Examination of Witnesses (Questions 500-519)
Ms Jane Bickerstaffe, Mr Stephen Carter, Dr Robert Chilton and Dr Forbes McDougall
4 MARCH 2008
Q500 Baroness Sharp of Guildford: From a consumer point of view there is a considerable resistance to incineration.
Dr McDougall: I do agree.
Q501 Baroness Sharp of Guildford: It is not a straightforward issue. If I look at what goes into my dustbin, it is very largely plastic packaging from the supermarket—meat packaging, the odd yoghurt pot and the like—which you know is not recyclable at the moment.
Mr Carter: Can I just make a comment on the Courtauld Commitment? Certainly my corporation supports the Courtauld Commitment, but one of the areas that the Courtauld Commitment does not focus on is the transit packaging, the packaging that is there for distribution and shelf presentation. It focuses on what the consumer buys. That is an area that I think needs development, because we need to look at packaging as a whole system. You can get into a situation where you so lightweight the individual consumer package that you have to bolster the transit package, because it has no strength. The consumer package has no strength on its own. Again, it is important not to look at individual elements of the whole product chain in isolation; you need to make sure that you tie them together and find the optimum.
Q502 Lord Howie of Troon: Ms Bickerstaffe mentioned excessive packaging. Who decides when the packaging is excessive?
Ms Bickerstaffe: That is a very good question. It will always be subjective to some extent. Looking at the letters we get at INCPEN, people do not tend to criticise the regular weekly groceries. I think that people accept that those are fairly minimally packed. We get some little concerns about fresh produce—fruit and vegetables—and why can they not be loose. Take cucumbers for example. After three days, a cucumber really is not saleable. People do not pick it up because it has lost moisture; it looks dull compared to the ones next to it. You put 1.5 grammes of plastic wrapping on it and people say, "Why do I need that?" but if you do that, you will extend the shelf life to 14 days and you still have a saleable product. When you look at the energy and resources that you have invested in growing fruit and vegetables, we reckon that it is a justifiable use of material.
Q503 Lord Lewis of Newnham: Not coconuts?
Ms Bickerstaffe: No. I do not know anybody who has ever bought a coconut, wrapped or unwrapped—but it is the one that is always raised!
Q504 Baroness Platt of Writtle: INCPEN has suggested that a "packaging watchdog" should be established, involving industry, local government and non-governmental organisations, to address the problem of excess packaging. What role do you envisage such a watchdog playing? What resources would it need to do this, and how beneficial do you think it would be for consumers? Would it in some way perhaps duplicate some of the aims of the Courtauld Commitment?
Ms Bickerstaffe: We have suggested this because, in the early 1990s, before the Essential Requirement Regulations made it a law for companies to use a sensible amount of packaging, we ran a body like that, and it was effective. Consumers could write in to us; we were a multi-stakeholder group; we had local government people from the waste management side and the trading standards side; we had people in the supply chain; we had environmental groups and consumer groups. People could write in if they had concerns about packaging and we would then take those complaints up with the company concerned. If the response came back and we thought it was not justified, we thought that the packaging could be improved, we could offer technical advice to the companies to do that. If they came back and said, "We package it like this for X, Y and Z reasons" then we could pass that information back to the consumer. It worked as a very good conduit between the consumer and the supply chain, and it did lead to some real improvements. Probably something like that is not appropriate today because we have the legal requirement and trading standards police it, but we still think there is room for a body that could identify this difficult area of what is excessive and what needs improving; could offer technical advice—and there are sources of Government-funded advice like Envirowise and WRAP that they could be pointed at to support it. We think that it is such a high-profile thing for such a tiny problem that some body ought to be set up to address that specifically.
Q505 Baroness Platt of Writtle: You cannot do it yourselves as INCPEN?
Ms Bickerstaffe: As INCPEN we did fund it ourselves in the 1990s and we got criticism for that because it was 100% industry-funded and we were accused of speaking for industry, even though I am quite convinced that we were not. Lord Clinton-Davis was the first chairman of it. He was completely impartial and not anybody's spokesperson. I think that now it would have to be different. It would make it more transparent if it was part-funded by industry, part-funded by Government.
Q506 Baroness Platt of Writtle: Would large companies like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever be willing to play a role in such a forum?
