WASTE MATERIAL: SALVAGE AND RECLAMATION

HL Deb 11 March 1970 vol 308 cc828-86

3.57 p.m.

Debate resumed.

LORD DELACOURT-SMITH

My Lords, I am sure that we are all of the opinion that thanks should be expressed where thanks are due, and I think we should all regard them as due to the noble Baroness for having initiated this timely debate. As our standards of living have progressively risen we have come to use more and more materials. This happens, of course, in all industrial societies. We are faced, obviously, with the prospect of progressively greater quantities of waste material, which must be either reabsorbed into industrial processes or disposed of in some other way.

Our techniques of disposal (and I use that word in the broadest sense) must keep abreast of the advance in our living standards. Otherwise, as has already been pointed out, we run risks which are both social and commercial. They are social because of the obvious dangers to environment and amenity; and they are commercial because if we let our waste products lie without taking suitable steps towards reclamation we may well be missing opportunities for greater national well-being. It will, I think, be best if my contribution to the debate at this stage is confined entirely to the commercial aspect of the matter, and at a later time, if I have your Lordships' leave, perhaps I can comment briefly on some of the points raised in the debate. This does not, of course, mean that either your Lordships' House or the Government are anything but extremely conscious of the social and environmental aspects of this question as well.

Your Lordships may recall that it is just one year to the day that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, introduced a Motion which enabled us to debate the social aspects; and more recently, of course, the Government have announced the setting up of a Standing Royal Com-mission on Environmental Pollution. I trust, therefore, that I may properly con-fine myself to the commercial and industrial aspects of the question, although in doing so I do not intend to follow the noble Lord, Lord Erroll, into the fascinating issues which he raised of the complete adequacy of market forces for dealing with this question. My starting point is the simple one that much scrap and waste, if recovered, can be used instead of virgin raw materials in our industrial processes. Many such raw materials are not indigenous but have to be imported. Recovery of scrap, there-fore, can make a valuable contribution to the balance-of-payments problem, and it is good husbandry in relation to the national economy not to squander any resources if we can possibly avoid it.

I have been asked in this connection by the noble Baroness to give the figures of the foreign currency cost of waste paper and scrap metal. In the steel industry, imports of ferrous scrap in 1969 amounted to 290,000 tons, at a cost of £5,672,000. Imports of waste paper in 1969 were 52,000 tons (and my figures confirm those given by the noble Baroness) at a cost of £880,000. In the existing circumstances of buoyant demand for iron and steel, all ferrous scrap finds a worthwhile market. I do not think we need fear that import-saving opportunities in the recovery of ferrous scrap are being neglected. Some 20 million tons of ferrous scrap is indeed recovered annually, and accounts for almost half of the crude steel production, and an even higher proportion of iron castings. Usually imports are negligible, and even in the circumstances of last year accounted for little more than 1 per cent. of our total consumption of scrap.

In the case of waste paper, our imports last year accounted for some 3 per cent. of consumption, but they were greatly exceeded by our exports. I do not think there is any doubt that more could be done in this country to recover waste paper, and to reduce still further the pro-portion of imported wood pulp going into paper and into board manufacture, with savings of foreign exchange. We are always likely to need to import some quantity of waste paper, since certain grades are not available in the United Kingdom, and because shortages are bound to occur from time to time, as demand and supply get out of phase. The noble Lord, Lord Erroll, raised the question of the import duty. Representations, as he will know, have been made on this point, and are being considered by Her Majesty's Government. In general, the view that has been taken is that the removal of the import duty might discourage local authorities from interesting themselves in making attractive contracts with paper mills.

Perhaps I may turn now to the other side of the matter, which the noble Baroness raised—domestic refuse collection. I appreciated very much the references which she made to the industrial and social importance of those who under-take this work. At the present time the Ministry of Housing and Local Government have a technical Working Party, and they are examining all aspects of refuse disposal organisation. Their report, which is expected this year, will give the Government a good deal of expert guidance on the part which local authorities might play in this matter.

A report has been prepared by the Ministry of Technology's Warren Spring Laboratory on The Treatment of Domestic Waste, and this will shortly be made avail-able. It estimates that some 18 million tons of domestic refuse arises annually in the United Kingdom, and costs local authorities some £15 million for disposal before the deduction of the amount secured for salvage. The quantity of refuse is rising, and it is expected that it may reach the figure of 29 million tons by 1980. If some economic means could be found for recovering all the scrap metal and waste paper in this refuse, substantial savings to the balance of payments would clearly be achieved.

How can we ensure the fullest practicable use of waste material? I want to emphasise that this is a mater of some complexity, as noble Lords will have found in preparing themselves for this debate. Scrap and waste are not homogeneous. The most important categories are ferrous scrap, non-ferrous scrap, chemical waste, textile waste, waste paper, plastic waste, and rubber; and although there are other categories these are the most important. As in so many subjects, there is no simple prescription which applies to all of them—no simple key to the whole problem. Scrap and waste can arise, for example, at different stages in manufacture. They can arise at the primary manufacturing stage or later, at the processing stage. While it is an element in good industrial production planning to seek the reduction of the waste material in the course of manufacture, it is probably very hard to eliminate it completely. As we have just been seeing, scrap and waste are found in the hands of consumers, or leave the hands of consumers in categories and ways with which we are all familiar.

The relative importance of different methods of tackling the problem varies according to the waste with which we are concerned. We owe a debt, which we ought to acknowledge, to the various reclamation trades, the scrap and waste merchants, who make a very useful contribution to the community in the collection, sorting and grading of these commodities, and in endeavouring to match supply and demand. There are a number of constraints, some technical, but some commercial, in securing the fullest re-use of waste. First of all, occasionally the use of scrap and waste in industry as an alternative to virgin material has some disadvantages for the user. For example, he may not always be able to use them for the whole range of his products, but only for the cheaper end of that range. There may be processing costs which can be avoided if virgin materials are used. The amount the user can afford to pay depends on the price he can get for the resulting product and on the net costs to him of using scrap and waste, rather than virgin material. I am sure that in that sentiment, at any rate, I shall carry the wholehearted agreement of the noble Lord, Lord Erroll.

Secondly, the amount of recoverable material varies between one form of waste and another. At one end of the scale we have ferrous scrap and waste paper, almost all of which can be used again. At the other end we have rubber waste, which has been mentioned once or twice in this debate but which so far we have found ways of re-employing only to a limited extent in further indus- trial processes. So it is difficult to generalise, whether one is looking at this from the technical or from the commercial point of view.

The third point is that there can be, in the short term at any rate, some mismatch, some disequilibrium, between the generation of waste and the demand for it. The rate at which the waste is generated depends upon society's consumption of the end product, and this grows at a fairly steady rate. Demand for waste, on the other hand, fluctuates with changes in the level of production and, to some extent, in the methods of production of the industries which use it. While a balance can be achieved in the long term, in the short term the supply of and demand for waste can get out of balance, and one of the major problems in some sectors is to find ways of overcoming this difficulty.

The last point I want to make with regard to this relates to transport costs. Perhaps I might take an example from the china clay industry. The china clay tips contain materials which are useful for other purposes; some of them, such as mica, are recovered, but the waste material consists principally of quartz sand, and the use of this in concrete aggregates and other building products is in fact largely confined, because of the high cost of transportation to centres such as the South-East, where it could be quite extensively employed, to the region in which the china clay tips are found. But, as I have said, much is being done already. I have already quoted the ferrous metals field, where 50 per cent. of crude steel production derives from scrap recovery, and in the non-ferrous metals field the figure is around 40 per cent. In these and in other industries the use of scrap and waste forms a crucially important part of industry's whole cycle of operations and they are indeed easily the most important indigenous raw materials. The total value of scrap and waste used annually in industrial processes has been estimated at £1,000 million.

To take a further example, waste paper represents about 30 per cent. of the basic raw material for our paper and board industry. The remaining 70 per cent. is woodpulp and this is for the most part imported. As waste paper substitutes for woodpulp, I need hardly emphasise the importance of its collection and segregation. In the same way, scrap from ferrous metals is used as an alternative or complementary raw material to pigiron in steel manufacture. In the case of non-ferrous scrap, the position is very similar. Of more than 2 million tons of non-ferrous metals used by our industries last year, over 40 per cent. came from the re-use of scrap. The value of metal recovered from scrap in 1969 amounted to over £300 million. This indicates the considerable import savings which have been made by the recovery operations in the non-ferrous scrap field. As a last example, in the woollen trade 46 million lb. of shoddy and mungo were used in 1969, representing 13 per cent. of the woollen trade's total consumption of fibres. One could quote other contributions which have been made in other industries—the rubber industry, the plastics industry, and so forth.

The approach of the Ministry of Technology to the problems of reclamation is to work with industry in identifying those areas where useful action is possible and seeking to press forward with that action. The Ministry of Technology cover virtually the whole of the industrial field, and the various divisions of the Ministry will make it their business to evaluate the scope for re-use of waste in the industries for which they are respectively responsible. We have already, of course, conducted and inspired research into better ways of treating waste and finding new commercial applications for it.

I have referred to the Ministry's Warren Spring Laboratory, which has special expertise in the fields of mineral processing and metal extraction. Apart from the work which I have already mentioned, the Laboratory has built up close links with industry, with the trade associations and with local authorities; and in the year 1968–69 the expenditure of the Laboratory on all aspects of scrap recovery was over £100,000. Effort was originally devoted to the recovery and re-use of the constituent metals in complex alloy scrap, such as that which arises in the manufacture of jet engines, but it has since ex-tended to a number of other waste material problems. I have already quoted to your Lordships the report which is shortly to be published on the subject of domestic waste. In the course of its work the Laboratory has developed novel equipment for the physical separation of residues and scrap, and this is already in industrial use in this country.

