Examination of Witnesses (Questions 152-159)
Mr John Holbrow, Mr Michael Glass, Dr Claire Barlow
and Mr Marcus Long
15 JANUARY 2008
Q152 Chairman: Good morning; may
I welcome you here this morning. Perhaps, you could introduce
yourselves and we will start with Dr Barlow.
Dr Barlow: Claire Barlow from Cambridge University,
Institute for Manufacturing. My field is materials processing.
Mr Glass: Michael Glass from a company called
PICME, which is an acronym for Process Industries Centre for Manufacturing
Excellence. My background is mainly the chemical industries. My
organisation helps manufacturing companies improve their performance.
Mr Holbrow: John Holbrow; I am Chair of the
Environment Committee of the Federation of Small Businesses. We
have 210,000 members across all industry sectors, so we are not
sector specific. As you can imagine, my main interest is small
businesses.
Mr Long: My name is Marcus Long from BSI British
Standards, the National Standards Body in the UK.
Q153 Chairman: Perhaps we can start
off with the manufacturing area. A lot of criticism is directed
to manufacturers building in waste, but how feasible is it for
manufacturers to design out waste and what incentives or disincentives
are there to do this compared to managing waste more effectively
once it is created? Is it possible and are there ways in which
we can eliminate waste beforehand rather than waiting to try to
clear it up afterwards.
Dr Barlow: Can I start off by defining four
sorts of waste—and this is not going to be a lecture. The
first lot of waste in which I think you are most interested here
is landfill; so the stuff that goes out the door and is of no
use to anybody. Then there are other sorts of waste which might
be going off to recycling or waste which is produced in the factory,
which is immediately reused in the factory. Then the other hidden
wastes—energy resource. All of these are important. Landfill
is particularly important because it is an obvious waste; but
even the recyclable materials, when they go out to recycling there
is waste associated with the process so they have to be minimised
as well. So if we are designing out waste we need to be looking
not only at the process itself, the manufacturing process, but
also thinking about what happens to the product in its lifetime
and at the disposal stage. One can design for manufacturing, one
can design for recycling; one can design for in life resource
efficiency. They are not all compatible but there are things that
can be done for all of those.
Mr Holbrow: From the small business angle it
is feasible to design out waste but most small businesses are
looking to survive for tomorrow, next week, next year. Although
they are very conscious of their need to contribute to waste reduction
there is no real incentive for a small business to do it; and
the other problem they have are all the new regulations which
keep coming in connected with waste and other things. We think
that government should be raising awareness to the small business
community to make them aware of what they should be doing and
what advantages there are to do it. Some of the help from some
of the other agencies like Envirowise, for instance, or the Environment
Agency Net.Regs site produce lots of information, but we think
that government could be doing more to raise awareness.
Mr Long: At BSI we have worked on a number of
standards to help people design, to bring sustainability more
into products and processes. I will quote some numbers at you.
For example , BSI 8887 looks at the design for manufacture assembly,
disassembly and end of life processing for products as well, and
part of the ISO 14000 series, ISO 14062 looks at integrated environmental
aspects into product design and development, and I think that
Professor Martin Charter talked to this Committee in December
about some of these things as well. But we are working on other
things, so for example at the moment we are working with Defra
and the Carbon Trust on something called PAS 2050, which is looking
to measure the embodied greenhouse gases in products and services,
and these kinds of measurement tools will hopefully help people
understand the design element when they are looking at developing
new products and services, and hopefully with more information
they can better manage out waste with new types of products and
services that are being developed.
Q154 Chairman: A lot of manufacturers
would throw their hands up and say, "We do not know where
to go." Where would you advise people to go, any one of the
four of you, with Mr Glass starting with this one?
Mr Glass: Advice on waste?
Q155 Chairman: Yes. Where to get
advice from, how to go about it.
Mr Glass: I think there are already quite a
few mechanisms, but as I see it first of all I deal with many
manufacturing companies and I would say that the single biggest
barrier to reducing waste or improving anything is the lack of
awareness amongst the senior people in the business of the real
potential for improvement. Many are carrying on doing things the
way they have always done and have not been particularly receptive
to learn. One can offer advice but it is of no value unless it
is actually implemented and something is done with it, and we
do not have a nation of implementers when it comes to business,
I would say. It is true, of course, only for some and I would
not like to generalise and give that impression of everyone, but
I do think that is part of the problem. There are organisations
like the Manufacturing Advisory Service, or sector specialist
industry forums, where manufacturers can go for advice and support;
there are various forms of training available; there are a multitude
of different resource sources on the Internet. So getting that
access to basic information is not difficult. Understanding how
to apply it and actually doing it is the main issue and a lot
of that is cultural.
Q156 Lord Crickhowell: I was surprised
by Mr Holbrow's comments that there are no incentives for small
businesses. Surely waste is waste of a resource and therefore
waste of potential profit. I think of an example of not a small
business but a well known manufacturer of steel bars in Wales,
who used to cut a piece off the end of every bar in order to take
the necessary samples and they sent some of their workforce over
to Japan and amazingly discovered that the Japanese cut a tiny
fraction off the end, and that made a difference of three per
cent to their profit margin. Surely if waste is waste and profit
margin there is a big incentive for even smaller businesses to
eliminate waste?
Mr Holbrow: I think the problem is the perception
amongst small businesses. As Michael was just saying, there is
lots of information there, there are lots of things that people
should do but the perception is amongst the owners of small businesses
that there are so many other things they have to do that they
do not necessarily see waste reduction as a way of increasing
profits. I agree with you that it does but the problem is getting
the message across and getting the education system there so that
people see this.
Q157 Lord Methuen: I think that Mr
Holbrow has to some extent covered my next question. How are small
manufacturers working to reduce waste and how are they affected
by their position within a supply chain? Would you care to add
anything to what has already been said?
Mr Holbrow: I think the problem with the supply
chain is that we have been working with local authorities, for
instance, to see how small businesses can access the supply chains
and supply local authorities, and when you see tenders coming
out for £50, £60, £70 million worth of business
it is not really applicable to small business and therefore there
is no real incentive there for a small business to access the
local authority's supply chain. It is improving; we are doing
a lot of work with them, and I think when that comes more into
place there will be the incentive there for small businesses,
but at the moment it is not there.
Q158 Lord Methuen: What can be done
to assist small manufacturers to reduce waste? Can anything be
done?
Mr Holbrow: I think, again, it is purely raising
awareness, getting people to see, as your colleague was suggesting,
that it will help their bottom line if they do reduce waste, but,
again, there is the difficulty from the small business that the
volume of waste that a small business produces is not really of
interest to recyclers because there is not enough of it in one
place. So waste clubs where people can, say, on a small industrial
estate group together, that can help. If local authorities can
be persuaded to allow small businesses the use of civic amenity
sites for recycling, it may not help reduce waste but it will
certainly help reuse and recycle waste. When you go along to a
civic amenities site and are told that because you are a small
business go away, that is not conducive to helping small businesses
do recycling and reuse.
Q159 Lord Lewis of Newnham: What
is the difference between the local authority's attitude towards
what I will call commercial and domestic waste? They are separated
out, they are charged differently; are you saying as well that
they are handled differently?
Mr Holbrow: I do not think they are handled
differently because lots of small businesses will not go to a
civic amenity site to dispose of their waste because they are
often told to go away. Some are being more helpful and the initiatives
under the WEEE regulations to enable householders to take waste
of electrical and electronic equipment to civic amenity sites
is a great move forward and we are hoping that once that beds
down and settles down one might be able to swing the argument
then for other waste streams other than for waste electrical and
electronic equipment.
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