Dr McDougall: We have been involved with INCPEN and the European body, EUROPEN, since formation. We have always been actively involved in this particular industry association.
Mr Carter: Yes, from my perspective also. One of the frustrations of corporations like Unilever and Proctor & Gamble is that we try very hard to comply with the essential requirements. We make great efforts, and sometimes we actually choose not to launch particular packs because we feel that they do not comply. It is very frustrating for us to see people we would regard as freeloaders taking advantage of the fact that they do not have the same standards as we do.
Q507 Lord Howie of Troon: Under the EU Directive on Packaging, I am told that large retailers have to buy Packaging Recovery Notes to meet their obligations. How successful have these notes been?
Ms Bickerstaffe: Could I first make the point that it is not just retailers who buy these Packaging Recovery Notes; our packaging recovery system obliges raw material suppliers, converters, brands and retailers all to contribute towards it. The system has been successful. The European Commission set down targets to meet recycling recovery targets by 2008. We are very likely to meet those targets. We have done it by spending just over £1 billion of industry funding since 1998, when the regulations came in. There has therefore been a significant financial contribution from industry, all parts of industry, to achieve this. We have got to the targets. The European Commission has now said that they think these levels of recycling are environmentally sensible. They think that the cost-benefit analysis they did on it in 2004 still stands. They are therefore recommending to all European countries that they do not move the targets further in the short term. In the UK we have a slightly different situation developing compared to other countries. We still have consumers saying that they would like to recycle more material; so we have to address that. We do have this issue of consumers thinking that there is too much packaging out there. It is really a switch now. We have come as far as 2008 under the EU rulings and we have achieved what we set out to do. Now we need to look at what additional issues we need to address.
Q508 Lord Howie of Troon: Have there been difficulties in implementing this system?
Ms Bickerstaffe: I suppose so, but the view that we took back in 1998 was to focus on getting the most resource-efficient packaging recovery system in place; so we focused predominantly on getting material out of the commercial/industrial waste streams, where it is cleaner and it is more homogenous, and so it is easier to get at and, financially and environmentally, sensible to go for. We have put less effort in on the household waste side. However, having said that, all the glass bottles and the metal cans tend to end up in the household waste stream; so we have had to have some focus on that. It is really what additional effort needs to go into that area now.
Mr Carter: I worked in the UK when the PRN system was introduced. I think that the whole packaging chain, from raw material manufacturers to retailers, really felt the pressure of gathering the data and putting the systems in place to gather the data. But that is all done now. Each corporation and retailer has data management systems that are efficient and they work. We put the pain and resource in in 1998 when the system was introduced, and now it is a system that everyone has learned to work with. I think that, relatively, it works very efficiently compared with many other countries in the world.
Q509 Lord Lewis of Newnham: This is not the question I was going to ask, but can I comment that I do think this business of recognising recycling from commercial bodies is very much more attractive to the bulk of recycling groups, because very often they are dealing with a single commodity all the time and so it does lead to it. What I am not clear about is the percentage of recycling that is commercial, as opposed to the amount of domestic. I have a feeling that it must be a large amount recycled commercially. The question I wanted to address myself to, however, is related to this. You have made the point, both Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, that you are governed by what is a world type of market, not by a local market. Here we are discussing the European implication. Have you found that in point of fact your directives from Europe are as strong or weaker than in other parts of the world? In other words, are there certain things or procedures you are carrying out which are not governed by the European Union but by other parts of the world, which have stricter types of environmental legislation?
Dr McDougall: Essentially what we see is that the most stringent legislation is being driven out of the EU, and that is across the board from operating/manufacturing sites to how we manage our residual packaging waste streams. To be honest, when you get into the nuts and bolts of much of that legislation, it is very similar in North America and Canada and in some of the countries with developed economies. Therefore our operating standards are very North American and Europe-centric, and we bring these operating standards into our Latin American operations and our Asian operations. We tend to have very well trained people in all these jobs, to make sure that we deliver the same quality at all our manufacturing facilities.
Q510 Baroness Platt of Writtle: You talked about a data system and that it is now in place and people can work with it. It works for large companies like Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, but I seriously wonder what it does to small firms who do not have the extra staff to do that kind of thing.
