Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
520-539)
HILARY BENN,
MP, MR ROY
HATHAWAY AND
MR ANDY
HOWARTH
4 NOVEMBER 2009
Q520 David Taylor: Do you think it
makes sense, then, to restrict any export of WEEE, to fully functioning
equipment in the way that we are discussing it now?
Mr Howarth: It was said earlier
by the Agency that there is a global demand for electrical equipment.
There is a huge demand to bridge the digital divide in Africa,
and it is legitimate that we send working computers to help them
and bridge that divide. I do not think we should necessarily be
targeting that legitimate sector; it is the illegitimate sector,
for want of a better phrase, that should be targeted.
Q521 David Taylor: Back to the Secretary
of State: Defra has agreed with BIS about giving attention to
enforcement of controls on WEEE, and it was said that changes
to the Directive are anticipated by February 2010. Is that still
on track, Secretary of State, as far as you are aware?
Hilary Benn: I do not know the
answer to that in terms of the timing, I am sorry.
Mr Hathaway: As far as I am aware
that is true, but the lead department for those changes is the
department that—
Q522 David Taylor: You are keeping
a watching brief on that.
Mr Hathaway: We certainly are,
yes.
Hilary Benn: But I will check
and come back to you.
Q523 Paddy Tipping: This is an area
of policy that I am concerned about. These are waste oils that
are being refined, but the rate of duty on them makes it almost
impossible for the industry to take off. I know it is not entirely
your responsibility, but what is your view?
Hilary Benn: Rates of duty absolutely
are not, and somebody else takes responsibility.
Q524 Paddy Tipping: The Treasury
and the courts.
Hilary Benn: Yes.
Q525 Paddy Tipping: You cannot take
these on.
Hilary Benn: And you know where
you should fear to tread! If one takes waste lubricating oils—and
of course there has been this court case brought by OSS. I am
sure the Committee will know that on appeal the court concluded:
"It should be enough that the holder has converted the waste
material into a distinct, marketable product which can be used
in exactly the same way as an ordinary fuel and with no worse
environmental impact." The issue for waste cooking oil, which
was not the subject of that particular case but obviously is a
concomitant concern, is that there are regulations applying environmental
controls to fuel manufactured from waste, and that means that
the controls would apply to the burning of fuel produced from
this waste even if it met the test that the courts have now applied.
The Government is prepared to consider amending the regulations.
The issue really is timing because as a result of the Appeal Court
case the Environment Agency and the Department were instructed
to produce an end-of-waste protocol for waste lubricating oils,
which we have done; we have notified the Commission under some
technical process, and they have until 30 November to say `okay'
or `not okay and we have got some objections' and so on. To be
honest, we are waiting currently to see whether they come back
and say that is fine or not. In essence this is a test case. If
the approach we have taken with the protocol works, then it will
be easier for us to look at it to apply it to other types of oils
that can be used as fuel, if that is helpful.
Q526 Paddy Tipping: It is helpful,
but it is purely illogical at the moment not to be converting
waste, some of which is being dumped illegally, into products
that can be put to good use.
Hilary Benn: I must say I have
a lot of sympathy with that view. A lot of these things come back
to the definition of waste, which covers the whole of the European
framework, and one can absolutely see why that definition has
been put in place, because it is all-encompassing and allows you
to make sure you have a decent structure in place to deal with
all kinds of waste. On the other hand, there are occasions where
doing what appears to be the sensible thing tends to run up against
that particular definition.
Q527 Mr Williams: Surely the problem
with the issue that Paddy Tipping has raised is that some fuel
derived from oil that is not waste is not sustainable, and it
is getting the definition between fuel that is derived from waste
and fuel that is derived from unsustainable plantations of palm
oil in far-away places!
Hilary Benn: That is absolutely
right. That is why (1) we asked Ed Gallagher to do his review
of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation last year, why (2)
if we are talking carbon and greenhouse gases you need to compare
bio-fuel with the petrol and diesel that you are hoping to replace.