Reference was made by the noble Baroness to the growth and importance of trade associations in this field, and we would endorse what she has said about the growth in their importance. There is now a clear expression of a need for a cohesive approach to problems on behalf of the waste and scrap trade in general. Perhaps the growth of the trade associations was a natural development; per-haps it was due to some extent to the community of interest which established itself in relation to certain issues such as selective employment tax. But, whatever the origins of the growth, we give an unreserved welcome to the recent initiatives which have been taken in this field.

In this connection the noble Baroness also made a reference to the Bureau International de Reclamation. In May, a conference is to be held in London under the auspices of the Bureau at which authorities will come together from a number of countries to discuss the whole problem of reclamation. One of my colleagues from the Ministry of Technology will be opening the conference and will be acting as host at a Government reception to the delegates attending it. I am quite sure that this international gathering will help to focus attention on the problems and enable some of the matters which have been raised, and others which will be raised, in this debate to be pursued in greater detail with the benefit of foreign experience.

The last point to which I should like to refer is that, as a number of noble Lords may know, a Working Party of the waste trade organisations has recently been set up, under the chairmanship of Mr. George Darling, M.P., to consider what possibilities there are of joint action in the future, and to investigate the desirability of setting up new organisational structures. As I said earlier, the Ministry of Technology, through their industry divisions, deal with almost all the trades in question. The Ministry have now decided to match Mr. Darling's initiative with one of their own (and I hope that here I shall not part company with the noble Lord opposite, having established, I am sure, a very good rapport with him by many of the things I have said earlier), and it is our intention to establish a section which will keep under review progress in the commercial re-use of waste and consider how far the lessons learnt in one area can be applied in another, and generally serve as a point of contact with the waste trades on issues that go wider than one particular material. I believe that I shall carry the overwhelming majority of noble Lords with me when I say that we believe that this action which we are taking, like this debate this afternoon, will forward the consideration of, and action in, this very important field.

4.19 p.m.

BARONESS HYLTON-FOSTER

My Lords, before apologies are abolished, may I explain to the House that, owing to an engagement, I may not be able to stay until the end of the debate. I have apologised to the noble Baroness and to the noble Lord who will wind up, and I now apologise to the House, although I still hope very much that I shall be able to be here. Then I should like to say what a blessing it is that this debate has been initiated at this time, and what a debt we owe to the mover of the Motion for making us all think about this subject.

The problem of waste in towns was very much on our doorsteps during the dustmen's strike, and of course the problem of waste in the country is there for all to see—broken bottles, dirty paper, polythene bags all left lying about. That is apart from the dumps of anything from motor cars to beds and mattresses. With due respect to the noble Lord opposite, I do not think he is a collector, while I am a collector of a number of many of these properties for charities. I do not collect mattresses, but I happen to know that mattresses are used in this country by the Salvation Army. They take them to bits and put them together again.

My Lords, we are living in a throw-away society and there is very little re-use of waste. This is now a national problem which needs to be tackled before it is too late. So far as I know, there is little re-use of glass, despite the fact that substantial quantities of the principal ingredients have to be imported, and in the country broken glass creates a very real danger, first, with forest fires, then with animals getting cut by glass and also with animals eating the glass. Of course it gets into their intestines, causes hæmorrhage and kills them. This problem is likely to increase if, as we are told, polythene soft drink bottles are to be replaced by glass bottles. That will increase the amount of waste glass, which is already a terrible problem.

I believe also there is no re-use of plastic bags, or indeed plastics of any kind, and again all country lovers know how absolutely revolting they look, scattered about the countryside and blown about in the wind, and what a terribly long time it takes for them to disintegrate, if they ever do. Again, this plastic brings great hazards to animals, because if they pick it up and eat it, it gets entwined in their guts and they die. At the moment I think I am right in saying that plastic forms only about 1 per cent. of our waste, but with the rapid increase in plastic goods and P.V.C. goods in particular it is a problem, because these materials can be destroyed only by incineration, and that figure of 1 per cent. will rapidly rise. It will also create another problem, I understand, of phosgene gas being given off by the fumes from incinerators.

Tin can be salvaged, but I would suggest that we might go back to some of our war-time habits and perhaps the housewife could be encouraged to keep certain things separate. I have in mind particularly tins and newspapers. As has already been mentioned, the United States of America are well behind us in matters of salvaging waste materials, but they are spending huge sums on research, including research on the salvaging of precious metals, mainly platinum, gold and silver, and on turning garbage and waste paper into gasolene and oil. Paper has been mentioned, so I will not say much about that except that it seems extraordinary that it is too expensive for the local authorities to collect it because they cannot get a sufficient length of contract to make it possible for them to do so. I believe that paper forms between 65 and 70 per cent. of our waste today and the figure is increasing, and if only it could be salvaged, as has been said, large quantities of wood pulp need not be imported and so there would be a saving on our balance of payments.

So it seems that very little re-use is made of waste materials. I believe 20 per cent. is incinerated or pulverised, and the remaining 80 per cent. is disposed of by means of controlled tipping; and as space throughout the country is rapidly disappearing I suggest that much more thought and research should be given to the method known as composting. I believe that was tried in this country some years ago but that it failed because too many foreign bodies were left in the compost. Since then great strides have been made in separating waste, and Holland has solved this problem and uses compost as a natural method of dealing with suitable waste. In this country at the moment we have nine compost plants. There are three in Edinburgh, five in Leicestershire, of which four are brand new, and one in Leatherhead; and I wondered whether I might tell your Lordships, in case some of you do not know, a little about the history of com-posting which Holland has been using for such a long time.

Up to the year 1900 composting was the common method of disposing of their waste, but after that, with the introduction of sewerage, the process was complicated and the compost was fouled. Then there was the introduction of artificial fertilisers, which became fashionable, so composting went out of business. They then had dumping and burning. The dumps had to be far away from towns because in those days they were fairly primitive and attracted many flies. Then it was found that the dumps took too much space, because Holland is a small country and there was nowhere to put them, even after reclamation. So burning was adopted, which was quick and hygienic. But the incineration plants were expensive and they produced smoke and gas, and in Holland even between the years 1900 and 1930 they were worried by air pollution. Then the stuff which would not burn had to be removed, which caused more problems, and of course the burning destroyed valuable organic matter. So in 1931 they made a start with the processing of town refuse on a large scale. This started in The Hague. Between 1950 and 1961 they had 14 Danish-manufactured compost plants and they produced something like a quarter of a million tons of compost (it is probably more now) of which 38 per cent. goes to agriculture, 38 per cent. to horticulture and the remaining 24 per cent. to the creation of playing fields and airfields and parks. Many of your Lordships will have seen the lovely bulb fields in Holland. They are fed with this compost.

Now how did we get on compared with them? So far as I can find out, we did not start until about 1961, when Leather-head was the first town in this country to start composting. They started it, oddly enough, with the same type of machine that the Dutch had been using for so many years. It is excellent, but one of the problems is that a magnet removes the metal particles while all the rest of the foreign bodies have to be separated by hand, and, as your Lordships will understand, this is a thoroughly dirty job. The compost is sold to nurserymen and householders. Fanners are not very receptive about it yet, but at any rate the demand in both countries well exceeds the supply. I put it to you, my Lords, that the object of using compost is to return to the soil the much needed humus following the depletion which has taken place over the past years, and I under-stand that at the request of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food the Agricultural Advisory Committee is to investigate the theory that soil fertility and structure are being affected by the dramatic progress in farm food production. So in view of the fact that many fertilisers are now thought to contain poisonous substances which cause pollution in the rivers, is not this another reason for using compost?

As I am not an engineer or a scientist but just an ordinary person I am indeed most grateful for the help which has been given me by the Director of Cleansing in the Westminster City Council, by the Leatherhead Engineers' and Surveyors' Department, and by the Nether-lands Embassy. They have all taken a tremendous interest in this problem, and I think this is most encouraging. But it seems to me that more research is needed into the automation of the separation of recoverable materials and into a nation-wide system of composting, so that the whole process may be made much cheaper, and to solve the problem of where to put the waste and at the same time return to the land some of the humus it has lost. So we are left with the three methods of waste disposal: incineration, with loss of organic matter; controlled tipping, with before long no-where to tip, and composting, which solves the problem of where to put the garbage and returns to the soil valuable and much-needed humus. I hope that before long the Government will see that the greatest of these is composting.

4.32 p.m.

BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRAD-FELLTE

My Lords, I shall intervene in this debate for only a very few minutes this afternoon, and I apologise for the fact that I have had the temerity to address your Lordships twice on two successive days, although I can promise you that this will be an even shorter speech than my speech of yesterday. I want to draw attention to the problem of hospital waste, most of which is, un-fortunately, quite unsuitable for re-use in any form. There is a considerable amount to deal with and it is an extremely costly undertaking. With the growing emphasis on disposable goods and the packaging of instruments and dressings and so on which are distributed throughout the wards from a central sterile sup-plies department, the volume of waste generated by hospitals increases and will continue to increase.

There are three main categories of hospital waste. The first is combustible and includes infected waste which needs to be destroyed immediately. The second consists of unburnable household refuse such as tins, bottles and ashes, which must be collected and dealt with by the local authority. The third is made up of products which could have a resale value such as food swill, fat, bones, clean paper, rags and metal. Incineration has long been regarded as a thoroughly effective method of refuse control. It destroys bacteria and reduces a large bulk of waste material to a small quantity of ash.

