Circular Economy

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for introducing the debate. I will try to rise to the challenge. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, mentioned tights, which we cut up and use as plant ties. Cotton, if it is good quality, gets absorbed into Lady Young’s quilts, one-sided printed paper is always cut up and recycled, and the carcass of the chicken goes into the stock pot for making soup. So there are a few things that we in the Young household do.

Most of the good points about the importance and value of the circular economy have already been made. I would like to put only a couple of other points to the Minister. First, has any thought been given to ensuring that we have a circular economy and industrial strategy operating at a LEP or local authority level, or to introducing the subject into schools and colleges? Lots of ideas come from young people.

I listened carefully to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans about technology. I have a bit of a problem; I am replacing good-quality lightbulbs. Why? Because I can buy LED bulbs that have come down in price and that dramatically reduce power consumption. I hate wondering what I am going to do with them—I will not do anything with them because I cannot think of an alternative use. It is a balancing act. I think that the same could be said of a significant number of household appliances; when you think of the power consumption of old-fashioned televisions, washing machines, refrigerators and so on, there is something of a problem there. Though that is not to argue against longevity; the idea of being able to repair items is fundamentally important.

On the recommendations that came from the Environmental Audit Select Committee in the Commons, can the Minister inform us whether the Government intend to adopt those recommendations, which seem to be valid, including the idea of providing incentives to companies to become more efficient and to ensure that the products that they produce have greater longevity? These are obvious things that we have been talking about for years. There is so much variation on mobile phone chargers—or chargers for any bit of equipment—but we still do not seem to have cracked that problem and persuaded manufacturers of the benefit of standardisation, so that every time another phone is introduced, there is not another variation of phone charger. So there are lots of opportunities for us to create a genuinely circular economy. It is a no-brainer in terms of job creation and environmental benefits and I look forward to the Minister’s response.