The truth is we know on direct impact there are some bio-fuels
that are better than the carbon and diesel from the climate point
of view—a good thing—and some are worse. Why would
you want to do that? I do not know why you would want to do that.
The complicated thing is the indirect land use impact, where we
are arguing in Europe and internationally for criteria to be drawn
up which would enable you to judge the sustainability. As the
Committee will be only too well aware, it is quite a complex and
difficult process to follow it all the way down the chain.
Q528 Mr Williams: I am sorry, it
is just this business about the tax rebate, is it not? We should
have the 20p tax rebate, I think Paddy is arguing, on the fuel
that is produced from waste oil but not from oil that comes from
unsustainable sources, and it is getting that definition between
the two is the difficult thing.
Hilary Benn: I am sure the Chancellor
will look with great interest at what the Committee has got to
say on this matter.
Q529 Paddy Tipping: We talk a lot
about household waste, domestic waste, but the big producer is
commercial waste. Why do we not put more focus on that? That is
an area where we can make real progress, can we not?
Hilary Benn: It is, and that is
exactly why we published our new strategy on commercial and industrial
waste about a month ago. One of the things we need is better information
about the make-up of that waste, so we are going to do a survey
so that the policies that we then pursue can be best informed.
The last time we did this was 2002, so it is a bit old and we
need to understand the composition. Second we want to make it
as easy as possible for people, so one of the things we are going
to pilot is looking at providing recycling facilities on an industrial
estate, because it is not always easy for small businesses to
do the right thing in those circumstances. I have to say I am
very impressed on my travels when I see people out and about that
are doing this. I was at a shopping centre in Peterborough a couple
of months ago. They have certainly got this, and they have reorganised
the way in which they deal with the waste and are having a big
impact. Provided the incentives are there and the information
is there, we can make progress.
Q530 Paddy Tipping: But the information
is pretty sketchy, is it not? There is an occasional survey—should
we put more resources into this?
Mr Hathaway: I am tempted to say
that we need better information on commercial and industrial waste,
which is why the national survey; but such a survey also imposes
a cost on the businesses responding to the survey, which is why
we do not survey them every year. We want to move to electronic
data collection whereby when a business applies for a permit from
the Environment Agency then certain information can be logged
electronically without imposing such a burden, and we want to
move towards that progressively. At the moment we need a survey
to refresh our knowledge from 2002-03. Perhaps I could also add
that we are developing policy instruments that bear equally on
household and commercial and industrial waste. A prime example
that is already there is the landfill tax, and there is plenty
of evidence that that is driving improvements in commercial and
industrial waste as well as household waste. Looking further forward,
issues about whether certain material should be restricted from
landfill in future would apply, or could apply, equally to all
types of waste.
Hilary Benn: The landfill tax
and the prospect of certain products not going to landfill in
future are two pretty powerful policies that have been principally,
not exclusively but principally, responsible for the big changes
we have seen already.
Q531 Paddy Tipping: But you have
also set targets for increasing recycling for household waste.
Why could we not set similar targets for the commercial and industrial
sectors?
Mr Hathaway: Once we have the
results from the survey and have a baseline against which to judge
that—remember commercial and industrial waste comes from
every sector of the economy, so to have a flat-rate target across
the whole lot might not prove to be the right approach, but we
do need to survey first. I would just point out that on construction
and demolition waste, which is a big part of commercial and industrial
waste—in fact the biggest by far—there are targets.
The Government has a target of halving that type of waste going
to landfill by 2012 against a 2008 baseline, and the new revised
waste framework directive requires 70 per cent of those type of
wastes to be recovered by 2020.
Q532 Chairman: Why did it take you
seven years to get round to refreshing the knowledge you have
about commercial waste? It seems an awful long time. So much emphasis
is being put on the domestic waste stream, with many initiatives
and lots of figures and lots of targets, but you seem to have
waited a long time to come back to commercial waste—why?
Hilary Benn: In terms of the survey,
Roy has just answered the question in relation to the frequency
with which it would be sensible to do that. I think a lot of effort,
understandably, has gone into trying to make progress in the household
waste stream, but I do not think it—
Q533 Chairman: That is the minority
waste stream in the country, is it not?
