents,
as happens at the moment?
Q357 Lynne Jones: People seem to
be buying a lot more wine.
Ms Ardagh: It is a question of
innovation as well. You get stuck in an ossified system. The other
big problem with taking back refillable bottles is the amount
of space which you need for empty bottles. The retailer would
need additional space. Factories would need additional space because
they would need washing lines, they would be using hot water,
caustic soda. Also, in the storage area there is a question of
hygiene, vermin. You need extra bottles for the summer months
which you have to store, so the cost of that space is very prohibitive.
Q358 Dr Strang: Retailers and manufacturers
have obviously been reducing waste from packaging for some time.
Do you think that that process has now reached as far as it can
go through a voluntary approach? Can I also ask you about the
so-called Courtauld Commitment, the second stage which involves
an absolute reduction in waste packaging by 2010, how do you see
that being achieved?
Ms Milne: As you say, over the
last couple of years retailers, initially joined by manufacturers
have made some real strides in reducing packaging, and indeed
have brought packaging growth to a standstill as measured by WRAP
and announced this summer, so that is the first significant step,
if you like, and many retailers are taking significant action
by their own brand packaging in the hope that they can push that
down further. There are, of course, tensions between reducing
the weight of packaging and maximising the amount of recyclable
materials that you might use. Those two things might pull you
in different directions, and one of the things that we need to
be concerned about is improving the infrastructure for handling
and recycling things so that perhaps we can recycle materials
that are lightweight but are not currently able to be recycled.
We think there are still opportunities to go further but, of course,
it gets harder and harder as you go further down that route.
Q359 Dr Strang: Moving quickly to
the issue of carrier bags, do you see us achieving a reduction
in single use carrier bags or will it require a ban or some sort
of levy to help achieve that? We have received evidence—and
I think this seems pretty self-evident—that paper bags are
more environmentally friendly than plastic bags. Would it make
sense to encourage people to use paper bags at the expense of
plastic bags?
Ms Milne: In fact, paper bags
are far less environmentally friendly than plastic bags. They
have a far greater environmental impact both in their manufacture
and in their transport to the shop, and indeed, once they are
buried well into landfill they take just as long to decompose
as plastic bags, so I am afraid that that is not the right route
to go. We have been involved for a couple of years now with government
with a commitment to reduce the environmental impact of single
use carrier bags. Originally that agreement was to reduce it by
25% by the end of this year and when measured at the end of 2007
we were over halfway towards that target and confident of reaching
it. Since then we have had discussions with ministers about how
we might go further on that original agreement and I am pleased
to say that I wrote today to the Minister to offer a new agreement
whereby supermarkets would reduce the number of single use carrier
bags by 50% by spring of next year. That is, I think, a very significant
achievement and we are open to discussing with government what
we can do together because this will take a much wider debate,
changing consumer behaviours and helping consumers to make that
extra step—many of them tell us, "Yes, we know about
bags for life. It is just that we forget to put them in the car
when we are going to the supermarket"—to get that figure
beyond the 50% mark.
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