The wrong loop……

Last week I promised more on the Government’s recent consultation about the UK’s material recycling targets. Indeed, these are issues that will run and run and will deserve our regular attention in this column.

My focus this week is the assumption within the legislature that the ‘products’ of the packaging sector, however defined, should always contain a measure of recycled materials. Where general resource efficiency and cost effectiveness apply – we agree.

In fact, for decades these recycling practices have been applied in packaging, largely unsung and unnoticed. The reason? It just makes good business sense to reuse and recycle; from the days of the door step milk bottle to paper and board industries to metals and cans, to utility plastics goods where consumer safety is not compromised.

The recycling model works in all cases where the supply and cost of recycled materials allows them to be factored back into a product, any product, which can then be sold to the consumer at a competitive price. The recyclate and the consumer products sink or swim in a free market in the usual way. Let’s be clear, anything else is doomed.

Today of course, the ancillary aim is to replace the general stock of virgin or new materials with second life materials in products.   No problem whatsoever with that.

However, in keeping an eye on this aim it is not possible, practical or even helpful to make a number of ‘end-use’ sectors responsible for the job – least of all packaging which is not an end use sector at all but a part of all manufactured goods.

All manufacturing – construction; automotive; white and brown goods, healthcare; food and drink – has a self-interested role to play in resource efficiency. More than ever we need to step back and take a holistic view of waste and recycling within the whole economy. In this sense SIC coded divisions within it – and their related recycling targets – are artificial and unhelpful.

There is of course one organic driver to the whole – and that is the consumer. Consumers decide and drive our market economies. They also determine the real appetite for recycled content products by voting with their wallets. And while the consumer appetite for green style products was always a minority interest, it is clear now that even that demand has waned in the last 2/3 years.

Supermarkets have shown us the picture – based on obvious reasons of price, recession and affordability.  Green products – often premium price with recyclate content or messages – are now stocked less. General and supermarketing talk of carbon footprinting and labeling of packaging and products has now largely disappeared – at least in the UK.  Practical considerations, and the huge costs involved, are reasserting themselves.

Our Government – and the wider European framework – should take note. I suggest that new strategies and a new mind set is needed.

Until things change, let’s assume the following:

Consumers, to date at least, cannot be relied upon in any way to drive or guarantee resource efficiency or the uptake of recycled materials other than through usual market forces and conditions.

Producers and manufacturers should not be made to create artificial markets or bear costs for recyclate where it is uncompetitive and unwanted.

We need a fresh and holistic view about resource efficiency in and across all manufacturing and all supply chains.

That would be a start.  And we’re certainly ready to play our full part.

Thanks again

Dick Searle

Recycle more but consume less?

So. The Government’s consultation about the UK’s material recycling targets is at an end – and the politicians and civil servants are now preparing again to tell UK manufacturing what it expects of us in terms of recycling.

It’s really not my place to dive into all of the consequences and the material details… wherein the devil lurks. However, I surely will have more than one or two things to say about what happened along the way and what may yet happen.

Consider this aspect for starters: As part of The Packaging Federation submission we noted the part of the Government consultation that said that ‘survey after survey shows that consumers believe packaging is a big environmental problem.’

Oh dear. It’s always a shame when the realm of facts is abandoned for the world of beliefs. In our evidence we simply noted that ‘Packaging is a solution as it saves far more waste than it creates and conserves far more.’

I’ll say it again. Packaging is not product. People buy and consume products not packaging. Packaging is merely the delivery system through which the product moves to reach consumers.

And what about those consumers, their beliefs and the politicians that serve them? For example, does the Government – any government – and its politicians ever have anything critical to say about the level of consumption of goods in this country?

What government today would ever presume to get elected by promising consumers less? – fewer goods? less choice? less consumption? It’s not really a runner is it?

Consumers, by and large, want more and more. At least they believe they do. Governments needing to get elected want to go on promising more and more. They also believe they cannot afford to do otherwise. Until that cycle is ever broken our political model will not change.

The truth is that consumers themselves are the origin and cause of ever-increasing consumption. The material evidence of product delivery solutions merely serves to remind consumers how much they consume. They may not like it, but it’s a fact – however embarrasing and inconvenient.

Many thanks again

Dick Searle

Getting real – why our manufacturers and environmentalists need to work together

Back in the late 1980′s, you may recall the first wave of a perceived need for environmental-friendly products. The new dawn began creeping over the horizon for marketing managers everywhere.

