Queen’s Speech

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to speak today in support of the gracious Speech. I intend to concentrate my remarks on the environmental aspects of the speech and, in doing so, declare an interest as a non-executive director of WRAP, which is funded to drive forward resource efficiency and recycling. With the Copenhagen summit nearly upon us, I very much welcome the leadership already shown by our Government. The commitment to reduce greenhouse gases to 80 per cent of 1990 levels and the low carbon transition plan focusing on energy conservation are important markers of intent. However, I hope that I can persuade your Lordships that there are greater opportunities to make carbon savings through more intelligent production and consumption of products and services, which could help us to meet our targets. My starting point is a recent contribution made by the Secretary of State at Defra. He reminded us that we are rapidly sucking the planet dry of its natural resources. The world’s forests have shrunk by half in the past 300 years, we have lost half our wetlands since the beginning of the century and we are running out of fresh water for agricultural use. Meanwhile, in the UK, escalating consumer spending, population growth and increases in single household occupancy demand ever more natural resources and threaten our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, a recent report from the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York calculated that, between 2004 and 2050, UK consumer greenhouse emissions measured across the whole life cycle of goods and services will increase by 40 per cent. As my noble friend Lord Giddens argued today, if we do nothing to improve manufacturing efficiency and curb rampant consumerism, we stand no chance of meeting our 2050 carbon reduction target. Clearly, there are some sectors where manufacturers are already becoming more resource and energy efficient, but those are offset by key areas where consumption growth is outpacing technological advance. That is particularly so in agriculture, transport, manufactured goods and the service sector. To give a simple example, fuel use alone has increased by more than 10 per cent between 1992 and 2004. Not only are we consuming more, but we are doing so inefficiently. Every year, the UK consumes 680 million tonnes of materials, about 50 per cent of which end up as waste. Overall, it is estimated that, in the UK, 33 per cent of all products thrown away are still working. That includes, for example, businesses discarding 59 per cent of office machinery and consumers throwing out 44 per cent of working telephones. The challenge for all of us—businesses, legislators and consumers—is to avoid waste and to manage our scarce resources more efficiently in the first place. That is our only chance of achieving our carbon reduction ambitions, and it is possible. The Stockholm Environment Institute report has identified a range of quick wins and best practice scenarios across the production and consumer sectors that would reverse the otherwise inexorable rise in carbon emissions and instead contribute a 10 per cent reduction by 2050. Central to this strategy is the need to modify consumer behaviour. Currently, purchases are more often made because of fashion and peer pressure rather than need. Sometimes goods will be replaced by more energy-efficient goods, but this is rarely the motivation. In the future, more efficient products with a longer lifespan need to be not only produced but valued. Similarly, the true economic cost to household budgets of discarding working goods needs to be highlighted. The report also suggests that consumers could increasingly rent or share goods that are rarely used or expensive, such as high-end clothing, tools, equipment and cars, rather than constantly aspire to individual ownership. As the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, eloquently argued, we cannot ignore the contribution that dietary changes can make. Even though meat and dairy account for less than a quarter of the weekly average food intake, they generate nearly 60 per cent of food-related greenhouse gas emissions. We need to promote healthy eating not only for the obvious reasons but to encourage a lower-meat diet. Equally, there is much more that businesses can do to play their part. I give just a few examples. First, much has already been said about the need for retailers to reduce excess packaging. They have already achieved a 35 per cent weight reduction by applying intelligent design to calculate optimum material use, but they could do more. This approach could apply right across the manufacturing sector to produce more lightweight materials. Secondly, food waste remains a major problem. While half of UK food waste arises in households, the remainder comes from retailers, food manufacturers, agriculture and the commercial sector, with hotels and restaurants producing 3 million tonnes of food waste alone. Better planning, storage and usage could cut these levels considerably. Thirdly, the simple act of banning junk mail—by its very definition, no one wants to receive it—could save 550,000 tonnes of paper, amounting to 4.4 per cent of the UK’s consumption of paper and board. Fourthly, there is some evidence that modular homes, assembled off-site, can reduce building waste by 70 to 90 per cent through better material management. Alternatively, if we concentrated on retrofitting existing homes, rather than building on new sites, we would save the 80 per cent of the total materials used in housebuilding that are poured into the foundations. These are just a few examples, but it has been estimated that UK business could save £6.4 billion a year through low-cost resource efficiency. In the current economic climate, it makes good business sense to cut costs, reduce waste and exploit new markets in low-carbon and environmental services. As Marc Bolland, latterly of Morrisons, soon to be the new CEO of Marks & Spencer, said: ""In our world resources are valuable assets and sources of economic wealth … and waste costs money"." The Government’s low carbon industrial strategy begins to address these issues but greater intervention is needed. The public sector is a major purchaser of goods and services. It should use modern public procurement techniques to insist on the supply of resource-efficient products and low-carbon certified services. There is no reason why delivering sustainability should not be a standard clause in government contracts. This would inevitably set best practice models that the private sector would follow. In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will agree that better interventions, such as incentives, price, consumer awareness, improving business tools and regulation, can all play their part in delivering some quick wins that would signal that we were serious about carbon reduction and strengthen our hand in the coming Copenhagen talks and beyond.