Hilary Benn: I was just going
to say that it is not the case there has not been progress in
relation to commercial and industrial waste. There certainly has
been.
Q534 Chairman: When we went and did
one of our visits in connection with this, I remember standing
with the company down near Croydon and they were saying, "We
are always sending information back to the Environment Agency;
there is no shortage of data; it is just that nobody seems to
be collecting it and updating it." It is all very old and
I am delighted you are doing it, but the simple question is, why
did it take you so long?
Mr Hathaway: There are a couple
of things I can say about that. One is that the focus has been
to some extent on household waste because the Landfill Directive,
landfill diversion targets, which impose huge penalties on Member
States that do not meet them, apply solely to biodegradable municipal
waste. Obviously, a government has to prioritise reaching those
targets for 2010, 2013, 2020. I would also say that when the Agency
did last measure C&I waste in 2002-03 we found that the waste
of recycling recovery was higher even at that time than it currently
is for household waste. So we do not want to be complacent about
this but actually you could argue that the evidence was that it
was the household sector that really needed to catch up.
Chairman: Two colleagues have supplementaries,
David Taylor and then Roger Williams.
Q535 David Taylor: One relates, Chairman,
to this area of commercial waste recycling, and I would like to
ask the Secretary of State whether he thinks we are missing an
opportunity here in the re-use of cooking oil, which is used in
great amounts in restaurants and elsewhere and it straddles both
the domestic and the commercial divide. The present position,
as I understand it, talking to a representative of the trade association
and organisations involved in this area, is that because the recovery
and conversion process of cooking oil into bio-fuel requires about
10 per cent of the volume to be from ethanol from non-renewable
sources, so we have 10 per cent ethanol from non-renewable sources
and 90 per cent of the volume from what would otherwise be a waste
product, we cannot get the European interpretation of RTFO to
accept that that is an acceptable process. That 10 per cent apparently
imperils the whole classification process as RTFO. Could the Secretary
of State look at this, because for want of that (a) we are losing
a small but very useful industry, and (b) we are wasting an awful
lot of heating oil that can contribute something like a billion
litres of RTFO fuel a year?
Hilary Benn: I would simply say,
Mr Taylor, that it is not a problem I have been aware of, but
I will gladly look at it now you have raised it with me and come
back to you and the Committee.
Q536 Mr Williams: Small businesses
locally tell me that where private individuals are encouraged
to recycle there is a huge disincentive for them because they
get charged by the local authority. Even if they sort out their
waste and then take it to the recycling centre they are not allowed
to deliver it in there. Is there a common approach to local authorities
or best practice or advice on this matter? If we are going to
make an impact on commercial waste we want to be encouraging people
not discouraging people, it seems to me.
Hilary Benn: I agree with that.
Greater convergence in the way waste is dealt with—because
in the end it matters less where it originated from and it matters
more that it is dealt with in a sensible way. Local authorities
are in the position to collect if they want. Question: how do
we encourage those who are collecting commercial waste to recycle
more of that? That is why one of the things in the commercial/industrial
waste strategy was indeed this pilot project I talked about to
see if you can make it easier for businesses to do that. Another
example would be that if a bin lorry is going down a street and
you have house, house, house, small shop, small business, small
business, house, house, house, it would be pretty sensible, if
you are collecting recyclates, to do that while you are at it.
Q537 Lynne Jones: Can I go back to
your discussion about your survey? Will you be making use of the
data collected by the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme,
because they do collect a huge amount of data about commercial
and industrial waste?
Mr Hathaway: Not directly we will
not, no, because the idea is to take a sort of stratified sample
of businesses across representative sectors of the economy, representative
size of businesses and weighted by region rather than to take
the information from existing databases, which may not have representative
sample sizes of the different bits of the economies.
Q538 Lynne Jones: Can I just urge
you that, in devising a strategy, since these are only periodic
surveys that you actually ensure that the information you are
collecting is relevant to information collected from other sources,
so that we can compare. That will allow you to use information
collected through other routes to tie in with the results of the
survey, so you will get meaningful figures on a more regular basis.