To-day the emphasis, quite rightly, is on clear air, and it is important that the old plant which is in use in many of our hospitals should be replaced by more modern and efficient incineration machinery if the increased demands now made upon it are to be dealt with adequately and without the emission of filthy smoke into the atmosphere. Modern incineration need not be an entirely unproductive affair if plans are made for the heat generated by combustion to be beneficially utilised. It is possible to draw a useful supply of hot air or hot water from large-scale plant, though this is easier in factories throwing out a lot of uniform rubbish than in a hospital where the waste is extremely mixed. But the main concern of hospital authorities must be to get rid of their waste as hygienically as possible, and that is the reason why there is not more scope for the commercial re-use of hospital waste material.

4.35 p.m.

LORD GARNSWORTHY

My Lords, all of us were extremely interested and I think highly amused by the, as it were, Hong-Kong stretch that the noble Lord, Lord Errol of Hale, did with the bed spring finishing up with a piece of Canton straight wire. But as for his argument that this ought to be left to the free play of the market, I am very much afraid that I cannot go along with him. I welcome not only the Motion put down by the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, but also the statement she made in moving it, for I think it widened the scope of the debate to justify me in the approach that I hope to make to the subject.

The noble Lord, Lord Errol of Hale, reminded me of the classic dereliction of John Barr's book, Derelict Britain, in which he wrote: Our grandfathers tore wealth from this land, willing us a prosperity devalued by dereliction. Are we to do the same for our grandchildren? If we do, they will curse us and they will be right to do so. The dereliction of which John Barr wrote represents the industrial waste of long decades, covering a vast acreage of, I think, over 120,000 acres in England, Scotland and Wales; and coal tips alone I think amount to some 28,000 acres, or expressed in tonnage, some 2,000 million tons.

I see these figures as a warning and a challenge, a warning to see whether we cannot place on industry some responsibility for disposing of its waste pro-ducts as it makes them without massive spoliation of amenities. If so charged, I believe industry could and would find good use for much that is now wasted. It is a challenge to discover uses for the waste that we have inherited from the past, and the exercise will be all the more valuable if we can use some of this wastage to avoid new dereliction and the extravagant and prodigal use of other natural resources, all of which, as my noble friend Lord Delacourt-Smith has said, are limited.

In the extensive road and civil engineering programme we have before us, there are opportunities which will not return, for once roads are built they are scarcely likely to be duplicated in our life-time. That we have lost such opportunities cannot be in doubt. May I give what may be something of a classic example by way of lost opportunity? When the Holy-stone section of the Tyne Tunnel road was constructed, the contractor obtained 350,000 tons of fill material from a borrow pit while suitable material was available from a pit heap only two miles away. The use of that colliery waste would have removed an area of dereliction, whereas exploitation of borrow pits means extracting material from enormous holes dug near the project. Borrow pits are peculiarly competitive in road and civil engineering projects where fill material is required; for when colliery shale, which is drawn from the waste tips, is used it is generally transported, at some point, on the public highway and the vehicles involved are liable for excise duty. But in the case of borrow pits alongside the roadworks, vehicles not using the highway are duty free, and experience shows that the cost of transport is a significant factor in tendering. There is also the question of liability to rating. The colliery tip being used is liable for rating, as I understand the borrow pit is not.

Another lost opportunity was the M.4, where 5 million tons of fill was required, and at least 2 million tons of waste material could have been supplied from the West Country and South Wales. British Rail is on record in the Reading Mercury for January 10 this year as saying that it offered to bring 2 million tons of bulk fill from these two areas. This would have helped in a big way to avoid spoliation of the countryside. If in fact that had been done, the railway system would have benefited tremendously, and the need for grant aid on the London-Westbury line would have been considerably relieved. But all the fill for the M.4 is to come from borrow pits, and Berkshire County Council seemingly will grant permission to the contractors, subject to appropriate conditions, for the extraction of gravel from those pits. Those conditions may well ensure that there is no permanent despoliation, but in the meantime good agricultural land will be put out of use. But perhaps that will not be regarded as a complete loss by those who may benefit by a rise in the price of land values, for I am told that good agricultural land valued at £300 an acre may rise in value to somewhere between £2,000 and £3,000 an acre when sold for exploitation as borrow pits.

Nor, my Lords, can we be ever satisfied that land used for borrow pits will be restored. I have with me a photo-graph which shows an abandoned pit at the Bradbury intersection of the A.1(M) and the A.689. It will indeed be ironic if, eventually, this hole should be filled with colliery shale. I understand that that matter is under consideration. If it is so filled, it is likely to be filled from the same pitheap that was considered too far away for use in construction of the motorway; and the cost of refilling that borrow pit will be additional, I under-stand, to the contract price.

I would ask that when the costing of these road projects is considered they should not be costed in isolation. There is a point in the public interest where the cost of not using waste material should be taken into account. We know that schemes for re-landscaping and re-contouring rank for grants ranging from 50 per cent. up to 85 per cent. I believe that there is a pit at Arley, in Warwick-shire, consisting of black and red shale which could be sold over the next five years for the purposes of road fill. I understand that there is a scheme to re-landscape and to re-contour it. And I wonder whether the figure that has been suggested to me of a quarter of a million pounds for that re-landscaping is very far from the mark. It would certainly be interesting to know how far off the mark it is. I suggest, in all seriousness, that it would be much better to use this fill for roadmaking rather than to create additional spoliation.

Looking to the future, there are many projects—the M.62 motorway, the M.18, the Sunderland by-pass, the A.1 spine road, the M.5 and M.9 (in Scotland), which could absorb nearly 30 million tons of waste material from industrial waste heaps. If this seems a small percentage of the figure I gave earlier as to the total, then I can only say that the challenge we face is so great that we cannot afford to miss any chance at all to reduce it. And if, at the end of the day, we have restored derelict land to good agricultural use, or made it available for good industrial development, and at the same time avoided additional spoliation, who can doubt that using this waste in this way is good business?

The Ministry of Transport have agreed the shales which are acceptable for fill purposes, and have given encouragement in a technical memorandum issued in September, 1968, on the use of colliery shales for filling; but they leave with the contractor the choice of acceptable filling material. This is set out quite clearly in a Written Answer given in another place, by Mr. Bob Brown, in reply to a Question by Mr. Bagier, and set out in column 278 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of February 28 of this year. My Lords, if we are serious in our desire to use industrial and commercial waste, and bearing in mind the contribution which might be made for the removal of dereliction, is it not time that we asked whether such an important matter should be left to the contractor? Is this not a matter where wider issues ought to be considered? The cheapest fill for any particular job may well cost the community dearly in the long ran in terms of hard cash and, I think equally important (here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers), in terms of amenity values.

The point I seek to make is this. Positive support for the use of waste material in these schemes, looking at the overall position, assessing the possible saving on grant aid as well as ridding areas of dereliction and avoiding additional spoliation, may well in the long run save money. I would ask that, if we are serious about using waste materials and about avoiding spoliation and dereliction, all proposals for planning consent for borrow pits should be referred to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government for advice; that the Treasury should look at all the financial implications, and that where it is obviously in the public interest the Ministry of Trans-port should clearly specify in contracts for new roads within their control that suitable industrial waste should be used as underfill. This, I appreciate, would call for interdepartmental co-operation. Without it, there is danger that the pre-sent situation will continue—indeed, it could at some points deteriorate. It also calls for drive and a sense of urgency, for every time an opportunity is lost, not only to dispose of waste but to dispose of it usefully and constructively, we risk the curse of those who will follow us.

4.47 p.m.

LORD SANDYS

My Lords, I should first like to thank the noble Baroness for giving us this opportunity to discuss this subject. Not only that, but she has given me the opportunity of joint research with her into this most fascinating subject before your Lordships this afternoon. Several months of study have convinced me that I have barely scratched the surface in my part of the researches; and in the course of this debate to-day I think I find myself approximately about half-way between the positions taken up by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, and the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale. How-ever, I am greatly inspired by the phoenix, a mythological bird which is the proud badge of certain sections of the reclamation industry. That has stimulated me in my research. Not for nothing did those ancient people, the Phoenicians, derive their name from it. The well-known discovery by some Phoenician merchants of glass as the bases of their cooking pots, formed by silica sand fusing, under the influence of flames, with magnesium lime-stone, is surely a fine example of a profitable discovery coming from waste materials found just by chance.

In the mechanical handling of waste, reclamation mainly employs three elements—fire, water and air—to achieve the desired results. I should like to take fire as my starting point. Of course, the part it plays in the steel industry is simply enormous. The British Scrap Federation has pointed out in its March news-letter the plight which scrap merchants find themselves in to-day. While world scrap prices of up to £30 per ton for the top grade of best heavy melting steel are rising, the fixed United Kingdom price remains the same—between £10 and £12 per ton, which is just about one-third of world prices. It is only natural that British scrap merchants should wish to export all that they can; but they are prevented from doing so by a virtual ban on all but a few insignificant grades. The totally inadequate profit margins on the home market have had a deeply depressing effect upon the industry as a whole. Your Lordships will be interested to know, therefore, that membership of the Federation has fallen by over 100, or 13 per cent., in the last three years, caused by mergers or plain bankruptcy. That indicates a most disturbing lack of confidence in the scrap industry and its future, and calls for an appropriate remedy.