Ms Bickerstaffe: It was definitely onerous at the beginning, collecting the data; but once the system is in place, even for small companies, it is then more of a turnover situation. I think that our system has delivered. We are ten years in operation now and we have got where we needed to be.
Q511 Baroness Platt of Writtle: How aware are consumers of the relative amounts of waste produced during the production, packaging, distribution and recycling stages of a product's life cycle, and what evidence is there to show that they are concerned about this?
Dr McDougall: With the greatest respect to our consumers, I think that their understanding of the whole life cycle is not very complete. They really do focus on what they see as the packaging or the waste from each product; they are very aware of this and very familiar with it—mothers in the kitchen who see it every day when putting the rubbish out, et cetera. They really do focus on the packaging as waste, rather than even the packaging playing a role in getting that product to them. I think that the quality of the product, the protection of the product, the anti-tampering—all the benefits that the packaging brings—even they are missed, let alone any of the environmental burdens caused at earlier stages in the product's manufacture. What we see with consumers, when they are questioned about their shopping habits and preferences, is that now lots of people say that they would pay more for green products or they would buy green products or environmentally friendly products; what we actually see in the marketplace is that it is a combination of the lowest price and the best performance that closes the deal. It is not necessarily across the board for every single product, but I would say that it is a fairly accurate generalisation.
Q512 Baroness Platt of Writtle: You talk about packaging, but of course there is the whole product itself anyway. This is what we are discussing. How it is produced, what they use in the life cycle, and then what happens at the end. Are they affected by that?
Dr McDougall: I do not think so. It really is product performance. If the product does not work, it gets bought once and then never again. It is a combination of product performance and price.
Mr Carter: There is a huge problem from our perspective as manufacturers about the level of understanding by the consumer. Recently there was an article published on the internet from Cadbury's, who were saying that 75% of their consumers think that the biggest thing Cadbury can do to reduce the environmental impact of their product is to reduce their packaging. Actually, if you look at a Cadbury's chocolate bar, it is about 1% of the total carbon emissions through the life cycle of the chocolate. That is one of the problems we have. Consumers do not understand that packaging is responsible for about 3% of the emissions of a shampoo: it is all the hot water that they heat to wash their hair. Asking them to turn the shower off while they lather their hair is far more effective than us trying to take 10% weight out of the packaging.
Q513 Baroness Platt of Writtle: A lot of education has to be done before this could be part of the selling process, is what you are saying?
Mr Carter: Yes.
Q514 Chairman: The consumers' champion—Dr Chilton?
Dr Chilton: Thank you for the opportunity. I agree with much of what Forbes has said. The system is complex; consumers do not understand the whole delivery system and, when they get into the shop, they are overwhelmed with information and choice. Your typical supermarket has 26,000 products in it. To choose amongst those products, they may be thinking about fair trade issues, organic issues, recycling issues. In practice, most of us just deal with brand, price and convenience, even though if we were interrogated we would say, "Yes, these other things are important to me". What is the answer, therefore? Clearly one would never resist more information to consumers, but expecting that alone to achieve substantial behavioural change is extremely optimistic. They need to be able to choose between products that are sustainable, not between a sustainable product and an unsustainable product. I will give an example. We have had eco-labelling of fridges since 1995. The A-rated fridges represented 3% of the purchase market. Only when poor-performing fridges were taken out of the market did we see a 50% improvement in the market of energy-efficient fridges. In other words, a degree of choice editing. There is still choice in the market for consumers, but it is not a choice to choose unsustainable solutions to their consumer needs.
Q515 Lord May of Oxford: Of course much of what you say is true, but I would say that it is greatly oversimplified. Take the growth of the organic product market, which is a complicated issue because the organic food in some ways is grown in a more environmentally friendly way, which is a plus, but a lot of people are buying it because they think they get extra benefits, which they are not. That is an example of something which, I would say, for many of the motives of people who spend extra money to do this, falls in the general category of sympathy for the environment. They have used that to trump the other things. You say people go into the supermarket and they think this, this and this. If I am typical, most people go into the supermarket and they buy the sorts of things that they are in the habit of buying, and you just make step changes in habit. Organic farming is one. A real commitment—not just marginal things which are a mixture of profit advantage anyhow—to minimising packaging and thinking very seriously about it, properly marketed, engaging things like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, has a chance to step-change habits. We are not talking about that here. You seem to dismiss that as if it is not a factor, whereas in the sale of organic produce it is demonstrably a factor.
