Mr Jonathan Davies, Mr Gareth Stace, Mr Merlin Hyman and Professor Mike Gregory

22 JANUARY 2008

  Q240  Baroness Platt of Writtle: Following Lord Crickhowell's question, there are Japanese firms in this country. Are they exercising that sort of thing and are we learning from them?

  Mr Stace: I have no examples from our members that that is taking place but it is certainly something I would be looking to follow up.

  Q241  Lord Crickhowell: I am astonished. I could take you to a number of companies in South Wales which I used to visit when I was Secretary of State that had this as a priority. They are competing with other British companies alongside them. It seems extraordinary to me that there is not more knowledge about it than you are indicating.

  Q242  Baroness Platt of Writtle: It is quite interesting to look at what is happening in Europe because they have to cope with the same Waste Disposal Directive that we have. Two countries that have been mentioned to me as being prime examples are the Netherlands and Switzerland. Do you know anything about their practices? Switzerland is of course outside the EU.

  Mr Davies: Indeed. I do not know about those two. As a company we have direct contact with the Netherlands. I was going to comment on the Japanese issue. Quite some time ago now I went around the Cowley factory or what was then Rover which at the time had an alliance with Honda. It is now the Mini factory for BMW. At that time they were very vigorously taking forward what they called the zero waste policy. It was evidently well embedded in all of their practices. If that was then, I would be surprised if things have gone backwards.

  Mr Hyman: I was going to mention one scheme which perhaps links more into the product. One of the government policy areas and one of the areas that makes companies always wake up if you like, perhaps a little more exciting than the process, is the product at the end of it and the potential for reducing responsibility type requirements, whether that is the WEEE or end of life vehicles or packaging. Product requirements can have an influence on the process as well as what happens as to the efficiency of the product. In Japan there is a scheme called the top runner scheme which the European Union has recently looked at emulating through something like a lead markets initiative. The standards for a particular product are set at, or at a higher level than, the most efficient product on the market at the moment. All companies sign up to delivering that within a certain period of time, so it is a constant ratcheting up. I had a presentation from someone from the Japanese department responsible for business to a European Commission experts' meeting who completed his evidence by saying, "Please, Europe, do not adopt this scheme because it is producing lots of business efficiencies and a competitive advantage for Japan." That is certainly one example but there is more focused on the process than on the product at the end of it and we are trying to use that to work back through the lifecycle.

  Q243  Baroness Platt of Writtle: What waste reduction skills can design and engineering graduates bring to industry?

  Professor Gregory: There is a huge opportunity here. The design and engineering graduates are extremely enthusiastic about this for all the reasons we would expect. There is a huge amount of untapped energy there which I think can be released through all sorts of networks and the things they do naturally. Institutionally it seems to me there are far more opportunities for projects, factory based projects, but also university based projects. They could be orchestrated much more effectively so that the lessons from those things are drawn back and available centrally. There are also things that could be done at the institutional level, the engineering institutions for example, who could make a study of appropriate parts of this agenda an integral part of the curriculum. That could also be tackled at the level of the engineering professors' conference, I think, so at multiple levels, capturing enthusiasm. They are very good at spreading enthusiasm and awareness. They can help practically in factories and business environments. Projects are not just about learning. They can solve real problems very cheaply for companies and at the far end we might even find that young engineers and designers can become the trainers. We have heard already that there is still a need to get people aware and it is not such a bad thing. The older, senior people in a company quite like to hear from youngsters. Sometimes it is more comfortable than hearing from their colleagues.

  Q244  Baroness Platt of Writtle: How can industry motivate and support academia to educate graduates about waste reduction in a practical way? You have just given one example. Do other people have examples or not? [No response] That sounds like a dead duck. Are designers sufficiently educated about the technical applicability of new materials, because there are a lot of new materials that are going into aircraft particularly at the moment, are there not?

  Professor Gregory: My sense is that a lot of good work has been done on this but how do you join these things up? It is a problem with the whole domain. Which system level are you working at and how do you get the knowledge flying across it. There is a role there for some collecting of the very excellent activities that are going on. At the detail level things are going on but designers and others are not generally given a sufficiently systemic view of the work they do so that they see its broader context as well as the particular function or product that they are designing.

  Q245  Lord Methuen: Can I ask Mr Hyman a specific question from his paper under consumer behaviour? You make the comment: "There may be some exceptions to this rule, usually in terms of energy or water using products, where improvements in operational efficiency outweigh the environmental costs of producing the product." What did you mean by this and can you give examples?

  Mr Hyman: What we are referring to there is at what stage is something sufficiently a more efficient material resource and energy efficient that it is worth recycling the old one and buying a new one. It does puzzle consumers a little bit that they see advertised a shiny new fridge with a triple A or quadruple A rating. Should they get rid of their old fridge and buy a new one? Which is better? I do not think there is much understanding or guidance or help out there for consumers in making that kind of decision.

  Q246  Baroness Sharp of Guildford: In terms of lifecycle analysis as distinct from a one off choice?

  Mr Hyman: Yes.