The best analysis I have seen of the complex price mechanism which affects the steel scrap or ferrous scrap trade appeared in the Financial Times on February 2 in an article by Rex Winsbury. I do not propose to quote more than three sentences, but I believe they are important and I hope your Lordships will bear with me. Mr. Winsbury wrote: One suggested solution to the scrap dealer's dilemma is that there should be an agreed buying price for scrap, as well as an agreed selling price, thus building a fixed margin into the business. If the Restrictive Practices Court accepted one, it might accept the other. The problem is that this would need a degree of co-ordination between scrap dealers that has not so far been displayed. This is not an insoluble problem, but it calls for recognition by the Board of Trade, the Restrictive Practices Court and the British Steel Corporation. I ask the Minister in his reply to give his assurance that he will draw his right honourable friend's attention to the urgency of this problem for an industry which provides over 30 per cent. of the raw material for British steel at a heavily subsidised price. The noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, mentioned the figure of 50 per cent., but I think he was taking into account the arisings from the steelmakers themselves. The raw material which British Steel achieves in this way means that the B.S.C. is given an advantage on a plate by the scrap dealers; and, armed with approximately half their feedstock at about one-third of world market prices for scrap, the steelmakers are placed in an exceptionally fortunate position and the British Scrap Federation in a highly detrimental one. Surely it is grossly un-fair that the reclamation industry should suffer from this fixed price handicap, agreed some years ago in totally different circumstances. Another cause for concern for scrap dealers is that local authorities have the policy of incineration of waste rather than separation at source. I do not think there is any complaint that they should incinerate combustible waste, but that is not the point. If bulk collection is the order of the day, low grade quality scrap is produced as an inevitable consequence of throwing everything into the incinerator, with metal burnt into metal and mixed with combustible material.

I should like now to turn to a totally different aspect of reclamation; that of water. We look upon it as our birth-right as a natural resource, in much the same way as air; but we should attain a much greater objectivity by heeding the views of those who visit this country from abroad. I like to recall a royal visit by a distinguished head of state, the late King Abdullah of Transjordan, some years ago. At the end of his visit His Majesty was asked what had impressed him most. There was an ominous pause. The visit had included displays of the latest weapons, shows, exhibitions and festivities. But none of these were chosen, and there was a barely suppressed gasp from the Chiefs of Staff when the King said simply, "Your water supply impressed me most of all. It covers the whole country, and all one need do is to turn on a tap."

We place far too low a value on our water supply, and I should like to give an example of this. In this country, a three-bedroomed house has a water rate of approximately £7 10s., taking an average of the water authorities as a whole. The same three-bedroomed house in the United States would have a water rate of £48. The conclusion is obvious: that the statutory water undertakings in the United States are placed in a much more fortunate position, because they almost certainly allow for a much greater margin of profit to be set aside for capital works of a considerable nature.

Our rainfall provides a good supply, but we use very little of it—I believe scarcely more than one-eighth. Our rivers are indeed a prominent example of a commercial re-use of waste for our water supply. Let us look at the Metropolitan Water Board, which supplies no less than five-sixths of London's water supply from the River Thames. Here there is a crucial difference between the approach to the Thames taken by the sanitary engineer and by the water engineers, who are solely concerned with a potable sup-ply. This battle has been going on for many years, probably since the great Act of 1852 which set up the Thames Conservancy. On the question of water sup-ply, I would point out that the commercial re-use of our rivers is a very significant part of the total problem of re-use of waste.

One aspect in the pollution field which I feel should be pointed out concerns the River Lea, where their water protection officer is quoted as saying: Up until 10 years ago, only two spillages of oil occurred a year. Last year, there were 69. Action is certainly needed, and in the field of legislation a fine of more than £30 seems to be desirable if we are going to put the code of law in line with current thought. An even greater source of anxiety arises from chemicals, quite apart from oil. The tragic case of the introduction of endosulphan into the Rhine, and the death of enormous numbers of fish a few months ago, is a very significant example. So far as the mixture of water within the Thames is concerned, I understand that the Port of London Authority rightly insist that one part of effluent must always be mixed with not less than eight parts of river water in order to ensure a satisfactory state of the river.

I should like to leave the question of water supply and come finally to the re-use of chemicals, which is a fascinating field. I begin with an extraordinary example of what is being wasted in this country. During the war one firm was called upon to clean the rough castings of undercarriages by use of solvent. Solvent was expensive, and at the end of each process many thousands of gallons were poured away. Some months after the war was over, a chemical engineer visited the factory and made an offer of several shillings per gallon for this particular solvent. He was asked what it contained, and he said, "It is worth three times what I am going to offer you for it, because of the silver". That is the nature of the recovery of chemicals with-in the context of industry. So often the most unexpected by-product can be produced by the native ingenuity of the chemical industry itself. Quite unsus- pected profits lie hidden in dumps and yards and places, and there they are lying to this day.

Another aspect of the salvage of chemicals is to be seen all the time at the salvage of warehouses which have been destroyed, or partially destroyed, by fire. Great ingenuity is needed to clean and re-use those containers, which probably have a valuable source of either the same chemical or some other by-product for further use. I will not go further into this subject because others who will be speaking have far greater knowledge of it. I thank your Lordships for your attention.

5.0 p.m.

LORD MCCORQUODALE OF NEWTON

My Lords, in spite of the interchange this afternoon between the noble Lord, Lord Denham, and the Leader of the House, I think we all wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, for raising this sub-ject—a subject which is of great interest, with all sorts of facets—in this Conservation year. Indeed, I would go further. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Denham, was wrong and that in these days of hustle and bustle we should ob-serve the courtesies of the House, for the effort of a minute or two. We can always postpone our "Who goes home?" time for a few minutes. That will not kill any of us.

I am not going to follow the last speaker in his most interesting speech, and I wish to talk about waste paper. I have been in the printing trade and the paper trade all my life, and it is a subject which affects all of us. After all, when we walk about the countryside or go into the parks, waste paper is probably the chief culprit in the matter of litter, and anything we can do to channel it or control it, or even to turn to ad-vantage the waste paper that otherwise befouls our countryside, must surely be of great value. We are faced now with a new menace which I read about in the newspapers the other day. The Goujon (Paper Togs) Mill, in Bolton, which according to the Sunday Times is at present producing no fewer than 1,750,000 pairs of paper pants every week, has now allied itself with a very big commercial enterprise and hopes to double, or even treble, that production. What a ghastly thought, my Lords! That will enlarge the amount of waste paper that might litter the countryside in a most offensive manner. Yet, on the other hand, it might be turned to advantage.

I wish to speak of how we can deal with this waste paper. One of the most important social problems that faces the highly developed countries in Western Europe, and especially in America, is the disposal of household refuse or waste; and of course here in London the dust-men's strike brought this home to us very strongly. When I was in New York last year, shortly after the great snowstorm there, the cleansing department in New York said that they could deal either with the refuse or with the snow, but not with both. So the State of New York was even worse than London during our strike.

The amount of household refuse produced has doubled in the last 20 years, and experts say that it is likely to double again in the next 20 years. How is it dealt with at present? It is dealt with by controlled tipping, which is rather un-pleasant for the people living near the tips, however careful the authorities are; it is dealt with by pulverisation—a most expensive process; and, finally, it is dealt with by incineration. All these plants are costly, and the cost is estimated to be rising by about 10 per cent. per annum. It has now reached something like £2 per head of the population in this country, or getting on for £100 mil-lion. Consequently, this is a matter of some magnitude.

It is the volume of refuse that matters most, not the weight. The statisticians always tell us everything by weight, and they will not tell us the volume. But in this matter it is the volume that matters, and it has been calculated that paper, cardboard, board of all descriptions and paper products amount in volume to nearly 70 per cent. of all the household waste collected in this country. If we could segregate that 70 per cent. into other receptacles, by providing a sack as well as a bin, a local authority would have to incinerate, tip or pulverise only 30 per cent. of what it handles at the present time, which would mean that the tips would last longer and the saving would be very great. On top of that, we should have a very large quantity of paper waste material which would be of value.

I would emphasise the connection between the volume of waste and the saving to the local authority if waste could be divided, because it is very important and is sometimes overlooked. Of course, on a conventional balance sheet we would treat paper salvage as a trading under-taking, divorced from the cleansing ser-vice of which it now forms a part; as a trading operation we would look to see whether it made a profit. But if a book profit of, say, £1 a ton was made on the handling of the paper, it might well mean a saving to the local authority of £7 a ton if we valued the refuse collection and disposal costs as up to £6 a ton, which is a reasonable figure.

Local authorities are not likely to over-look this matter where the officer in charge has both the collection and the disposal under his hand. But in the London area at the present time these are being divorced, and this split respon-sibility—which is causing a certain amount of anxiety in some of the boroughs—is leading the collection authorities to overlook the disposal savings, and merely to look at the actual savings in the use of the waste paper. So I hope that the authorities will look again at this matter.

In 1968 we had something like 1.8 million tons of waste paper. That was 200,000 tons more than the year before, and the figure is rapidly growing. The high-grade paper that is collected from printers, stationers and different industrial concerns is handled by a merchant, and goes back to the mills to be made again into high-grade paper. I wish to refer to the low-grade paper, the salvage paper that is taken up by the local authority. The cardboard, or strawboard, industry, is entirely dependent on waste paper for its raw material; and, indeed, over 30 per cent. of our paper and board production in this country at the present time comes from our own waste. If we had to import mechanical pulp the cost would be over £50 million, so there is a considerable saving in foreign exchange involved here.

Theoretically, something like 85 per cent. of all waste paper should be capable of being recovered, but at the present time we are recovering only about 30 per cent. During the war, when pressure was on and everybody was recovering everything, the figure rose to something like 50 per cent. But if, instead of collecting only 30 per cent., we could push the figure up to about 35 per cent. there would be an enormous difference. If it were available, the industry could use greatly increased volumes of waste paper for board, for newsprint and for other grades. As has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet, and others, not only are we not increasing our recovery figure, we are having to import waste paper from abroad in increasing amounts. Two years ago we imported only 50,000 tons; the latest figure is 52,000 tons.

