Mr Neil Thornton, Mr Tony Pedrotti and Dr David Evans

27 NOVEMBER 2007

  Q40  Lord Lewis of Newnham: At the moment I do not believe that is illegal.

  Mr Thornton: No, it is not illegal, as I have just said. We do not treat householders as criminals if they fail to do the best thing they can for the environment with materials of that kind. Some local authorities do collect WEEE from the doorstep as part of their recycling capacity and I anticipate that would increasingly be regarded as good practice for the smaller materials, for example a toaster. There are some products where it is not practical to handle them in those ways and, of course, local authorities' practices do differ according to the services, the communities and disposal facilities they have got. I think the world of WEEE is learning how to live with the new regulations and in a year's time it will be interesting to see whether, as we hope, that will have settled down.

  Q41  Chairman: Can we just clarify one point. I was not very clear when you were talking about IPR and CPR. You made this distinction and said that the Government would introduce IPR as soon as possible without being "overly burdensome". Where is the burden felt and what is the problem about the individual producer responsibility?

  Mr Pedrotti: This was a hell of a challenge. The idea of individual producer responsibility is one that we agree with, it is just a case of how you practically implement that. At the moment the Directive allows for a fee to be shown to the consumer to deal with historic waste electronic equipment that is coming through the system. The idea of IPR is for any new products that a manufacturer, or whoever, is placing on the European/UK market, they are then responsible at the end of its life. Some products lend themselves to that more easily than others. With smaller domestic, to have IPR in the UK you would have to have a system where all the waste electrical was collected and potentially if you want to go for total IPR you would then sort through every single piece of equipment and identify the producer. That gets even more complex in the fact that some organisations, if we take Philips, will be the manufacturer but then place it on to the European market via a second party because they bought it off of Philips and are now placing it on the UK market, so this person is the producer and not Philips, but when it comes to the end of its life it says "Philips" on the side of it. It is very, very difficult. Producer compliance schemes which are working with producers in relation to WEEE are under an obligation under our regulations to put recommendations to us via the Environment Agency by the end of this year about how they feel we could move towards it and the Environment Agency are reminding those producer compliance schemes of that duty now. The other thing is I have helped to establish a new non-departmental public body, advisory body, to look at the whole way that the WEEE system is working in the UK and to give us feedback on IPR issues. We are not against IPR and, indeed, there is nothing to stop a manufacturer/producer now putting in place an IPR system, it is not precluded, but the reason they have not done it is that it is virtually impossible.

  Q42  Lord Lewis of Newnham: There is a good reason for them to do it from our point of view because it will encourage them. If they are going to get their own material back it will encourage them to consider the design programme. At the moment there is no incentive if they are going to put it in a pile with a load of other stuff.

  Mr Pedrotti: There is collective responsibility and if everybody acted along that line then everyone would be taking a big hit. From a design point of view, IPR point of view, yes, we would like to get there. I am certain companies, particularly IT companies, would like to get there. We would welcome any ideas from the advisory body or the producers about how we can move towards that system. From a wider environmental point of view, I could fill the new Wembley six times with waste electrical equipment that is produced in the UK during the course of one year. I could shift it all to Wembley, fill it up six times, sort it out and now I have got to get it from there to the producer and the producer's site where they can recycle it and deal with it themselves. That is where I start to think that IPR is a marvellous idea and would drive innovation and eco-design and would be true producer responsibility, but how do we get there. We could put in place a system but it would be so expensive and arguably un-environmentally friendly.

  Q43  Lord Lewis of Newnham: No European country does this?

  Mr Pedrotti: No European country does this whatsoever. They may have put it on their statute books but they are not doing IPR. There was a meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee at the European level very recently and the Commission basically turned around and said, "We know this is not working across Europe". This is something we want to look at as part of the review which the Commission will be starting next year and we will be working with them. No-one in Europe is doing IPR.

  Q44  Baroness Platt of Writtle: From the point of view of the consumer who may have bought a larger item of equipment, say a washing machine or dishwasher or something, it is absolutely vital that that piece of equipment, the old one, the obsolete one, does go back somewhere otherwise fly-tipping will become appalling.

  Mr Pedrotti: I can assure you that at this moment in time there are people who are not quite knocking your front door down to get that waste electrical equipment but it is getting close because of that scrap metal value.

  Q45  Baroness Platt of Writtle: That is cheering, is it not?

  Mr Pedrotti: You have two routes. One, where you buy a new product and the person you are buying it from will undoubtedly offer you the opportunity for them to take the old piece of large domestic appliance away or, two, local authorities offer what is called bulky waste collection so for a fee, because obviously they are doing a service for you, they will take that piece of equipment and make sure it is treated in accordance with the WEEE Regulations and will be dealt with accordingly.