The first reaction for many companies was a twinge of commercial fear and a worry for the status quo. Many others, however, began licking their lips at the prospect of mining the new situation in order to create wider profit margin.

It was commonplace – every week – to attend product launches at which a new environmental solution – usually launched against a hapless  ‘unenvironmental’ situation or industry- was being unveiled. Quite apart from the actual merits of the product itself, the understanding was that all green products were a class apart and needed to be priced as such.

I now forget the rationale – but to those who lived through counter culture ideas of 50′s and 60′s the idea that an alternative world needed to be more costly than Main Street seemed laughable.

However, the last laugh may yet be still on us. The premium-price green product strategy is slipping but the mind set still lingers. Worse still, the green marketing schtick continues to imply that somehow we live in a two-tier material world; the ordinary one – just getting by – and then the virtuous more expensive one, where everything could be greener – we just have to pay more.

It’s time, once again, to get real. Thankfully – and quite apart from the wider green movement now not knowing its own direction or beliefs – some governments, manufacturers and strategists are beginning to think straight.

Matthias Machnig, for one. He is the minister for economics for Thuringia, one of the regional states which makes up the Federal Republic of Germany. He has credentials in both industrial and environmental policy and he recently argues that industrial policy cannot be a policy on its own but must be integrated with environmental policy.

After all, taking a little thought, it is clear that good manufacturing already integrates and gives good environmental performance into its operations and products. How could it not? Why – in a competitive, regulated, visible and transparent market economy – would any manufacturer make an unenvironmental product?  It’s not good business.

Another fundamental question to ask is: How does a free market regulate itself?   The plain answer is the consumer. Choice and pricing are clearly part of the answer and social contract; command and control and subsidy are generally not.

Therefore, the greatest discipline – for manufacturers and most environmentalists together – is effectively to engage the first cog in the economic wheel, namely the customer/consumer on whom the whole system turns. Our politicians seem to be very far detached from this truth and from us, their customers at this moment, but that’s another story.

In the UK we seem to have a political culture that has bought into the idea of a separate, special and alternative environmental industry; one that has been set apart and often subsidised in order to create new environmental technology for new environmental markets.

This was mistaken. Moreover, it won’t work. In fact, the opposite direction needs to be encouraged for prosperity’s sake. Our environmentalists need to take a leaf out of Germany’s book and get fully engaged with UK manufacturing and vica versa. Our UK industrialists and manufacturers need to embrace the open, questioning and innovative dynamic of the environmental movement. UK Government needs to help both sides work together.

Great environmental solutions are part of great manufacturing. Great manufacturing is disciplined to give customers and society the goods and services they want and need at optimum cost. Our policy and strategy should have the two working together as closely and profitably as possible.

Thanks again

Dick Searle

Once more unto the breach…

It was my great pleasure to be in Stratford upon Avon this month. Something of the Bard must have been in the air because the messages given and the audience receiving it provided a very good fit indeed.

The occasion was the environment seminar of the Foodservice Packaging Assocation, a member trade association of The Packaging Federation. The turnout was very healthy and the sessions were well structured and well organised. All credit to Martin Kersh, FSPA secretary, and FSPA chairman Neil Whittall of Huhtamaki UK for presiding over things.

As I walked to the podium to make The Packaging Federation presentation – the last presentation of the conference – it was clear to me that we were going to enjoy ourselves.  As you might expect, I generally work off a standard powerpoint module to introduce myself, the PF and packaging issues. However, the material is always structured for topicality and ad libbing and I try to make it fresh and new every time.

My Stratford audience certainly thought so – and was sympathetic and appreciative. Sometimes it just takes a thought or the right word to dislodge and articulate the truths that are self-evident. Those who know me will realise that preaching to the converted is something that I try to avoid. However, encouraging our own industry simply to know its strengths and to act upon them is for me a 101 requirement. It’s also a task that, for the sake of reason and common sense, is absolutely necessary.

And oftentimes we simply need a little fun and ‘kiddology’ to get the ball rolling and see the world straight again.  For example – ‘How much packaging do we sell to consumers?’ I am often fond of asking companies. The correct answer is none, of course. Consumers buy products. Packaging is simply the delivery system that brings those products to market.

