Mr Rick Hindley, Dr Michael Pitts, Mr Will Savage and Mr David Workman

22 JANUARY 2008

  Q252  Chairman: We are very pleased that you could come this morning, gentlemen. Dr Pitts, perhaps you could start off by introducing yourself and we will work along the table and take it from there.

  Dr Pitts: I am Michael Pitts. I work for the Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network, which is one of the ways that the Government delivers its technology strategy. I look after sustainable technologies within that.

  Mr Workman: I am David Workman. I am the Director General of the British Glass Manufacturers Confederation and for my sins I am also President of the European Glass Manufacturers Association. The industry is in essence now container glass, flat glass and fibreglass. Unfortunately most other areas of glass manufacture have offshored over the last few years.

  Mr Hindley: My name is Rick Hindley. I am Executive Director of the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation, Alupro. We are a specialist industry organisation which is focused on the recycling of aluminium packaging and we are funded by the major aluminium producers, their converter customers such as foil converters and one of the can manufacturers, but we also have a group that represents the recyclers and exporters of aluminium packaging for recycling.

  Mr Savage: Good morning. My name is Will Savage. I am Secretary General of the Aluminium Federation. We represent the whole of the life-cycle of aluminium in the United Kingdom. We have over 200 members. Thank you for inviting me along this morning.

  Q253  Lord Howie of Troon: What is the potential for manufacturers to design out waste or minimise waste through new or novel processing techniques?

  Mr Workman: In terms of glass, we are almost at the point of being able to utilise all known technology. There is not an awful lot we can do in the process. We are as lean as we can possibly be at the moment. There are a lot of WRAP funded projects going on in the container area to take the weight out of bottles and jars and that has really been the emphasis of the industry in terms of waste minimisation. In the flat glass area the biggest emphasis has been on innovation and leading-edge technology for coatings for different types of glass to the benefit of the environment generally.

  Mr Hindley: From the aluminium packaging perspective, our industry has been heavily involved for a long time in reducing the thickness and the weight of packaging. If I take two specific examples, the aluminium drinks can, which is obviously the largest part of the packaging fraction, the weight of that can has reduced by around 28 per cent in the last 20 years and it is continuing to do so and that is done for environmental reasons but also for commercial reasons. Within the foil tray sector the actual gauge of an aluminium foil container has reduced from 12 microns to eight microns in the last 15 years, which is around 33 per cent, but you do get to a point where taking the gauge down any further has an effect which perhaps you do not want, which is actually increasing the amount of food waste, for example, through damage, in transit etc. It is an evolving process, but there does come a point when it makes no commercial or environmental sense to go any further.

  Q254  Lord Howie of Troon: Have you any views on the use of glass as a construction material?

  Mr Workman: Yes, we do. As you can see when you look out your windows, the skylines of most of the major cities around the world now are glass and the reason that glass is used is that there are properties now within glass that allow buildings to retain heat in the winter and reflect heat in the summer. I suppose the best example of that is the Gherkin in the City where I understand they hardly ever need to turn the heat on in the winter and hardly ever need to turn the air-conditioning on in the summer. This is the result of technological advance mainly to do with gases between various layers of glass and also on coatings on glass. The innovation in the last ten to 20 years has been phenomenal in that area and has been largely led by what used to be a British company, Pilkington.

  Q255  Lord Howie of Troon: I know it well. What you are saying is that the use of glass as a construction material can lead to great savings in energy and things of that sort?

  Mr Workman: We believe that if glass were used to its full potential across Europe the EU could meet 25 per cent of its 2020 CO2 target, just through the proper use of glass in existing and new build.

  Q256  Earl of Selborne: Is that retrofit?

  Mr Workman: It would be retrofit on existing build, yes.

  Q257  Lord Howie of Troon: On buildings like the GLA Headquarters near Tower Bridge the architect made substantial claims about the energy savings. Are these energy savings monitored in any way and are they actually delivered?

  Mr Workman: I do not have any written evidence to suggest that they are, but I could probably provide you with that evidence through Pilkington.

  Lord Howie of Troon: I do not know if it would help us very much but I would like to know!

  Q258  Chairman: If we can bring a little light into your life, Lord Howie, then all to the good!

  Mr Savage: We can define waste in a number of ways. If we talk about energy, the primary aluminium sector globally has reduced its energy consumption per tonne of primary aluminium by something like 40 per cent since 1955, which has been a significant reduction, and continues to strive to find ways to do that. In the manufacturing side of aluminium the intrinsic value of the material has indeed had a major role in making companies look at waste reduction in their production cycle.

  Q259  Baroness Sharp of Guildford: How successful have manufacturing initiatives such as "lean manufacturing" and the "six sigma" approach been in reducing waste within industry?

  Dr Pitts: We think these initiatives have had a huge influence and they certainly have a proven track record. As you know, "six sigma" aims to reduce defects to less than 3.4 per million opportunities and "lean manufacturing", which essentially is just-in-time manufacturing, certainly reduces the likelihood of waste. I am told the UK is starting to lead in new areas for tackling these kinds of issues such as design for manufacture where you make it very easy to make and something called "pokey-yokey", which is making something inadvertently mistake proof. Our feeling as a Knowledge Transfer Network, however, is that all of these optimise existing processes and the real step change and plant closing technologies lie in deep innovation and that is something that we try to encourage companies to look at.