Another important aspect is that re-search recently done by the trade, not-ably by Reeds, Dixons and others, with the help of Government loans, has developed a new de-inking procedure which will allow waste paper to be used much more freely in the production of news-print, which is at present entirely manufactured from mechanical pulp imported from abroad. Not only will this mean a notable saving in foreign exchange, but should mean a considerable saving in cost of mechanical paper to newsprint. It is a most important breakthrough; but it is essential, of course, that we have the waste paper which we can use.

There have recently been excellent papers in a magazine which, I must con-fess, I had never heard of until I looked into this matter. It has a rather formidable title, that of Environmental Health, and it is the journal of the Association of Public Health Inspectors. It is most interesting and illuminating. Mr. Frank Flintoff has published four articles in successive issues of this paper, with another one at Christmas, on the whole subject of collection of waste by local authorities. Is it worth while? What is the best way to do it? What are the lessons from Sunderland, from Edinburgh, from Swindon, from different parts of the country? He conclusively proves that it is well worth while; that waste collection can be a very profitable affair for local authorities. I know—we all know—that town clerks and local authority officers are overworked and "pushed"; that Government instructions and local councillors demand this and that; but I think this is a matter which those who are not taking part should look at again.

We have the position, therefore, that demand for waste paper is growing, that collection can be profitable and that the saving of foreign exchange is consider-able. I would therefore suggest that the time is now ripe—very ripe—for us all to have another good look at this question. At present, out of some 1,365 authorities there are about 475 concerned in the collection of waste paper. The remainder have up to now not found it worth while, or have not been able to get going to do it. The paper and board industry have, especially over the last two or three years, been making great efforts to encourage local authorities to start collecting waste paper. I would urge the Government, in the light of all that I have been saying, to lend their weight to the encouragement of local authorities, and I would urge the local authorities then to encourage their public to segregate their household collections of waste paper both in their own interest, in helping to lower rates, and in the national interest as well.

Further, many authorities could be helped by the Government by means of easier access to sources of capital. Some complain that when they put in applications the Government take such a long time to deal with them. Speedier approval of small capital expenditures would be of great assistance; and if the Treasury could see its way to making investment grants available to local authorities, as indeed they are to industry, for the purchase of plant and equipment for paper baling and sorting, I am sure that that would make a considerable difference in encouraging these local authorities.

My Lords, I have said enough, I hope, to impress upon your Lordships that this is a matter on which we should now, I am quite sure, go forward. If that were done, I believe that we should be taking a real step forward in the relatively mundane but vital sphere of keeping our cities and our countryside cleaner and tidier, and benefiting our economic position at the same time.

5.15 p.m.

LORD STRANGE

My Lords, I believe in politeness; I was brought up to it. I should therefore like to thank the noble Baroness very much for introducing one of the most important subjects that we have in the world to-day—getting rid of scrap, coupled with the name "commercialism". The noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale, mentioned spring mat-tresses. That took me back many years of my life, when it seemed that the feather mattress went out of fashion. That coincided with the days of an increase in the number of motor cars. It was no uncommon thing to see a feather mattress dumped over a hedge. I dare say there were zoological reasons for disposing of it so quickly. But when the noble Lord was speaking I was struck by an interesting thing. The ethics on which I was brought up are not applicable to materialists. It is no use trying to teach them the ethics on which I was brought up, because they do not count to them. It is no use telling a man, if he puts his feather mattress over a hedge or into somebody else's garden, that he will go to hell, because materialists are in hell already; there is no point in changing their way of life.

I think that perhaps the most interesting point which can be raised, not only in this debate but on many other subjects, is how the ethical code has lost touch with materialism. Materialists have no ethical code at all, so far as I know, and the religious code is not applicable to them. The reason for this is that the religious code—or, rather, the ethical code on which I was brought up— depends on the views and opinions of the evolved man: the evolved man who knows himself, who understands all the influences which influence him in life, which go back to animals and which go back to many that he has created him-self, with complexes and so on. His attitude towards life and towards other people is one of toleration; and this, of course, is the attitude on which are based the ethical codes on which I was brought up and which are not applicable to materialists. So far as I know, they have no basic codes at all. The two noble Lords who were sitting on the Front Benches have just left, and I think that is just as well because it occurred to me to say that in most approved and brilliant speeches they represented the attitude of materialists completely: if scrap did not pay, there was no obligation to do anything about it at all. It must pay. There was no question of Government grants or of researches to try to make scrap pay. They both agreed: if scrap is not commercial, it does not pay.

Many years ago I happened to be standing on the railway station at Baltimore (which is an unlikely place for anybody to be standing) waiting for something—I think it was a train. I was watching an American across the other rank who was also waiting for something. I do not know what he was waiting for; but he was a human snowstorm. He was eating little things, and there were bits of paper coming out of his pocket and pouring down beside him. It really was extraordinary. Now I understand that in America the "litter drop" of the population is 3 lb. to 5 1b. per day for every person. This, I would say, is alarming.

When it came to the littering of the world around us with scrap, I wondered whether it was right or wrong. Many people said it was wrong to take out-of-date electronic equipment and drop it on the moon and leave it there to rot. They thought it was wrong to put up satellites. I came to the conclusion (I do not know if it is wrong, but I think it is right) that when we look into the bigger-scale materialism in the void around us, we find that dumping is the rule. It may be that it is the rule of materialism—I believe it is. We find the place littered with dying suns, with useless planets, with chunks of rock, with meteorite displays that may replace for children the fireworks of which they are going to be deprived.

This is all going on through insella dust —and I spell it, the word, because it is not in the Oxford English Dictionary and I know that my unprepared, unwritten speeches are a terrible trouble to Hansard. The dust is as the dust on picture frames. It seems to be a grind-up of all the junk and bad experiments that do not come off in the material world around us. I believe that there may be some purpose, some sense in it. It may be that the rule of materialism is to dump. Of course we are looking into the void around us and finding that whatever the movement is which causes materialism it has a terrible problem: it has to make matter out of a force; and we are not sure what that force is. It has to make suns; and they have to die down; so any created matter which has been made in space can be of use in being reorganised and utilised in the creation of further energy or matter. For instance, it seems to me—I do not know—that a dying sun may hook up and become a planet. But there seems to be a definite reason that material has in scrapping. We should have this reason, too. We should scrap. That seems to be the fundamental rule of materialism. The fundamental rule of ethics is not to scrap but to preserve, and not to put your mattress into somebody else's garden. If that is the case then we should scrap, not as a commercial process but as the rule of materialism. We should scrap in order that our scrap in the small world that we live in may be used again. That must be the rule of materialism. I have not made myself clear, I am afraid: I did not think I should. But I expect that your Lordships may have a little idea of what I am saying.

To go back to mattresses. Mattresses are interesting things. A man whose name I will not mention—and I shall finish on this story—started a business buying feather mattresses. In those days he bought them all over the country. He went searching round for them. He took the cotton from them; it was valuable for paper—a better quality paper than a newspaper. He also did something with the feathers. I do not know what it was, but he had a sale for them. In those days (it was a long time ago) I suppose he might have carried them in bundles and sold them to be burned before ladies who were about to faint—which I understand was a cure. But the reason for his interest was commercial. That is the point. He realised that when people get old they get illish; they get disagreeable; they get deaf; they get cross, and their relatives go to see them as little as possible; and then they get frightened of being left alone to starve. So, quietly, they sew up some money and put it inside their mat-tresses. They do not expect to die; but when they are dead they find they have forgotten to tell anybody about the money. Opening one of those mattresses, this man got a "bonanza" mattress—it was full of gold coins. And he was able to retire and to go into a more pleasant occupation.

5.24 p.m.

LORD RITCHIE-CALDER

My Lords, I must say that it is very difficult to follow that delightful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Strange. But I think that he has something here. I think we may be known—since ours will be the last civilisation: who is going to remember us I do not know—as the "Non-returnable Civilisation". Because, as Lewis Mumford once said, civilisation began not with neolithic tilling but with the making of containers, pots. I have the horrible thought that civilisation, having begun with Lewis Mumford containers, will end with containers—plastic containers, which no organic method can destroy; plastic wrapping, plastic non-returnable bottles: plastic—the world that died of plastic! The spoil heaps of our civilisation, if anyone is going to discover them from outer space, will be identified not by the broken earthenware but by plastic ice-cream tops. This will be a civilisation that went not with a bang but a ripple.

To-day, in the United States—we keep on coming back to that country as the really horrible example; nothing here is as bad as it is there—30 million tin cans are opened every day and thrown away. Unlike plastic, they might even rust away; but at the moment they are collected, squeezed and dumped all over the place. In this country, off the mouth of the Thames where the two great blocks of Atlantic water, one from the North of Scotland and the other through the Channel, meet on the Dogger Bank beyond the estuary of the Thames, the fish are twice as numerous as anywhere else around our coasts. This is because we dump into the Thames 4,000 tons of sludge daily. It is taken out to the Thames Estuary by barges and tipped. A lot of it comes back on to the beaches, as we know. A lot of it goes out as a very rich nutrient and encourages fish to grow. It encourages something known as eutrophy, which is different from atrophy: it means that everything grows more vigorously, including seaweed. These nutrients are largely wasted. The phosphorus in the increased catch is estimated at a 120 tons a year, which is only 4 per cent. of what goes out in the sewage. It is ironically true that we take the phosphorus out of the great prairies of America; we cart it across the sea in the shape of wheat and flour and corn; we eat it and then it goes out into the North Sea as sewage to feed the fish. That is the largely irrecoverable phosphorus or phosphates.

