Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-424)
Miss Holly McCain, Miss Lizzie Dutton, Mr Mark Adams
and Dr Jonathan Chapman
5 FEBRUARY 2008
Q420 Earl of Selborne: What is the
answer? What should we be recommending?
Mr Adams: I do not think that is my expertise.
Miss McCain: The problem with the concept of
recycling is that it is dealing with waste after it has already
been produced and it is just putting off the landfill by one stage.
If you recycle materials into definables and new materials, they
might be used in products but you might not be able to recycle
those. It is just putting off the landfill by one stage in the
product's life.
Miss Dutton: One area where we have had experience
of the problems of recycling is more the businesses' and SMEs'
recycling situation. We have had contact with the retail design
industry who are keen to use recycled materials. They have a relatively
high turnover of materials. They want a high visual finish for
their materials. They are happy to work around different ways
of producing that using recycled card and recycled polystyrene,
but they are having issues with returning that material to recycling
points and getting hold of recycled material and in the right
quantities. If the businesses cannot do it then that needs to
be resolved first and then the consumer is less of a priority,
but businesses are demanding those materials in certain cases.
Dr Chapman: We need to provide information about
where people in certain local communities can take products such
as a toaster, if it is broken and it is irreparable, to be handed
over to a team who then disassemble it and recycle it responsibly.
It is important that people know where these places are because
they do exist and they are quite commonplace across the UK. You
can take a monitor along and it is placed with a pile of other
monitors and I know that is still waste but at least it is being
disassembled and recycled as responsibly as possible. Simply providing
information will help but I do not think it will create a huge
quantum leap from where we are today. The reason I can say that
is because, for example, we can place on cigarette packets the
fact that you will probably die if you smoke these and while that
has reduced the number of smokers today, people still smoke.
Q421 Lord Lewis of Newnham: We have
been talking about the fact that in many instances we are concerned
with the interaction between industry and various designs and
that very often the industry is leading rather than following
the design process. Public procurement is an area which of course
should be very much more sensitive to the sustainability aspect
of this particular problem. What impact is there on the designer
when products are designed for government? Is there a different
approach to government than industry?
Mr Adams: Not in our experience of having dealt
with government as a customer. We have never been asked the question.
We would very much welcome the question because I think we could
answer it fairly thoroughly.
Q422 Lord Lewis of Newnham: So you
are telling us that government does not really implement any concept
of sustainability in its ordering process?
Mr Adams: Not in our experience. With a product
which, for example, academic institutions use because they like
the longevity of it, they like the reassurance they can come back
in ten or 15 years' time and get spare parts for it, you would
have thought that thinking would apply to government as well because
there is this thinking long term in government, but we have never
been asked the question and that seems surprising.
Miss Dutton: In terms of the products that were
aimed at government or public procurement ends, we have some NHS
products for which I have had limited success in finding out what
the potential procurement policy of the NHS would be in terms
of reducing the environmental impact. There was one company that
was developing a product and it asked why it should do this and
whether this was going to be a priority in the end when it is
sold into the NHS. On the other hand, we had a company who were
actively producing a product for local councils, it was a water
reduction product. They had identified the opportunity and they
were going to sell that whether they were being asked for it or
not. They identified the opportunity in advance of being asked
for it. They were not necessarily getting any information for
that requirement.
Q423 Lord Crickhowell: I think Ms
McCain gave a slightly dispiriting and not entirely accurate remark
when you said that if you can recycle something once or twice
it still gets into landfill eventually. There are certain products
where that is simply not true. You can go on recycling aluminium
ad infinitum. You can go on recycling glass ad infinitum if you
get the right quantities and it is sorted properly. We heard very
strong evidence earlier that the problem with the whole waste
disposal thing is it is weight related and there are no real incentives,
it is not coming through in the right quantities and it is easier
to send it off for disposal. So it is actually rather important
that designers know which products can be recycled. Plastics,
as we have heard, can be recycled quite a lot, although not into
infinity. We had a very good example given of a great building
going up—at least I hope it is a great building—in
London in which because of the right sort of glass being used
there is virtually no heating and no cooling expense because the
glass keeps it cool during the day and hot during the night. Surely
it is absolutely fundamentally important that designers understand
what can be recycled. It may be that we do not have the other
part of the equation right, the cost incentives for getting people
to collect it in the right quantities and disposing of it, but
surely it is vitally important. The Continent is so much better
at doing it. Why do you dismiss the whole thing as being rather
unimportant for designers?
