Speech by Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP at the WRAP conference on Resource Efficiency, 4 November 2009
Not checked against delivery.
My thanks to Liz [Goodwin], and to WRAP as a whole, for the work you’re doing.
Resource efficiency - what does it mean, and why do we need it?
For me it’s about only taking what we need.
Mending things instead of throwing them away and making things that aren’t going to break.
It’s moving things from where they’re not needed any more to where they are needed.
It’s about making the very concept of waste obsolete.
Why do we need to do this? Because there’s more and more of us, and we’re running out of things.
Because by 2050 the world’s population is predicted to rise by 2 ½ to 3 billion more people.
Because in last 300 years the world’s forests have shrunk by nearly half; and since 1900, the world has lost about half of its wetlands. Because seventy percent of our global fresh water is used for agriculture – and our changing climate means our supplies of fresh water are diminishing.
Because in the past two centuries of breathtaking science and massive economic growth, we lost sight of the idea of limits, or of consequence.
Because we’ve been sucking on our planet like it’s an orange: as if, once we’re done we can chuck away the rind and grab another one from the bowl.
That’s the moral case, but eating into our natural capital also makes no economic sense.
But telling ourselves off is just another waste of energy. What about asking ourselves Canadian designer Bruce Mau’s question:
“Now that you can make anything, what is it that you want to make?”
It’s our ingenuity has brought about the great leaps forward in science and technology we’ve seen over the last two centuries. Creating more wealth, better health, and ever more possibilities.
At the same time it’s human ingenuity that’s unwittingly created the threat to the natural world and to our own future.
So, now we need to draw on that same ingenuity – our inventiveness, our resourcefulness, our entrepreneurial spirit – to change the way we design things, make things and sell things. To change the way we run our businesses, and the habits of our employees. To find ways of limiting, redressing and undoing the damage we have caused. And meeting our own needs in a way that ensures our children and grandchildren can meet theirs.
It seems to me that there are three big things we need to think about.
First, lowering carbon emissions, in the running of your buildings, in the way you produce things. As the WRAP research does, build in the carbon emissions created in the production and transportation of the things you buy.
Two: lowering, if not eliminating, your impact on the natural environment by managing and reducing your use of water, by using more efficient equipment, fixtures and fittings; by promoting biodiversity in the way you manage your land and buildings, for example with green roofs which support flora and fauna, as well as helping with urban water management, and most fundamentally by mimicking nature – biomimicry – increasingly recognised as an inspiration for business innovation.
And three, abolishing waste. As I said two weeks ago, at the launch of our zero waste nation vision, we are dumping valuable resources into landfill. There’s all the material we could be re-using or recycling; and there’s food, which could become compost or turned into energy, with the other stuff to create heat and electricity.
So how do we do this?
Sometimes with a neat adjustment. Making aluminium cans with ring pulls that stay on the can, so the ring pulls get recycled too.
Changing the shape of the trailers you transport your goods in, from rectangular cubes to that of a teardrop. M&S now has 141 of these new aerodynamic trailers. They are ten percent more fuel efficient and have ten percent more capacity than its existing trailers, and will reduce M&S’s carbon footprint by 840 tonnes a year.
Or with a clever invention: the new washing machine that weighs the laundry you put in it and then uses only the amount of water, electricity and detergent necessary to get it clean.
Or with a shift in focus – I’m thinking of Hills Office Furniture in Yorkshire, who I visited earlier in the month. Established 40 years ago, the largest supplier of office furniture in the north, they’ve now diversified to deal in furniture other businesses are throwing out - and making use of every last shred of it.
By re-using – selling it on, or giving it to people who are desperate for it.
By recycling, building new furniture out of it or selling the raw material on to the relevant industry.
And what’s left over they chip, and mix with nitrogen-rich seaweed and some stuff called mungo, which repels slugs: to make a soil conditioner.
Last year the global value of the low carbon and environmental goods and services sector was £3,046 billion.