  Lord Lewis of Newnham: That is jolly cheering, the idea that it might be of value in some way.

  Q46  Lord Methuen: Can I ask an off-the-wall question. For instance, a major policy decision was made to go to digital TV and the implication of that is tens of millions of analogue TV sets are going to be thrown away. Has there been any consideration of the waste disposal problem of those?

  Mr Pedrotti: Yes, it was. The interesting thing is when you look at the old analogue, it does not necessarily mean that the televisions you have got in your house at this moment in time are incompatible.

  Q47  Lord Methuen: You can have a set-top box, yes.

  Mr Pedrotti: As you say, you can have a set-top box that means the television is perfectly capable of working. We are not anticipating a huge rise in perfectly workable televisions being disposed of at CA sites. What will probably happen is, as in most people's households, and it certainly happens in mine, you will find that television moves to your son's or daughter's room and you have this merry-go-round until finally—

  Q48  Lord Methuen: So it is being recycled.

  Mr Pedrotti: Reused within my house.

  Q49  Lord Crickhowell: Just one further question on innovation. Again, we are back to the difficulty that we are going to rely a great deal on what is going on in other countries, where a lot of manufacturing is going on. How sure are we that we are really keeping abreast with the technology and scientific development on this work that is being done in Japan, say, or elsewhere?

  Dr Evans: One of the responsibilities which we have put on the Knowledge Transfer Networks is to ensure that they are up to speed with best practice and leading edge technology around the whole world. We are reasonably confident that aspiration is being met. Typically, university departments have a very international perspective and that is one of the very good reasons why the relevant universities which are expert in the specific areas are actively participating and encouraged to participate in the Knowledge Transfer Networks. I would not describe the support system that we have in place as being a nationally confined one; I would say it is very open to development, not least through things like the European Framework Programme which supports research activities across Europe as well.

  Mr Thornton: Can I make a very general point about this international trade aspect because it has come up several times. Obviously we are an economy which is much less of a manufacturing economy than we were and the consumer choices people are making and the purchases they are making are tending to be designed and manufactured overseas. That is obviously something that is very important to us in our consideration of either the UK's footprint or the footprint that the UK is responsible for in terms of climate change particularly. Of course, places like China, for example, are frequently exporting to a wider number of European Member States and, therefore, European regulations are frequently quite determining of product design in overseas manufacturing bases. We are also trying to transfer our own techniques, for example the Market Transformation Programme which I was describing which is looking at life-cycle impacts and technology choices that are available to people. Those kinds of methodologies are frequently being exported to China, because people who are working with us on those programmes are working in places like China, to give them their own capacity to make their own choices because they too are interested in these kinds of product impacts.

  Q50  Lord Howie of Troon: I am told that the European Union has a Directive concerning Eco-Design of Energy-using Products.

  Mr Thornton: Yes.

  Q51  Lord Howie of Troon: This is the first time I have heard of it, and no doubt you will explain it to me. I gather that this Directive is thought by some people as likely to change attitudes towards waste at the design stage of developing a product. Is the Government intending to implement this Directive in a way that would encourage the reduction of waste?

  Mr Thornton: Our overall approach to the Eco-Design of Energy-using Products Directive is to think that the best and most important use of it is, if you like, for what it says on the tin. The environmental impacts or the energy in use of products is a very fundamental aspect of the impacts, particularly the climate impacts, of product use. It is the case that the Framework Directive enables Member States to import, as it were, waste aspects as well, but most of the products we are talking about here will have waste regulations applying to them because most of them will have WEEE and RoHS applying to the products themselves. Our instinct at the moment, and it is quite early days because the Framework Directive has only just been put in place, is to think that the most important thing to use it for is to focus on the energy in use of the products. We will certainly be looking at the interface with the waste regulatory system to see whether there is any fine-tuning that we ought to undertake. This is a Framework Directive so it is envisaged that later on it will have a series of daughter directives in particular product areas. Obviously work like our own Market Transformation Programme will work very closely and engage with the Commission on the early stages of the design of some of those daughter directives.

  Q52  Lord Howie of Troon: I think I am a bit further forward than I was a few moments ago. Can you tell me how long you have been considering this and how far you have got? You say it is fairly recent.

  Mr Thornton: The Directive has come into force fairly recently but because it is a Framework Directive it has no direct impact because there is nothing else built under it. If you wanted to know more about our approach to the negotiation and so on, I would probably have to offer you a note because it runs outwith my knowledge. I would be happy to do that.

  Lord Howie of Troon: That would be fine.

  Q53  Baroness Sharp of Guildford: Looking to the future, how far are we training young designers to incorporate waste reduction and how far does the syllabus incorporate this for them?