Miss McCain: I think it is incredibly important
for designers to know what can be recycled, where, how and what
happens to that material when it is reprocessed. It is all about
informing designers or designers knowing about the whole life
cycle of the materials and the products and also, how much energy
it is going to take to recycle or smelt down these metals or steels
that could be recycled. It is about educating designers so they
know about these issues and getting them to look at the whole
life-cycle consequences. I am not saying we should just dismiss
recycling as a crazy notion. You really have to look at it on
a case by case basis and which materials can be downgraded, which
of them have an infinite recyclable life and which of them cannot
be recycled at all.
Q424 Lord Methuen: Dr Chapman, you
are a lecturer in 3D design. That implies to me what the thing
looks like, the ergonomics of it. I would be interested to know
on what courses your students are, and to what extent do you take
into account the technical content of the 3D block you are lecturing
on?
Dr Chapman: I lecture on two programmes. The
first is a BA (hons) 3D Design, which is a Bachelor of Arts. It
has a sort of human factors experiential aspect as the focus of
the design activity. I also teach on a BSc Product Design course
which is a more scientific, engineering-focused approach to the
creation of objects. Regardless of those distinctions, both programmes
are essentially concerned with exploring the best way to create
objects and experiences for users. Perhaps I can then unpack that
a bit and say what sort of considerations there are. As you rightly
said, there are issues such as ergonomics, material specification,
optimisation for certain moulding processes, and it is quite a
long list of considerations, but essentially the main concern
we have is to say that a product is a way of delivering a service
or an experience to an end user and it needs to do so in a way
that is effective, that creates minimal ecological impact whilst
creating optimal opportunities for economic growth. What you might
have noticed is I have not mentioned sustainability because that
is an underlying theme which we simply embed in everything we
do. Similarly, I did not mention the fact that everything needs
essentially to look good because one would assume that that is
something that every designer will hold dear. We do not teach
students what aesthetics are or what the necessary conditions
for a PC to look stylish are, for example, because that is an
evolving unstable notion which changes each month and it is also
dependent on the individual design team and on the cultural context
they are placing that object in. So we would never adopt that
kind of "house style", but what we will do is we will
say that there are certain parameters that an effective designer
needs to operate within and sustainability is something that permeates
and actually, dare I say, pollutes each of those parameters, throughout
all stages of the design process[40].
Lord May of Oxford: We have talked a lot about
design for recycling and so on. There was an interesting MORI
poll where the public were asked what they thought was the most
effective thing they can do for the environment in general and
climate change in particular and they said recycling and yet when
you ask experts that is way down the list. Much smore important
is reducing electricity use and not having waste in the first
place. There is a tension there once again. Maybe your mother-in-law's
fridge was a good thing to get rid of as you then bought a more
efficient one.
Lord Crickhowell: The present one is nothing
like as good.
Lord May of Oxford: Maybe we should have focused
a little bit more on design for the initial process of production,
to get the waste out of that, rather than worrying quite so much
about recycling.
Lord Lewis of Newnham: I think I would agree
with that. To me energy is a "waste".
Lord May of Oxford: And much more important
than recycling.
Chairman: On that point of agreement, which
I will take as comments and not questions, we are very grateful
for your evidence today. If there is anything you would like to
add to it we would be more than happy to receive it. We will reserve
the right to get back to you if there is anything else we would
like you to deal with. We are very grateful for the time you have
taken. Thank you very much.
40 Nick Grant and I are developing an MA Sustainable
Design at Brighton which places this agenda at the very forefront
of creative enquiry. Back
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