May I turn now to an example nearer home in Scotland. The Lochgelly Burn is a very small stream, a course, which is the responsibility of the National Coal Board—why, I do not know; but they have to clean it out. At one spring-cleaning they recovered from the Lochgelly Burn four spring mattresses, 26 iron bedsteads, 30 angle irons, six pillars, six big baths, nine porcelain basins, one sofa, one armchair, four water cisterns, four kitchen sinks, one washing machine, six clothes poles, 46 sheets of corrugated iron, three prams, four fireside fenders, six bicycles, seven motor tyres, 13 lengths of gas pipe, one gas meter, nine truck-loads of bricks, tins, cans, wood, and the carcases of two dogs, one cat and four hens. That does not take into consideration any of the normal sewage which was there. That is identifiably recovery! But what do you do with it? As has been pointed out, it is very difficult to dispose even of the springs of the mattresses: although I must say that I thought, on listening to the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale, talking about straightening out springs, that maybe the Chinese ought to do something about straightening out Lord Erroll, because if we are going to contemplate this situation with the complacency with which he contemplated it we shall be asking for ultimate disaster and it may not be so very remote.

This is not something about which you can sit back and let what might be called the normal commercial process prevail. It is not manifest to anybody except Steptoe and Son that you can make a living out of waste. You have to go about it systematically. What we want to know is what we are doing here through Government research, not only to find out what is going to waste (many of us know that), but how to recover it and how to convince people that it ought to be recovered.

I can give three examples of the most fantastic use of waste. The first one is germanium in transistors. It is the basis £7 an ounce and is the basis of transistors. Imagine what we can do with germanium in transistors. It is the basic of one of the biggest technological expansions in our age. From where can we get germanium? It can be obtained from flue dust from chimneys. If you can recover it you are in business—£7 an ounce!

We had the wonderful story of penicillin. Your Lordships may remember that penicillin was developed at Oxford by Florey and Chain. It was a mould which had to be fed with rich nutrients. Originally we got the nutrient from a distillery in the East End of London. Then, when Florey and Heatley found that they could not make it in sufficient quantities they went to the United States —this was during the war, in 1942—to persuade the big companies in America that they ought to go in for antibiotics. It is one of the ironies—an example which I would commend to the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale—of what is not economic unless you can persuade people to handle it, and make it so plain that it is such a commercial possibility that they are not taking any risk at all.

None of the corporations which have now made fantastic fortunes out of nutrients would look at it. Florey went to Peoria, to the fermentation laboratories of the Department of Agriculture in the United States which is concerned with distilling and fermentation. They asked him, "Do you think that we could use corn-steep liquor as a nutrient?" Heatley, who was a chemist, said, "Of course." Corn-steep liquor as a waste was costing the corporation, the cornflour makers, and the distillers millions of dollars a year because it was so rich in sugar, and so on, that even in America it was not allowed to be put in the sewers —though I may tell your Lordships that a lot of it got away into Lake Michigan and elsewhere. But this was so rich that they could go into what we now call deep culture of penicillin in great batches, with no limit to what could be done. It was possible to take what had been a throw-away, a non-product, a by-product, and make a fortune out of it.

My Lords, the atom bomb began with uranium waste. The uranium came from the slag heaps of Katanga. It had been thrown away because they had been looking for radium: and everything else was thrown away. Now they throw away the radium in Katanga and in Canada. Radium is no longer the sought product but uranium is, and the material for the American bomb came from "tailings". It is possible to go on ticking off the waste and realising how much is going to waste. But the point I wish to make very strongly is that in this atomic age we have the most dangerous waste of all. We have all the fission debris of all the by-products of bombs, or of atomic energy for peaceful uses. This is something which has concerned many people for a long time.

I was chairman of a commission of inquiry in the University of Chicago on "living with the atom": how we could get along with the peaceful atom and forget about the possibility of bombs for war. In our inquiries the greatest concern was about waste. It is radio-active, and some of it, like plutonium, if it gets into the waste system, will last actively and dangerously for a half-life of something like 25,000 years. That is "half-life". You can reckon that the final last kick of plutonium may be in something like 250,000 years, so what we have created in the shape of waste will persist in an active form for centuries, for thousands of years—for a quarter of a million years. This is something we have to dispose of.

My Lords, I am not talking about how we are to dispose of low level waste. By the way in which low-level atomic waste which goes into the Thames has been treated, Harwell has set an example for everybody. Now we can catch fish in the Thames. The water which was going into the Thames from the atomic plant was so much better than the water in the river that they had to do something about the river water. I will not discuss the question of the disposal of radio-active trash, the stuff that gets contaminated and is dumped somewhere in the sea. That is another matter which is of concern to a great many people. But the one thing I should like to know from the Minister is what we are doing with and about the nuclear waste that we produce from our generating stations and from our participation in the deterrent?

This is something we must look at from two points, from the point of view which the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, has raised, about what is commercially possible, and also what we ought to do with it and whether we can make a substantial commercial recovery. I say this partly in the hope that my noble friend will give me an answer, and also in order to make this point. We have to dispose of the waste, we have to bury it. In the United States, at Hanford, in the State of Washington, there is what is euphemistically called "the graveyard" where there are millions and millions of gallons of nuclear waste —"gallons", because the waste is in a fluid state, in nitric acid, in great containers, partly buried in the ground. It generates enormous heat because of the atomic activity, and it has therefore to be kept cool. Your Lordships will know what happens if there is a power cut and a refrigerator system stops. Imagine what would happen if this refrigerator system stopped! Incidentally, this is built on an earthquake system, and that is a matter about which we are having arguments with the Atomic Energy Com-mission. But millions and millions of gallons of radioactive waste are stored there. If that system broke down, the waste would go into the source waters of the Columbia River and would spread.

Since we in Britain are "canny", one of the great ideas at Harwell in the early days of nuclear development which was pretty obvious, was to take out the active material and sell it. The trouble with taking out the active material waste is that, in a world sense, you are distributing it all over the world in smaller quantities. It is safer in the ground if you have not the proper safeguards to look after it and distribute it. So I suspect that the danger is not coming from the atomic waste but from the atomic process of waste. I should be glad to know if in fact we are doing something, both to get an adequate return on this waste and to make sure that the waste is not going to destroy us. In America in the last 20 years it has cost them more to bury live atoms in Hanford nuclear Giza than it cost to bury all the Pyramid Kings of Egypt.

5.40 p.m.

LORD ABERDARE

My Lords, I can-not follow the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder. I wish I could, but I have not his deep scientific knowledge. I cannot wait to examine my flue dust to see whether it has germanium in it. The noble Lord did not explain whether it matters what fuel one burns in the grate in order to get flue dust containing this material, but if it is solid fuel it is the best advertisement yet for Lord Robens's call for the use of solid fuel.

Despite what my noble friend Lord Denham said, I should like to thank my noble friend Lady Emmet of Amberley for introducing this debate. I take my noble friend's point in general. I agree that we do not need always to be fulsome in our thanks to those who introduce the routine debates we have at regular intervals, but this Motion is something rather exceptional and has led to a fascinating and important debate. I should certainly like to express my thanks to my noble friend.

The importance of the commercial use of waste materials is quite clear and has a twofold advantage, which has been made plain in this debate. One is that of saving imports. The example has already been given of the use of metal scrap in the iron and steel industry. My noble friend Lord Sandys made a relevant point here. Unfortunately, this is not a market in which free forces are allowed to operate, because scrap merchants are not allowed to export their scrap and the price is fixed by the one consumer, the British Steel Corporation.

Another obvious area is that of newsprint, on which my noble friend Lord McCorquodale of Newton made an interesting and powerful speech. The number of newspapers that are thrown away into bins every week has always seemed to me to be a terrible waste. I should have thought that in this field, if a process can be operated whereby the ink is removed, then the market forces of my noble friend Lord Erroll of Hale might well come into play, for surely the newsprint industry could afford to pay a little more for waste newsprint and in turn local councils would find it more lucrative to collect it.

The other obvious advantage of the commercial use of waste materials is the prevention of pollution. Obviously, it is much better to use materials in an economic way than to pollute the water or the atmosphere. One interesting use of waste in this way happens in many municipal sewage works, where the sewage is treated bacteriologically to make it harmless, using the forces of nature in a highly economic way. In the process, highly in-flammable methane gas is given off which can be used to provide the heat which is necessary—I believe it has to be about 90 degrees—for bacteriological action to be effective. In that way this dangerous, polluting methane gas can be used in the very process of rendering sewage harm-less.

There are other lucrative processes for the recovery of precious metals. My noble friend Lady Emmet of Amberley made a quotation which I have heard somewhat differently in Yorkshire. There it goes: "Where there's muck, there's brass." If there is not brass, there is sometimes other valuable materials. I am told that a large amount of the silver imported into this country is used in photographic processes and here again there is an opportunity for recovering valuable material. It struck me that my noble friend Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte may find some valuable silver deposits from hospital X-ray departments.

It is gradually coming to be realised that there is value in recovering raw materials from what was previously called waste. Indeed, the very word "waste" is now frowned on and the "in" word in this country is "reclamation". In the United States they refer to "secondary raw materials". Even the trade paper has changed its name. It was called Waste Trade Record and is now Materials Reclamation Weekly. I am grateful to the editor of that paper, who helped me a great deal in my research into this question. It was that paper which sponsored an interesting inter-national exhibition on reclamation and disposal at Olympia last year, and also a conference at which some interesting papers were read. The noble Lord, Lord Byers, mentioned another organisation, the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors, and there is also the National Industrial Materials Recovery Association, which is also endeavouring to bring together industries interested in this subject and is doing a great deal of useful work.