I just raise that as an issue. You mentioned the commercial and
industrial waste strategy, and I am sorry I have not read it,
but I am aware of the landscape review of the business and resource
efficiency programme. Is that included in that? Can you tell us
a little bit about how you are going about implementing that?
It is mentioned in your update that it will be implemented in
2010, and that that will be the delivery body. Can I put in a
plea for the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) because
it has delivered fantastic results! You mentioned the Treasury
and I am sure they would be very interested. In three and a half
years they have saved 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide at
a cost of 63p a tonne, which is streets ahead of any other means
of saving greenhouse gases. Their approach, which began with Advantage
West Midlands supporting the programme, has now been adopted overseas,
and we are a global leader now in this industrial symbiosis programme.
It has been adopted in Mexico, and now they have got a big contract
in China. Can I urge you to ensure that the good work that has
been delivered through this programme is not lost in the new way
in which you are delivering it? I still think it would have been
better to have kept this programme as it is because, after all,
if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
Hilary Benn: We absolutely do
not want to lose the achievements and expertise that is to be
found in NISP, and I would echo everything you say about what
it has achieved. The landscape review is all about trying to make
sure that we provide all of this support in the most cost-effective
way possible because we have to have regard to how we are spending
the money. The aim of doing it is to get that efficiency, but
not to undermine the importance of the work that the various partners
have done, be it WRAP, BREW, NCAMS or NISP. I hope that those
who have valued the work will not see that any of that disappears.
It seems to me there are benefits if you can bring together people
who are working in some cases distinct and in other cases similar
areas so that from the point of view of the businesses out there
that want support and advice, because they may be saying, "when
should I go to NISP for one, and what do BREW and NCAMS, now tell
me about WRAP"—if one can provide as seamless a service
as possible to help businesses that want to make the change on
the basis of good advice, it strikes me as a pretty sensible way
to do it.
Q539 Lynne Jones: I think it is sensible
to rationalise it. It was confusing but I think NISP has a particular
niche and it is very important, it is streets ahead in terms of
what it has delivered compared to the other programmes, that that
is enabled to continue. Can I move on to food waste. Over the
summer I read a book by Tristram Stuart called Waste. I
did not realise it had a subtitle Uncovering the Global Food
Scandal" when I picked it up from the library because
there was a sticker covering that bit and I thought it might help
this inquiry. When I read it I wished I had read it prior to us
producing our report on food because it really was a shocker some
of the information in that. A lot of the emphasis on food waste
has been on household waste and obviously we have had the "Love
Food, Hate Waste" campaign which has been excellent and the
composting of household waste, but by far the largest element
of food that is wasted is before it even gets to the consumer
in terms of the demands the supermarkets make on their suppliers,
not just the agricultural suppliers but also those that produce
the ready-made meals for example. I have not got my notes with
me, I left them at home, but two anecdotes from the book struck
me. One was that the company that supplies Marks and Spencer's
sandwiches chops off the crusts at each end of the loaf and they
are discarded so 17 per cent of every loaf that is used is just
wasted. The other story is that in 2007 because of the floods
about a third of the potato crop was lost and yet the supplies
to the supermarkets were not diminished in any way, largely because
the supermarkets reduced their quality controls, as it were, on
the size of the crop that they were prepared to accept but before
that huge amounts of crops were just being wasted. We need to
address this. I know there has been a lot of emphasis on anaerobic
digestion and I welcome that but the top of the waste hierarchy
is prevention and reuse. There are also other statistics about
the amount of food that we waste. In effect, we are taking land
resources from developing countries, so we really do need to give
attention to this area. Of course, food is about a third of our
carbon dioxide emissions. Are food retailers doing enough to cut
down on food wastage from their own operations and what is Defra
doing to ensure that they do so? For example, should it be mandatory
to report food waste tonnage as part of their routine waste reporting
requirements?
Hilary Benn: Well, I have only
just started the particular book that you refer to.
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