AVA LIVE VENDING TARGETS THE ENVIRONMENT
Chair of the UK’s independent Committee on Climate Change, Lord Deben said he was encouraged by the determination of AVA members to find the right path as delegates unpicked what the industry is up against in the face of the growing environmental crisis. Lord Deben was chairing a debate at the AVA Leadership
Symposium aimed at setting out the facts and trying to put delegates on the right path in future business dealings. On the panel were WWF UK sustainable materials specialist
Paula Chin, The AVA’s environmental committee chair Adrian Pratt and director at Closed Loop Environmental Solutions Peter Goodwin. Delegates were warned that the time to act was right now as
climate change threatened to bring about the end of civilisation as we know within three decades. With its seven million coffee cups disposed of daily, guests heard the UK had a vital role to play. Paula Chin said the WWF’s passion was to create a world where people and nature thrive together but warned that nature was under threat as mankind was using precious resources faster than nature could restore itself. “This can’t continue because nature is our support system. Plastic pollution is visibly choking our oceans with over nine million tons of plastic leaks into the ocean ever year. By 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish at current rates, while it’s estimated that carbon emissions from plastic will be 13% of our total carbon budget.” Paula said the WWF was working towards a goal of no plastics in the ocean by 2030 but it was concerned about the absence of a legally binding framework which would enable this. “All we see now are voluntary commitments, but we don’t think
they are enough to deliver our goal by 2030.” For this reason, the WWF is asking the United Nations to establish a legally binding framework to stop plastic pollution. Paula said recent consultations on packaging and plastics were welcomed, but more needed to be done. She stressed it wouldn’t be possible to “recycle our way out of this”. Instead it was necessary to find ways to ‘avoid and eliminate’ the use of plastic packaging as a starting point. Adrian Pratt informed delegates about the important government consultations ongoing which had the potential to permanently change the landscape in a good way. One of these is the extended producer responsibility consultation which proceeds against the backdrop of a general move to a process where every element of industry will become responsible for the packaging it puts to the marketplace. “This is a significant change where we will become entirely
responsible for the cost burden,” Adrian warned and urged AVA members to make sure they engaged in technical consultations. He said there would be a move away from exporting waste to a
situation where recyclability of materials was encouraged. This would be good for the planet, but it would impact businesses considerably. He added that vending was in a very good place to manage its waste because of it operated in a close loop environment. “We aren’t subject to the contaminations of the high street, we can provide clean waste and at the point where the product is finished with, we can manage it well.”
The consistent waste collection consultation would extend the
practises of curbside into business and industry, promoting segregated waste collections, improving the quality of waste, introducing a consistency across the country and helping the consumer to understand the process. He also highlighted deposit return schemes in Scotland which
were also under consideration for England and Wales for a range of items. Though the effects on vending were not yet clear, Adrian summed up: “The backdrop to our environmental practises is about to change substantially and in a very positive way in a way which encourages us all to engage.” Peter Goodwin said in the last 15 years, the easiest option of
exporting low quality material to the Far East had been adopted widely and that this represented lost resource that should have been recovered to use as valuable raw material. He referred to varied initiatives which have begun and failed in
the UK in the past but congratulated the government which now had “the right policies in place” to proceed. He stressed that sustainability was a complex issue and his big
fear was the unintended consequences. “Turning our back on plastics in favour of something else might serve a short-term PR benefit but it might also do long-term harm.” “What we do must be conducive to what we want. What we want is the best environmental outcome that is sustainable within a commercial environment.” His added that it was crucial to get the public on board. To do this solutions should be both simple, by simplifying curbside recycling, and believable where consumers had faith that their waste would be dealt with as promised. Lor Deben concluded: “It’s important for vending that we don’t go down false routes. There is a real determination in industry to find the right way through and it is only by doing the right thing from the start we will be there with it at the end.”
From left: Paula Chin (WWF), Adrian Pratt (AVA Environment Committee), Lord Deben chai of the independent CCC and Peter Goodwin, director at Closed Loop Environmental Solutions
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