Thanks to Simon Twilley and PackTV, who were present at the FPA event, these and other messages are now preserved and available over the internet. Simon’s PackTV gives our sector a regular and interesting diet of news and features in a handy format that is designed for our YouTube age.

Some of you will have seen me in this mode and setting. The message is familiar but I make no apology for that. A variety of media formats and offerings are key to keeping our message alive with all. Please do check out Simon’s site at www.packtv.co.uk where you’ll find me under his recent FPA coverage. Enjoy!

Many thanks again

Dick Searle

Food security – a renewed challenge for packaging

Twenty years ago you could be forgiven for thinking that the term ‘food security’ represented some branch of the tamper evident packaging world.

Today – as Wikipedia tells us food security ‘refers to the availability of food and one’s access to it.’ It is certain that as our global population grows the food security term will gain more currency – and not in a good way, I fear.

All the more reason, therefore, for our particular industry to remember its fundamental strengths and to be allowed to step up and play a full and creative part in tackling the global food security challenge.

In the UK, our supply chain gets rightly twitchy if, at any point, product wastage figures of over 3% are showing. In some developing economies – and much larger scale than ours – wastage rates of over 40% are the current norm. The problem – and the opportunity – is large scale and if not tackled will sow destructive seeds.

Process and continuous improvement engineers tell us that in any production system the greatest waste can be found in the waste of finished product. Why? Because all the other factors and costs of production involved – the energy; skills; growing time; packaging and so forth – have also been wasted into the bargain.

This fact gives us another reason why the UK’s WRAP-led campaign against food waste is so fundamental and important – and deserves a new lease of life from the Government.

Packaging, of course, is not a product but rather a delivery system, and it has a critical role to play in helping many economies dramatically lower their unacceptable rates of food wastage.

I am certain that – with the right orchestration, imagination and creativity – the combined talents in our sector can do much more to protect the rotting crops and wasted agriculture in fields and factories worldwide.

Food security issues are here to stay, both home and abroad. They will retain a place on my desk for the foreseeable future and the Packaging Federation will play a full part in helping our industry to make a welcome contribution of value. 

Thanks again

Dick Searle

Fundamentals – not fundamentalism

Already the headlines are showing an interesting year: House prices are up not down; the service sector is on the rise not waning.

Christmas as usual has been duly enjoyed – despite the untimely and unseemly mid-December own-goal by Grant Shapps MP on how he thinks we should celebrate it.

Plot reversals, turnabouts and unbriefed politicians speaking out of turn are, of course, the perennial stuff of drama. And drama, like it or not, is increasingly the stuff of the media.

However, today’s infotainment often does less than nothing to help serious issues – and does nothing either for common sense or for common purposes such as our national recycling targets.

This month, Government and industry, as planned, are working closely together with each other in order to review and improve our current recycling practices and targets.

From where I sit, both parties are ready and equal for the task. Both are proving to be sensitive to the needs of the supply chain. Both are mostly refraining from ill-informed and ‘flaming’ comments. Both are conscious of the need to not impose further financial burdens on manufacturing margins that the UK can ill afford.

If I was in the hoping or wishing business for 2012 – sadly I’m not – I would ask that our industry and society could be granted a reprieve from headline grabbers and from fundamentalisms of various kinds.

Progress would then be much more assured. We could also deploy fundamentals in exactly the right way.

What are those fundamentals? Let me – without apology – restate them as follows.

• Packaging is a net environmental benefit: It saves much more waste than it produces
• Packaging conserves the resources and products that society wants
• Packaging offers shoppers choice – a variety of goods and a variety of types of goods (brands) – all day, every day.

I am personally looking forward very much this month to helping Defra, BIS and their associates increase the resource efficiency of UK plc with these three simple truths in mind. I hope that they become the cornerstone for our joint continuing and effective work in this area through this year and beyond.

Happy New Year!

Dick Searle

In shopping sympathy…

The recent Packaging News conference on retailing and packaging did much to show what works and what’s good about the current state-of-the-retail-art. Issues of production selection and point-of-sale choice were especially interesting.

For those of us currently embroiled in the Xmas shopping experience – and perhaps looking this year to take the armchair route out – check this link to a cautionary video tale.

This little piece is actually a healthy reminder of the true purpose of retailing. Systems, options and information technology although they present options and choices – are not shopping. Our day-to-day commercial dealings still need the human touch and are likely to do so for time to come.

Thanks again

Dick Searle