I should like to devote myself this afternoon mainly to the question that I know best—and I shall not take very long—the recovery of waste material from coal tips in South Wales. I must declare an interest in that I have unfortunately a number of derelict coal pits in my ownership. I should like to say, as I have said before, that the Derelict Land Unit of the Welsh Office is doing an extremely good job in tidying up these derelict areas. In 1969 they approved 25 schemes in Wales, covering 739 acres, and agreed grants amounting to over £1 million. This is certainly progress in the right direction. I am glad to say that the town of Aberdare has the most ambitious scheme in hand, approved and agreed and going ahead. But even 739 acres is not a very great deal when com-pared with the total of 13,000 acres, which it is estimated would respond to treatment in Wales.

Some of these derelict tips contain enough coal for this to be used commercially, and where that is so it is being exploited. It is a well known process. There is a great deal of work going on, and provided that the market exists, all is well. But there are many other cases where the tip may be of more recent origin and does not contain as much fuel as some of the older tips and therefore it is not possible to work the coal. There are other instances where, although the coal could be recovered, for planning reasons it is seemingly impossible to make use of the waste material that remains afterwards.

I should like to follow what my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy said, in asking whether this waste material could not be used in connection with road building. I was interested to see in the South York-shire Times of last Saturday that a tip at Denaby Main Colliery at Pastures Road, Mexborough, is being worked and that, according to the newspaper, the dig-out is being used for road-surfacing purposes. I am aware that it is used in Belgium for such purposes, and I believe there was some research being done on whether this waste could be used in connection with road work. I should be interested to hear from the noble Lord who is to reply whether there is a possibility that this may be so.

But there is another very exciting possibility in the use of this waste material for the manufacture of synthetic aggregates. All over the country we are familiar with the extraction of gravel from pits everywhere for making concrete, and there is bound to come a time —if it has not come already—when either the natural supply will fall short of our requirements, or, for planning reasons, we shall not want to dig any more holes in the ground. When this time comes— and, as I say, I think it may well have come already—it surely will be disastrous if we have to import aggregates from overseas. How much better if we could use waste material to make synthetic aggregates!

Moreover, I am told that the synthetic aggregates have certain real advantages: they are of lower density, and thereby provide a better ratio of strength to weight in the manufacture of concrete; they give better thermal and sound insulation; they are better as a fire resistant; yet they do not in any way impair the structure properties of the concrete. I suggest that if we could use derelict land to manufacture concrete we should be killing two birds with one aggregate. In this field we are way behind many other countries. It is worth noting that in France and Germany some 15 per cent. of their concrete manufacture is made with synthetic aggregates; in America, the figure is 20 per cent.; in Japan, it is 30 per cent. Here it is only 4 per cent.

I have come across two processes that are being used in this field. One is being developed by the Newell Dunford Engineering Company, which has set up a pilot plant at Misterton, near Don-caster, for this purpose. Another exceedingly interesting process in Scotland is called "Aglite"; and a new factory was opened by the Minister of State, Scottish Office, last December at a place called Twecher, in Dunbartonshire. This is a co-ordinating factory where three processes take place. It is in a colliery area, and at one end the coal tips are washed and the coal contained removed; the remaining material then goes into a central factory where by a sintering process it is made into a lightweight aggregate called "Aglite". At the final end of the plant the Aglite is mixed with cement and fly-ash, and the resulting product is a concrete block. This would seem to me to be an admirable use for otherwise waste material.

I do not wish to run contrary to what my noble friend Lord Erroll has said, but I should hope that the Government could at least help in encouraging this kind of development, because if it is to be developed at the production end there must also be interest in it from the user end. There must be research by engineers, architects, and by all those engaged in the building industry, into the properties of this concrete made with synthetic aggregate. There will need to be new codes of practice for the construction industry if synthetic aggregates come into general use. I believe that the Government could help by encouraging the use of concrete made with synthetic aggregates in new construction, and I hope that perhaps the new section of the noble Lord's Ministry could devote some attention to this possibility. It would involve developing plant, encouraging new designs and the actual construction of buildings using these synthetic aggregates. But once the initial research has been done, and pilot plants have proved successful, then I believe it can result in a profitable new enterprise and a valuable use of materials that are at present going to waste.

5.55 p.m.

LORD ARCHIBALD

My Lords, I must first apologise to the House for not being in my place when my name came in the batting order, but I had a meeting to attend which I thought would be well over in time. However, either some speakers dropped out or there was unusual brevity from those who have taken part in the debate, and I was late in getting back. I am particularly sorry to have missed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale of Newton, who I think probably dealt with the point that I want to cover. I must also thank my noble friend Lord Leatherland for agreeing that I might speak ahead of him.

I cannot pretend to follow the width and profundity of my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder in his wide-ranging review of the world-wide scientific elements involved in this question of waste; nor can I follow the noble Lord who has just sat down on his exceedingly interesting technical survey of certain aspects of this subject. In fact, by comparison what I have to say will probably seem quite trivial, because I am going to deal only with the question of waste paper. I deal with it partly because it is almost a year ago (it was, in fact, on March 26 last year) that I asked a Question in your Lordships' House about the representations made at that time by the Joint Wastepaper Advisory Council regarding the dangerously low level of waste paper stocks, as they put it, in that particular month. My noble friend Lord Brown replied, and said, in effect, that this was primarily a matter for local authorities.

Taking my cue from that, I thought that I ought to try to stimulate my own local authority. I collected signatures— some from Members of your Lordships' House of all Parties, and others from Members of no Party, or of no known Party—for a letter to our local newspaper to urge the Camden Borough Council to institute a separate collection of waste paper. However, the chairman of the appropriate committee of the borough council replied in due course to the effect that central collection of waste paper was uneconomic. That was the end of that particular exercise.

Some months ago, however, the Scout Association announced a scheme of waste paper collection in association with a leading firm of paper merchants. I did not myself take any active part in this scheme, but my wife, on hearing of it, got in touch with the scouts and arranged for them to collect from the immediate area in which we live. They now make collections every two weeks; they are pleased with the amount they collect, and their funds will benefit accordingly. The Director of Fund Raising for that Association estimates that if it were fully organised this waste paper collection could contribute £25 million per annum towards our balance of payments. Even now, when our balance of payments is well in credit, a contribution of £25 million per annum is not to be despised.

Almost a year from my first Question in the House on this subject—that is to say, on February 20 of this year—a further warning was published by the Joint Waste Paper Advisory Council on the serious shortages of waste paper. Their figures showed that Britain imported more waste paper last year than in any other single year. The Advisory Council placed the blame on the collecting agencies, particularly the local authorities. This is the case where, I am afraid, the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Erroll, that market forces should prevail, would not be applicable.

I then made what I must describe as a mistake on my part. I wrote a letter to The Times, and it was published in the Business News section. This was on February 27. I say that it was a mistake because although it produced two supporting letters, it also produced a large number of personal letters which I have neither office, secretary nor other resources to deal with. These personal letters ranged from describing what I had written as "fantastic" to those that were in complete support. Some useful points emerged from those letters. One correspondent pointed out that the Borough of Epsom and Ewell operated a scheme for the separate collection of waste paper, each dust cart towing a trailer for the waste paper. In one four-week period—and I quote from a letter from the Town Clerk—the income was £1,345 8s. 6d., which for a four-week period is not neglible. The other two letters told me that the Edinburgh Corporation also have a waste paper collection. Large jute sacks are supplied, and collection is made once a fortnight by the same department as deals with ordinary rubbish collection, but quite separately. As a Scot I think I may be permitted to say that if the Edinburgh Corporation organises such a scheme it cannot be uneconomic.

My Lords, if such different local authorities as Epsom and Ewell, in the South, and Edinburgh, in the North, can do this, why not others? Why is it uneconomic for other authorities? Perhaps the Joint Waste Paper Advisory Council should be-come a little more imaginative, and give a lead to local authorities, instead of just issuing an annual complaint about the shortage of waste paper. If it is too ex-pensive to collect waste paper separately from the private householder, can we be assured that, apart from collections from private householders, there is an efficient system of collection from all the big con-cerns—the local authority offices, the offices of nationalised industries, hospital groups and all the other big sources of waste paper. I have not given notice of this point to my noble friend, but it is one which could be followed up. If such a system were in operation the saving on imports could obviously be substantial: we are not talking about small or insignificant figures.

I wonder whether the Board of Trade could persuade the Joint Waste Paper Advisory Council to be less advisory and less complaining, and more active in giving a lead and in doing some organi- sation in this field. I have had a letter from the secretary of that Council, which I will pass on to my noble friend who is to reply to this debate. I am bound to say that I find the letter in some respects quite extraordinary, and in other respects I cannot understand why there has been the delay in sending me the letter, and what the point is that the secretary described to me. He gives quite sensible warnings about not collecting waste paper when there are no facilities for disposal; in other words, not to organise collections in areas which are so remote from the users of waste paper that the trans-port costs involved would make the whole matter ridiculous.

I think I might sum up my remarks by saying that in my view the Board of Trade should consider whether there is not a case for reconstituting the machinery for encouraging waste paper collection and disposal. I recognise that waste paper is only one of the many fields —and perhaps not the most important one—in which re-use of waste could be considered. However, it is an important field, and in some respects a much simpler one than many others that have been discussed this afternoon, and I hope that it will be very carefully reconsidered.

6.7 p.m.

LORD LEATHERLAND

My Lords, if I were to comment on the speeches that we have heard this afternoon I should be inclined to say that they contained only a minimal amount of waste material. But as I rise I can hear the cynics whispering, "Ah, but he is a newspaper man. For the past 45 years he has done nothing else but create waste paper. A case of Satan rebuking sin." As we are talking about sin, I ought to explain that before I became a kind of assistant curate in the parish of newspapers I was something like an archdeacon in the diocese of salvage. How did that come about? It came about because when the First War ended and I put aside my sergeant-major's crown, I was appointed by the Birmingham Corporation to create and control a cost accounting system in their salvage and refuse disposal department. I can still recall those charts and statistics which I used to bring to the committee chairman so that he could persuade the City Council that the refuse disposal department was a most efficient and economically conducted organisation.