  Dr Evans: Perhaps I might say something about that. The Design Council, which is a body which reports to my Department, has actually put a great deal of effort into working with the universities and colleges who train designers on the whole of the syllabus. It has done that in association with the relevant Sector Skills Council, which is the one for the creative and cultural industries, and has prepared a forward looking plan which locates the whole life performance, including the waste and disposal aspects of products, as being an essential part of the design curriculum. The Design Council itself is very enthusiastic about sustainable development and gives a high priority to that. The features of waste management as part of the overall sustainable development approach exist within the design curriculum but whether they exist sufficiently is perhaps something you could speak to the Design Council about who are more expert and more directly responsible than I.

  Q54  Baroness Sharp of Guildford: How far is there a link-up between design and engineering?

  Dr Evans: That is something which my Department and its predecessor have done quite a lot on. For example, we have brought together the Royal College of Art and Imperial College to a new institute bringing the design and engineering aspects of both education and product design together with significant funding. Our objective is to create similar linkages between other leading edge design schools and the engineering departments in universities. In that way you can enable the understanding between both the design capabilities, the features of good design, and the material properties, if you are talking materials, or the functional properties if you are talking about electronics or whatever it is, to enable the two disciplines to talk better together. It is this multi-disciplinarity which I think is a key feature which is needed if you are to have successful design in the area of waste management.

  Lord Howie of Troon: This is a difficult area. If you pursue it far enough you encourage architects to design bridges which are very fancy but tend to be somewhat wasteful in the use of material.

  Chairman: There speaks a civil engineer who should have declared his interest!

  Q55  Baroness Platt of Writtle: I am an engineer too, but aeronautical. I think this definition of the word "design" is rather careless if you are not careful because it is the look of the thing, but how it works is what an engineer would want to know. Okay, is it wasteful or is it not, but in the circumstances we have also talked about a motorcar and there is the beginning, the end, but there is the use in the middle, so the engineer would be much more interested in the different forms of design. That is the first thing. I was very pleased that earlier you referred not only to universities but to colleges of further education because when you are talking about car mechanics, garages, all sorts of people, it is this middle group of people, the technicians of the car, which is terribly important if you are to have good use in the middle, although it will be the chartered engineers who will be much more interested in the original design. In a way I am commenting on what you have said but what I really want to ask is what do schools do. I am the patron of the WISE campaign—Women in Science and Engineering—trying to encourage more girls into engineering, but if you are not careful in the schools the young people are put off careers, and our Committee has produced a report on that so I will not bore you with it. One of the things that I do think is important in schools is that if young people have seen what is happening they will go home and say, "You know, mummy, the day you threw that away, that wasn't a good idea, we could have reused it". To what extent do schools organise visits to employers locally to see what they are doing about designing not to have waste? Also, the same child who will have asked questions of mummy will ask questions of the employer as well, and quite often those questions are very good.

  Dr Evans: You have asked a number of points which in some way bring together some of the earlier discussion because it also talks about the issues of planned obsolescence as well in relation to some of these things. First of all, I would have to say on behalf of the Design Council, the Design Council argues extremely strongly that design is not just about the appearance of a product or a service.

  Q56  Baroness Platt of Writtle: Good.

  Dr Evans: A design is all about its functionality in relation to the needs of the consumer or the user, whatever it may be, and good design cannot be at variance with usability. It may also have attributes of attractiveness to look at but good design cannot just reside in appearance. You raised a very good point about technical level skills and that may come back to some of these questions about repairability of products which have gone out of function. We definitely need to educate people at a technical level in a way which enables them to meet environmental aspirations of products as well as the economic aspirations. I am in an exploratory phase with my new Department and I do not feel I understand enough about the way in which the technical education and the learning and skills function operates in relation to that.

  Q57  Baroness Platt of Writtle: You could get City and Guilds to help you.

  Dr Evans: Absolutely. However, the Sector Skills Council, working with the Design Council, has put forward the idea of a diploma in design which addresses some of these issues, so if you invite the Design Council to come and give you evidence I am sure they will be able to tell you something about the work they have been doing with the relevant Sector Skills Council so as to get design better understood at the technical level as well.

  Q58  Baroness Platt of Writtle: You will not forget schools, will you?

  Dr Evans: I wrote down the list.

  Q59  Lord Crickhowell: The Design Council has already submitted some written evidence and it is pretty critical in many ways. It talks about there being little demand for skills in UK industry and it goes on to argue things that spring from that. I am not going to go through all their recommendations but they argue extremely strongly that certain things should happen. I think it might be helpful to the Committee if you could let us have a response to those specific recommendations set out under section four of the evidence that they have submitted because they are fairly detailed and comprehensive. I am not going to elaborate on them but it would be helpful if you could give us a response.

  Dr Evans: I would be very happy to provide a note on behalf of the Department in relation to the points from the Design Council.