  Mr Davies: The triple A rating produces an immediate response of "Oh, that must be good", but if you buy a computer printer it will say the printer is £65 and the cost of the print is six pence a sheet. Or you can buy one for £100 and it is four pence a sheet. You have some figures on which you can make an assessment whereas the triple A washing machine does not tell you how much a year it is going to cost you. If there were a benchmark—it would have to be defined of course—which would say that typically this costs so much, you can quickly see that it is worth paying more because over five years this will save more money.

  Q247  Lord Lewis of Newnham: This does bring us to a point which is related in part to the point that Baroness Platt has been asking about. If you take material selection, it is one of the important features in starting. You do a lifecycle analysis. We have heard, in the absence of consistent standards for evaluation and reporting environmental impacts, that you can get some very different sorts of results. In your remarks, Mr Stace, you do make the point that for example using one material over another might mean less waste is generated at the end of life. It is easier to recycle but it may in fact produce more energy during its lifetime's production. It does seem to me that we have an interesting factor here. The whole concept over waste is at the moment based on weight and the amount of waste you produce is weighed. There is an argument even in terms of volume as far as this is concerned and I think in our next group of people we will see that in the case of aluminium this is producing a rather peculiar effect on disposal of aluminium to sites. There is another factor that is now coming in from climate change and that is energy and energy consumption. Where are we going to when we talk about sustainability here? What should be our guideline here? Is it going to be the amount of waste we are putting into a landfill site? Is it the amount of energy over the total cycle and the energy required in recycling and factors like this? It does seem to me we are now coming to a sort of crossroads where one set of interests are not necessarily compatible with another set of interests.

  Mr Stace: It is almost a revolution in terms of companies understanding what waste is. Waste, to me, was solid waste but waste in terms of energy and bringing everything round to tonnes of carbon is again a whole new way of thinking. My earlier example was of the low fume flux. There is energy and real solid waste there. It is really looking across the whole of that supply chain, what you are doing within that supply chain and where is the result at the end. Our members might be making, say, high strength steels for lightweight motor vehicles but they might be, at the end of that life, a bit more difficult to recycle than conventional steels. One lifecycle analysis will show up one result and another one might show up another result. It is an emerging minefield for our members on the ground, doing the day to day business in understanding what is best for them to do and what should they be measuring now or in the future. It brings us back to that long term certainty. Where should their focus be? I think they need to understand that.

  Q248  Baroness Platt of Writtle: It needs to be lifecycle, does it not? It has to be production, energy used during the time it is used and then waste. It is a complete lifecycle, is it not?

  Mr Stace: Lifecycle is a subjective process as well. It is not an exact science. Until there is a European agreed standard on lifecycle analysis, we might have conflicting views or results of what companies should be doing for the best.

  Q249  Lord Lewis of Newnham: May I be very brutal and say that my view for instance at the moment on landfill is that they use weight rather than volume because it is easier to measure. It is a much more tangible situation. Volume in many instances can be very susceptible to packing so application does play an important role and measurement does play an important role. Although I think carbon content—based on carbon content and equivalence to carbon content—could be a very important way of dealing with it, it seems to me to be fraught with great difficulties in application.

  Mr Davies: I absolutely agree with you. You may be familiar with the Aldersgate Group which has produced a report calling for consistency in corporate carbon accounting. That obviously links through to lifecycle assessment and the critical thing is drawing the boundary in the right place so that you have tracked everything down to the offset energy and so forth and that, when you have recovered materials, the energy and carbon thereby saved is also taken into account. Once you have done that—there are a number of tools and they need to be made consistent—this is calling for a consistent approach. There is a Defra method which is quite highly regarded. That would be a sensible place to start, I would suggest, but if you have that you really draw everything into this common currency of carbon accounting. Once you have that the next stage, dare I say, would be carbon pricing. Then we would really know what we are costing. On that basis, we can change the whole economy. We will not do that tomorrow but we do need to do it pretty quickly, I would suggest.

  Q250  Earl of Selborne: We heard from BSI last week. They say that they are engaged with WRAP and other key stakeholders in producing specifications and codes of practice in the management of waste, wood, paper recycling, glass, plastics and the like. Are you aware of opportunities that you have to help write such specifications and does this move into the international field?

  Mr Davies: Our linkage is through the waste protocols which feed into the standards. The Waste Protocol effectively is a standard for recovered material so BSI are linking into the same system.

  Mr Hyman: A number of our members participate in a wide range of BSI standards. They are almost all these days I think done on an international basis. The standards industry is perhaps responding but it is a slow and often complex process.

  Q251  Baroness Platt of Writtle: Do manufacturers take part in the decision making of BSI?

  Mr Hyman: They certainly have the opportunity to do so.

  Mr Stace: I agree with Jonathan that the Waste Protocol has a real input into developing standards and the standards being set within the waste protocols system.

Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen. As we say to everyone, if there is anything else you would like to send us, we would be very happy to receive and consider it. We might well return to you once we have had a look at the printed copy of the evidence. If there are any issues that we think we would like to pursue with you, we may well be in touch. We are very happy to receive your evidence today and it has been very helpful. Thank you very much.