Supplementary memorandum by the Technology
Strategy Board
Materials database (Q 435)
One of the recommendations of the Materials
Innovation & Growth Team (2006) was the establishment of a
lifecycle analysis database "Materials Property Validation
Centre" or MPVC. This activity is being led by Materials
UK, an organisation run on behalf of the materials community in
the UK, and linked to the Materials Knowledge Transfer Network.
The MPVC is looking at three distinct types
of material property:
—
performance in use; and
For virgin materials there is a lot of data
both in the public sector and commercially but this will exist
in variety of formats and can be quite specific. It is not clear
that this data has been fully mapped and indeed this would be
a valuable activity the MPVC might perform. There are issues around
the multiplicity of data that would need to be gathered in addition
to this, that is the permutations of provenances, production methods,
applications and end-of-life fates that would need to be described.
There may be some useful learning from the chemical
industry which is getting to grips with sharing data under REACH
legislation. If a comprehensive database is to be prepared, it
may be more appropriate to do this on a European rather than UK
basis (to share costs and ensure the widest range of materials
is included).
For recycled materials, the lack of verified
data and the need to develop standards for a range of materials
form a major barrier to their wider use. The International Institute
for Sustainability, which is planned as part of the Thames Gateway
project, aims to collect data on recycled materials which may
go some way to address this gap.
Smart Materials (Q 440)
Smart materials potentially have role to play
in improving material recognition, and there are limited examples
of these in use:
—
debondable adhesives (the adhesive loses its function
on application of an electric or other field).
the issues are:
—
confidence in use—what happens if the reversion
happens accidentally, or over a period of time during normal use?
This poses a risk of damage to brand, potentially even of litigation.
To mitigate this risk, companies may need to combine the use of
smart materials with sensors and control systems which assure
integrity. All of these add to the cost.
We expect first applications of smart materials
to be in relatively complex but non-critical systems (ie a car
dashboard rather than a wheel assembly) and also in components
where a closed loop can be implemented so that the manufacturer
gains the benefit of investment, as well as recovering the materials.
RFID sensors are used extensively at wholesale/retail
level (at the pallet of goods level, or for high value items)
but not for low value individual goods. The unit cost of the current
(silicon-based) technology is around 10 cents. Normal technological
development will help to reduce this somewhat, but not to the
extent necessary to justify their use on individual low-value
items. Plastic electronics—an area of UK strength—potentially
could allow flexible, printable RFIDs at a cost an order of magnitude
or more below the current level. However this is not currently
feasible, and there would be issues such as robustness under reprocessing
conditions to address.
All tagging approaches will add complexity to
the system and the RFID also needs to be removed in the recycling
step, or be compatible with it
CONSUMER ATTITUDES
First and foremost we should design better products
that are also more sustainable, to give a stronger basis for differentiation
for consumers to purchase.
As a general principle sustainable products
should compete on technical performance. This has not always been
the case—some early eco-detergent products were perceived
as not being as effective as mainstream products; early compact
fluorescent energy-efficient lights had problems in speed of response
and light tone.
If performance is comparable, there may be scope
for a marginal price premium. Historically, consumers have shown
greater enthusiasm in surveys for sustainable products than in
practice. There is some recent evidence a proportion of consumers
are willing to bear higher costs for ethical peace of mind—for
example sales of organic and Fair Trade certified goods—but
these are still niche markets despite the dramatic growth they
have enjoyed of late.
Generally consumers are apparently more motivated
by the upfront cost of products, not the whole life cost. Energy
efficient lightbulbs and rechargeable batteries come to mind as
examples where lifetime costs are significantly lower than for
the traditional product but still consumers have proved resistant
to their adoption. The Design Council has run a project where
use of energy efficient products was encouraged by a combination
of smart metering (to provide visibility) and a low cost financing
(avoiding up-front costs); we will need similar initiatives to
overcome consumer inertia in other areas.
Note that in an ideal world, sustainable products
would be less expensive that normal products if the environmental
impacts (waste, energy, water etc) were fairly costed and this
cost efficiently passed on to the consumer.
SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT
Government procurement has great potential to
create markets in the environmental sector with the public purse
being responsible for up to £150 billion of goods and services.
This approach was endorsed by the CEMEP report which stressed
the potential of Forward Commitment Purchasing (ie to specification
not currently met by current technology, within price limits).
We do not have data on how well plans for sustainable
procurement are being rolled out but anecdotal evidence is that
government purchasers are inherently risk averse. This presents
the risk that radical innovation with potential for step-change
potential for improvements in sustainability is discounted, and
instead incremental changes in technology are preferred. The problem
may reside in the culture of government procurement specialists,
compounded by the fact that they may not have the technical expertise
to make an assessment of the potential of new products.
The Technology Strategy Board could have a role
to facilitate proof of concept/prototype studies to mitigate technical
risk. There is also potential for knowledge transfer in the form
of secondment of designers/technical specialists in to purchasing
teams to understand the culture and encourage a more innovation-friendly
approach.
March 2008
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