Disposal and Re-use of White Goods (Hansard, 17 June 1998)

§ Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to mitigate the environmental problems of disposal of white goods by means of a point-of-sale deposit system to encourage re-use or responsible disposal; and for connected purposes.

The House might be curious about what white goods are. "White goods" is a generic term for large electrical appliances which covers refrigerators, freezers, cookers, washing machines, driers and dishwashers. Such items are a great boon to households when they work, but a great curse when they do not and subsequently prove not to be repairable. Although most machines end up being recycled to the extent that they eventually arrive at the scrap metal dealers, they often get there by complicated routes and create substantial environmental damage in the process.

We know that more than 1 million refrigerators, almost 2 million washing machines and 500,000 dishwashers are purchased each year. Estimates vary about the quantity of such machines that are discarded each year, but about 200,000 to 300,000 tonnes of scrap engines, casing and coolants is a fair estimate. Many machines are disposed of responsibly, with about 50 per cent. of all purchases of new machines offering an opportunity to exchange the old one with the retailer. From direct investigation, I know that such returns are dealt with responsibly, but by no means everyone exchanges the old machine and, in any case, many people either buy their machines from dealers who do not offer that service, or buy second-hand.

Many end-of-life machines are at large and they are easy to spot: they are in people's garages, on wasteland or on roadside verges. They pose a danger to children who play in them and almost always require collection at a later date, often by the local authority at public expense. The result in respect of fridges and freezers is that most of the coolant chlorofluorocarbons they contain will disappear into the atmosphere. A parliamentary written reply which I received estimated that 300 tonnes or two thirds of the total CFCs in redundant machines enter the atmosphere each year, which contributes to the problem of ozone depletion. The good news is that CFCs are being replaced in newer fridges by hydrofluorocarbons, which do not deplete the ozone layer. The bad news is that HFCs are something like 12 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. Another recent parliamentary answer said that HFCs will account for 1 per cent. of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, but some people suggest the figure is substantially higher. If we are to make progress on our emission targets, we need to take such figures very seriously.

Even if we were able to persuade people not to leave their white goods on verges but to dispose of them responsibly, we as a nation would still be missing an opportunity to save resources by reusing parts of redundant white goods or repairing those goods for further use. In Liverpool, there is an excellent organisation called CREATE which does just that. It takes in redundant machines—in many cases from companies such as Dixons which operate a take-back policy—and either repairs them or cannibalises them for parts. Only then is the residue scrapped after the safe drainage of CFCs or HFCs. 389 Although CREATE estimates that about 25 per cent. of machines are potentially reusable when people put them out for council collection, by the time anyone can get to them at the council tip, only 3 per cent. are still recoverable. In other words, a string of CREATEs around the country could make an enormous difference to the recovery of machines which people want to dispose of, but which still work or are repairable. CREATE is a superb organisation. Another organisation—RESPOND in London—is now following in its wake, but we must be realistic and acknowledge that such organisations are only scratching the surface.

All this is happening against the background of the development of a proposed European directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment—known in Euro-speak by its acronym WEEE. This directive, which is certainly on its way, will require each nation to establish effective schemes to deal with the problem—for example, perhaps by involving producers in schemes to dispose of their machines when they are finished with.

The likely effect is that producers will increase the price of machines to take the directive into account, but it is unclear exactly how it will work. Will purchasers have to bring a used machine to the shop before they can buy a new one? If a Zanussi fridge is found in a lay-by, will Zanussi or its agents be required to come and get it? Above all, the directive does not seem to contain any mechanism to persuade the public to take part in responsible disposal and reuse.

The Bill offers a way out by giving the product a separate value once its use for its original purpose is over. In that way, the value always goes with the machine, whoever owns it, and the incentive to redeem that value is constant. The Bill proposes that retailers of white goods should be required to lay a deposit on new appliances at the point of sale. This would be at a level to be agreed, but it would typically amount to about 10 per cent. of the purchase price—let us say about £20 to £30.

The purchaser would be issued with a deposit note which would effectively act as a logbook for the life of the appliance. Should the machine be sold on by the original purchaser in full working order, the logbook would of course go with it. At the end of the machine's life, it could be encashed on presentation when the machine is collected for scrap by a local authority or given for parts recovery to a voluntary organisation or business.

The value of the deposit would be substantial enough to encourage encashment by the consumer and would clearly increase as an incentive as the capital value of the product decreased. The retailer of the white goods would have the responsibility of issuing the logbook and collecting the deposits, which could be passed on with the minimum of bureaucracy to a central agency, perhaps set up on a similar basis to Entrust, the agency that administers the distribution of landfill levy grants. Existing organisations such as Waste Watch could, I believe, perform this function relatively easily.

390 The central agency would be responsible for reimbursing the agencies paying out on redeemed logbooks and for assisting the establishment of bodies able to receive end-of-life white goods for refurbishment, cannibalisation or disposal. The financing of the system should be feasible at zero cost to the Exchequer, as the time lag between receipt of deposits and their eventual redemption allows income to be obtained from investment. Furthermore, not every logbook for every machine will finally be redeemed.

The system should therefore allow for the financing of a handling charge to retailers, the administration of the agency responsible for operating the scheme, and for considerable underwriting of organisations such as CREATE which could establish end-of-use bodies in the way I described.

I hope that hon. Members will appreciate the very real benefits that the scheme would produce, which I can summarise. First, the scheme would introduce an incentive to counter dumping or storage. Whenever possible, goods or parts of goods that can be recycled would be recycled. Secondly, the scheme would establish an incentive to encourage disposal of white goods through agencies that will undertake to reuse them or to dispose of them in an environmentally friendly manner. Thirdly, the scheme would establish—through purchase of the products themselves—a source of support for organisations undertaking recycling of white goods. Fourthly, the negative environmental impact of the release of CFCs or HFCs from refrigerants would be greatly reduced. Lastly, the scheme would ensure that a substantial element of bulk in the waste stream is diverted, rather than subsequently recovered after disposal.

Some people have said that implementing the proposals in my Bill could be inflationary. However, we have to remember that the EU directive will come, and that manufacturers inevitably will put up their prices to cope with it. We should bear in mind also the fact that there is a better way of dealing with the matter—and I think that my Bill offers it.

I therefore hope that the House will agree to give my Bill a Second Reading.