The UK had a £107 billion share of that – good, but only a three and a half percent of the market, putting us sixth from top.
The cake is going to get bigger. And as it does, the UK could and should have a bigger slice of it.
As we said in the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy, published in the summer, in Government we are determined to support business to achieve this. This booklet – Can You Afford Not To? – is part of that support.
Essentially it’s the business case for action. For grasping opportunities and exploiting this new market, but also for cutting costs.
As the film showed earlier, UK business could save 6.4 billion pounds each year by taking no or low cost resource efficiency steps. Things like mending taps and turning the thermostat down.
We really want to get the message across to small business, mainstream businesses, big businesses all the way through the supply chain. We want those 6.4 billion pounds to be saved. We’ve also launched a campaign today, hosted on Business Link website, aimed at small and medium sized businesses. It’s called “Saving money - it’s your business”. We hope it will encourage people to do things.
And I’d like to ask for your help with this. Spread the word, to your suppliers and everyone you work with. I am writing a letter, with my colleagues Ed Miliband and Lord Mandelson, to the CEOs of several leading companies making this specific plea. I do hope they’ll act on it.
Our business case leaflet also talks about managing risk, something all of us – including in Government know a lot about. And again, we want the word spread. Risks range from customers rejecting high carbon goods to water and material scarcity, and flooding and drought due to climate change. Future proof your company and ensure you remain buoyant.
There’s also an opportunity for your customer’s values and behaviours changing.
In a Defra survey earlier this year nearly half of respondents said they would pay more for environmentally friendly products. And around a third decided not to buy something because of its excessive packaging. Nearly three quarters had looked for energy saving logos.
More and more leading companies are defending or enhancing their brand value by becoming greener. Just watch a prime time ad break and you’ll see. Greenwashing won’t do, of course. And the government is updating the Green Claims Code to make sure it doesn’t happen.
But if you’re serious and if you’re perceived as “green” you’ll get better people to work for you, and get more out of your employees.
People want to work for a company they believe in. They want a clear sense of purpose and they thrive on the feeling that they’re doing the right thing.
We should all encourage our employees in using less and wasting less. Invite them to come up with ideas and put them into action. You get the boost in morale, the drop in bills, and a great opportunity to tell your customers.
If you want proof of all this, look at the thousands of examples across the UK of businesses who have cottoned on to the change that is needed and are already reaping the benefits. And of course some of the best ones have been led by people here today. Marc Bolland from Morrisons is next up, and I look forward to hearing from him what Morrisons has done, as well as about Bovis Lend Lease later.
Today’s leaflet, and our campaign to SMEs, is just part of the work we are doing.
We’re providing incentives to encourage investment in resource efficiency and the long term certainty that businesses need to make investments.
We’ve developed PAS 2050, a standardised method for measuring the carbon footprint of products. We’re encouraging all companies to use PAS 2050, so there’s consistency in the way this measurement is made.
And on turning waste into energy: There are new markets to be developed and existing markets to be grown making better use of the material we want to divert from landfill. The UK must be a player in those markets and we must help. So Defra is working with BIS to identify the new business opportunities for waste materials.
We’ve been told by business that they want us to be clear what our long-term plans are, so they can plan better themselves. For this and other reasons we’re developing a vision for how things need to be two decades from now, an explanation of what’s we’re aiming for and why it is important we act now. Our staff, our delivery network, our stakeholders and other government departments are helping us with this work.
We’re looking at lifestyles, communities, and we’re looking at the economy: how businesses behave and individuals consume, and how the businesses sectors need to develop.
We will deliver this vision early in the new year.
The message on resource efficiency is sobering – it’s also exciting. Now that we can make anything, what shall we make?
Richard Branson, a great businessman, and one who understands the urgency of the shift our whole society needs to make gives us this advice:
“Business is the force of change. Business is essential to solving the climate crisis, because this is what business is best at: innovating, changing, addressing risks, searching for opportunities. There is no more vital task.”
Thank you.
Source: Defra