Dr Chilton: I think that we could end up violently agreeing with each other! This is a complex problem; there is no single, simple solution. It requires an alignment of incentives and behaviours. One of the key reports that the National Consumer Council has produced is I Will if You Will. It requires collective behaviour amongst consumers, so that you do not feel you are standing out by taking a step in this direction; you are not by-standing. It is also a partnership with providers: that they are responding to the collective messages of consumers and facilitating green choices. Clearly there are NGOs that provide some thought leadership and some navigation skills in this, to which consumers and packagers can be receptive.
Ms Bickerstaffe: One of the reasons that major companies belong to INCPEN is to support our education programme. We have had a schools education programme since 1988 and the level of interest in it in the last five years has soared enormously. At that level, children are wanting to understand the environment better and we can capitalise on that by explaining things more simply. People are confused about what is important environmentally and what is not. MORI does regular surveys saying to people, "What do you think is the most important single step you can take to improve your own environmental impact?" and they tend to put recycling at the top. Recycling helps but it is actually tiny compared to things like turning down the home thermostat, using your car less or buying a more efficient car. We did one bit of research that showed that if, rather than buying an SUV or a gas-guzzling car, you bought a regular family saloon car, the energy you would save in one year is equivalent to recycling all your glass bottles for 400 years.
Q516 Lord May of Oxford: There was a fascinating MORI poll which asked the people who were polled to rank ten actions that would save energy and then it asked climate change experts, and there is essentially no correlation.
Ms Bickerstaffe: That is something we need to help consumers understand.
Q517 Chairman: On the other hand, Ms Bickerstaffe, your education would probably have been one of the major informants or drivers in the rejection, certainly by junior consumers, of the amount of packaging that Cadbury's have on the things that they eat; for example, Easter eggs. They have now bowed to that. With respect to your dismissal of the packaging in chocolate, where you get specific campaigns relating to things like Easter eggs, you cannot tell us that the packaging there is nothing other than a means of trying to persuade consumers to purchase one egg against another. Mr Carter, it was you who used the Cadbury example.
Mr Carter: One of the difficult areas that we get into is gift and luxury goods packaging. Easter eggs are bought as a gift. If you consider other things that are bought as a gift, in society there is an expectation that gifts are elaborately packaged; and, again, if you look at fine fragrances. One of the challenges we have as a society is in making gifts look minimalist. Certainly Cadbury's are addressing this, because one of the things that they are trying to do at the moment is to make the chocolate thicker, so that they do not have to protect it as much; so that they do not have to have such an elaborate box.
Q518 Chairman: Do you think they will be doing it for the same price, or do you think the cost of chocolate will increase?
Mr Carter: Unfortunately, I do not know the commercial drivers of chocolate manufacture, so I cannot answer that question!
Chairman: Maybe we should ask them.
Lord Howie of Troon: This is all very reminiscent of the problems that politicians have in explaining politics to the voter!
Q519 Lord Lewis of Newnham: We have been concerned primarily with packaging. Can we talk a little bit about what is inside the package? We have been told that industry can only achieve a certain amount of reduction in waste and that the complexities of consumer behaviour—the throw-away society aspect—also needs to be addressed. How can consumers be encouraged to value durable products above cheap and disposable items?
Dr Chilton: Information is necessary but not sufficient. It is behavioural change. There are other examples. The Health Select Committee has examined how to persuade people to stop smoking or to eat better, et cetera? There is a whole series of behavioural approaches which help to shepherd people into making good choices, and provide them with information; but also collective behaviour and incentives to do so. You are probably looking at something that involves subsidy, regulation, taxation, information, and celebration of the good things that are going on, so that people feel that they are conforming. I was in a supermarket last night and I had to work quite hard to stop that plastic bag coming across the counter, because everybody else was getting plastic bags. I had to stand out. That should not be the case; it should have been the other way round. Interestingly, Waitrose are now dedicating some of their cash rows to non-plastic-bag people. They are starting to make it easier. I do not think that they have reached the point of processing you more quickly—that would be a wonderful incentive!—but building those sorts of practices right through the delivery chain. We do see, and have seen on certain issues in society, that people's behaviour progresses on a journey and will achieve the result that we all actually want.
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