SUPPLIER SUMMIT Rachel Fryers
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
NBG Board Member Rachel Fryers explained to the Partners and Suppliers how her company and NBG are going to be handling waste management in 2022.
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s a buying group, we know that together we can all benefit from shared learning, excellence and innovation. We are, when we
act together, stronger.” That’s according to NBG Board Member Rachel Fryers, Managing Director of builders merchant Merrit and Fryers in Skipton. “As independents we’ve proven already that we can adapt quickly and embrace change really well.”
An area that Fryers is passionate about is waste, in particular packaging waste and how much we actually generate.
“On average, we handle 66 tonnes of packaging waste per annum in our business; the average cost for us dealing with primary and secondary packaging and removal of some of the waste that we have to handle is £46,000: about £700 a tonne. That’s the equivalent of the wages of a couple of lads in the yard. And this is the bit that really gets to me, this is why I’m passionate about it, it’s an expense that I feel unable to do anything about,” she said, adding that she is very proud of the fact that the company recycles 100% of its waste. “We reuse what we can, we send our sawdust out to make pet bedding. But we still have the overhead costs of segregating the recycling and the skips, and, as we are in the middle of a residential area next to a canal, the Environment Agency are all over us. So, we are really responsible in what we do. But there’s very little return or benefits to what we’re doing. The more responsible we try to be, the more segregatation of waste we do, the more skips we need to pay for.” Fryers said that, as a merchant, the sort of waste that the company tends to have to deal with is cardboard, plastics, metals, wood, possibly sawdust, hopefully not plasterboard
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but certainly pallets. “Oh my, the pallets,” she said. “We reuse them where we can and there’s a new scheme to recycle and reuse them. But having pallets in the yard takes up space that we pay rates on. Storing used pallets loses us selling space.”
Fryers said that having a proper Waste Management Policy is important because any company that handles 50 tonnes of packaging with a turnover of £2 million pounds or more has an obligation to provide recovery notes. “The cost of compiling all that, particularly for an independent - just think how many different product lines we stock - is really difficult. You either do it all yourself or you can join a compliance scheme.
“The various core stages identified in the packaging chain: from raw material, through to the end packaging all have a tax associated with them, whether it’s plastic or cardboard or wood or whatever. And the rate at which this is taxed is dependent on whatever the extremely volatile secondary commodities market is at that time. Not only that, but merchants pay the highest percentage tax in the entire packaging supply chain. That’s us paying more to deal with the packaging from our Suppliers’ products than they are,” she said.
“That’s something we have very little control over. So, hopefully, we can influence this and start thinking about and really asking our Suppliers what they can do to help us reduce this.”
The situation is going to get worse this year, she pointed out, when the plastic packaging tax comes in on April, 1 2022. “That will be £200 pounds per tonne on any plastic handled, unless that packaging has 30% recycled content. If that’s not an incentive for you all to start looking at doing something about this I don’t know what is.”
From 2022, NBG will be gathering information on packaging waste data from Suppliers and that information will be made accessible via the Hub for Partners to use. The group will also be including in tenders a request for Suppliers to provide details of any ESG, waste or environmental policies, to list their sustainable products and to make all this information accessible to Partners on the Hub. “Many of our Suppliers will already have environmental policies and as merchants we need to be asking about them,” she continued. “At Merrit and Fryers we have had a clear Environmental Policy for many years. And it’s really not very complicated, but it’s very realistic for the size of business that we are and it’s achievable. The message is that we strive to improve every year, year on year, a little bit at a time. That’s what we do. We review it every year.
“It’s not easy to go and find all these solutions to packaging problems when you’re trying to run a business, but it is something that’s very much coming to the fore and won’t go away. There are some great products emerging into the marketplace and we want to deal with those. We have a clear idea about what we want to do. But we do need some more responsible products in the market to be easily accessible and we need to be made aware of them. If you have them shout about it. My thinking is that, surely collectively as a group, we can do great things.”
January 2022
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