Circular Economy

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for introducing this debate and I also acclaim the inspiration of Ellen MacArthur in pushing this subject up the agenda. The goal is of course to conserve resources, to reduce the scale of mining and similar activities, to save energy and, as a by-product, to reduce CO₂ emissions.

Dealing with food and organic waste is in principle straightforward. Most can be recycled or burnt for fuel but, better still of course, we should create less of it. Far less tractable, however, is the recycling of plastics. Here, cutting consumption must be the priority. Promoting the reuse of plastic bags is in itself merely a token gesture. Overall plastic debris is a growing problem; if this cannot be addressed as global growth continues, we will end up with as many plastic bottles in the ocean as there are fish. There need to be incentives to ensure not only the greener operation of buildings and consumer products, but greener design as well. Cambridge’s department of engineering has published some interesting ideas on this. To take one example, it points out that, when a building is demolished, some of its elements—steel girders and plastic piping—will hardly have degraded at all and could be routinely reused. Moreover, girders could be more cleverly designed so as to offer the same strength with less weight, thereby saving on steel production.

Advances in technology allow continuing improvements in appliances and vehicles, but these objects should be designed in a more modular way so that they can be readily upgraded by replacing parts, rather than thrown away. To echo the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, we need to value long-lasting things and to put pressure on producers and retailers to highlight durability. We need to repair and upgrade rather than replace. Regulations, especially in the EU, are helping but they will not gain full traction unless the public mindset changes. Attitudes to, for instance, smoking and drink-driving have transformed in recent decades. We need a similar change in attitude so that the manifestly wasteful consumption of materials and energy—Chelsea tractors, brightly illuminated houses, slavish following of fast-changing fashions, and the like—become regarded as naff rather than stylish.

Finally, let us remember that the issues in this debate have long-term global resonance. By 2050, the world’s population will have risen to 9 billion. We surely hope that by then there will be a narrower gap between the lifestyle that we in privileged societies enjoy and that available to the rest of the world. This cannot happen if developing countries track our route to industrialisation. They have to leapfrog to a more efficient and less wasteful mode of life. The world’s people will only achieve a sustainable future via a lifestyle that is, for all of us, far less profligate of energy and resources than ours is today. This goal is not anti-technology; its achievement will demand more technology, but differently directed technology and a great deal of innovation. We and the rest of Europe can surely lead in this enterprise, to the benefit not only of ourselves but of the rest of the world.