We were very salvage minded. We used to collect thousands of tons of waste paper every year, grade it into the superior ledger paper on the one hand and the newsprint and wrapping paper on the other, and sell it at a considerable profit for the ratepayers. We used to collect old sardine, pineapple and salmon tins, ship them across to Germany, where there was a firm which had a special electric process for de-tinning them, after which they sent the bulk residue to the blast furnaces. It is per-haps a little sad to reflect upon the fact that it could be that those sardine tins came back to us twenty years later in the form of V.ls and V.2s. We also carried on a fairly considerable traffic in the salvage of non-ferrous metals, copper, lead, zinc, aluminium and so on. We took the refuse from the meat markets and fish markets; we put it through a steam digester and created meat meal and fishmeal which we used to sell by the barge load to the farmers of Warwickshire.

We took our old rags, divided them into two sections, and the superior ones went to the restructuring mills of York-shire, while the inferior ones were given a new lease of life for wiping down oily machinery. From the destructor furnaces we produced steam which we used to sell to the electric generating station across the road. With the clinker that we extracted from the furnaces at the end of the operation we used to make concrete slabs which we sold to con-tractors and to the city surveyor. That was all fifty years ago, and there have been many advances since then, but I do not think quite as much is being done as ought to be done. When all is said and done, in a nation which is constantly taking its temperature with a balance-of-trade thermometer we have to regard the substitution of imports as a very important item indeed in our economy.

Some reference has already been made to the extent to which this import saving can be achieved. This is no mere peripheral question. As we have heard, 40 per cent. of the metals used by our non-ferrous industries come from reconstituted scrap; £200 million worth of iron and steel scrap each year goes into the blast furnaces. The woollen industry saves £50 million worth of raw wool by using the trimmings and cuttings from our tailors' and garment workers' work-shops and factories. The felt industry, for its manufacture of roofing felt and floor-covering felts, uses large quantities of the inferior type of rag, together with a considerable quantity of surplus hair. As I look around me, my Lords, I do not see very much of that in your Lord-ships' House.

Most of the materials to which I have been referring are very well catered for by the commercial firms in the scrap and waste industry. They very systematically comb the factories and shops and workshops of the country and have this reclamation business organised on a very efficient scale. I would incidentally mention that these scrap merchants—I am not talking of Steptoe and Son; I am talking of the big combines, some of them with tens of millions of pounds' worth of capital—complain that they are regarded as a service industry and there-fore have to pay selective employment tax. They argue that they should be regarded as a manufacturing industry because of the particularly important service they are rendering to the country's economy. I can see part of their argument. The process which they perform is one of many processes which are continued in the factories and in the blast furnaces. I know there may be a Civil-Service argument in favour of drawing a demarcation line somewhere. I would merely add to that that I, of course, have no shares in any waste reclamation company. I rather wish I had.

I now want to turn to waste paper, which is really the subject about which I want to speak. I want to talk of it because I feel that here the local authorities have a direct and major part to play. Some of them, I know, are doing what they should. But let us, by way of a preliminary, look at a few figures. We use in this country seven million tons of paper every year. Two-thirds of this we manufacture ourselves; one-third of it we import. The cost of those imports, an uncomfortable factor in our balance of trade, is £180 million. True, we ex-port £50 million worth of paper, so that the net uncomfortable factor in our balance of trade is £130 million. On top of that, we import £100 million worth of woodpulp every year, and if by collecting and using more waste paper we could reduce that £100 million worth of pulp which we now have to import it would be very good indeed for our economy. But, as we have heard, we are not merely failing to produce the amount of waste paper that the paper mills need; we actually imported 52,000 tons in the past year. That, incidentally, is the highest figure in this regard that there has ever been.

That is not the only aspect of this question. On more than one occasion during the past year some of the mills were almost at crisis point. They had only three weeks' stock of waste paper in hand. What are they to do? Are they to be told: "Go on importing waste paper. Go on importing more pulp"? Or are they to be told that a real, concerted campaign will be organised in order to ensure that more waste paper is collected in our own community? This is not a static problem. Go into any supermarket and one sees more and more of what is ungrammatically called "packaging". Look at the newspapers. I know some of them have died in recent years, but others have been born and others have expanded their size, and more newsprint is being used to-day than was the case ten years ago.

Then there has been some reference to what are called the "disposables": disposable paper handkerchiefs, disposable paper dish cloths, disposable paper napkins, of both sorts. And there have been references to the paper panties which are now being manufactured at the rate of millions a month. I have not conducted any personal research into that question, but it is a fact that several factories are at present engaged in the production of those paper scanties. Moreover, the population of the country is increasing. That has nothing to do with what I said in the last paragraph; but as the population increases so will the demand for paper. So this is a problem which is not diminishing as the years go by but is actually increasing.

The amount of waste paper which is collected and delivered to the mills has increased in the last 10 years from 1⅓ million tons to 1¾ million tons, but this is not anything near enough. I do not want to commit anybody to a target, but we could easily collect another million or two million tons each year. But where are we to collect it from? The printers' waste, the newspaper offices' waste, the packing firms' waste is all very well catered for by the commercial waste-paper merchants. Therefore, if we are to fill the gap we must turn to the housewives and to the local authorities. The local authorities at the moment are supplying the mills with only about a quarter of a million tons a year, less than ¾ lb. from each household per week. If the housewives of Britain and the local authorities want to hoist the flag saying, "Let us help Britain", here is an opportunity for them to do so; not only to help the country's economy but at the same time to put money into the pockets of the ratepayers.

There are many local councils which are not carrying out the paper collection and salvage that they could. They give various reasons. Some of them are just not interested. Some of them have geo-graphical difficulties, particularly in scattered areas. Some of them say, "We used to collect it but it didn't pay." Then there are others—and I regard this as a serious excuse—which say, "We have been systematically collecting large quantities of paper; we have had it hoarded to overflowing in our destructor yards and depots, and the mills have turned round and told us that they cannot take any more." This is a serious complaint. But I believe that if they had shopped around a little more persistently they would have found mills ready to take it, because there are one or two mills in the country which are prepared to put their hands on anything they can get. But, whatever may be the merits of that excuse, it applies no longer; it is something of the past. The mills are now offering local authorities firm legal contracts for a firm quantity of waste paper every year at a firm price. That, I suggest, makes this a most attractive transaction for the local authorities.

There are local authorities which have been carrying out this work for some years and are prepared to produce their cost accounts—in fact, some have actually published them—showing that when all expenses have been taken into consideration, including amortisation and productivity bonuses to the dustmen, they can show a handsome surplus.

But, my Lords—and now I come to the nub of the situation, which has already been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale of Newton— if these councils do not sell their waste paper and get money from it, what are they going to do with it? They have either to burn it or tip it, and in either case it will cost money to their ratepayers. If they burn it, then the capacity of their destructor installation may have to be larger than it would be if they sold the paper; and I am assured by some technologists that a superfluity of waste paper in the furnaces does not lead to optimum combustion. I do not know much about that as an expert: the only kind of flames I know anything about are those that do not come out of furnaces. If the council happens to be one of those which tips its refuse, then its tips will be full to capacity long before they otherwise would be; huge expenditure must be incurred in transporting the refuse from the depot or the collection area to the tip, which is often miles away, and the controlled tip which contains paper needs to have more labour expended upon it than one from which the paper has been extracted.

There is another point which has been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale, but it is something which I learned in my cost-accounting days with the Salvage Department. If you present an ordinary commercial type of profit-and-loss account showing, on the one hand, the costs of collection and, on the other, the revenue derived from the sale of paper, you may get one kind of picture; but surely you have to take these other factors into account—the amount of money that has been saved by not having to burn all this paper or transport it to the tips. There then arises an entirely different kind of picture. A couple of years ago one big city council toyed with the idea of scrapping its special paper salvage system. It called in consultants, and those consultants told the council (and this bears on the point I have just made) that if the paper salvage system was scrapped the refuse collection and disposal would cost an extra £20,000 a year.

My Lords, I said a moment ago that the papermills are now offering firm con-tracts to local authorities. They are doing more than that: one of the big board mills is saying to the local authorities, "We will send our team of work study experts down to your district so that they can carry out technical surveys and advise you as to the best and most economical method of organising your waste paper collection." Therefore I think there are very few excuses left for any local authorities not to participate in waste paper salvage. With a well-thought-out scheme—and I emphasise that it must be a well-thought-out scheme —there are savings for the ratepayers, there are productivity bonuses for the workers and there is a distinct gain to the national economy. I should like my noble friend to assure us that a great waste paper salvage campaign will be organised. I do not want it to interfere with private enterprise and I do not want any expenditure (except on a minimal basis) to be incurred; but I think that if the country is roused to the importance of saving our waste paper a very good deal will have been done for the community.

6.25 p.m.

THE EARL OF GOWRIE

My Lords, I will not attempt to follow the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, because he has been dealing with waste paper and I wish to make a few brief remarks about glass and rubber. I would assure him, how-ever, that in my household a piece of paper which rapidly became waste the other day was that issue of The Times which referred him as Lord "Leather-head", after a particularly excellent speech of his which I enjoyed.

I was sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, did not speak this afternoon. My own interest—a very lay interest—in reclamation was stimulated in this House by a conversation that I had with him a little over a year ago, when he told me that we were importing a substance (the name of which unfortunately I cannot remember) which could be derived quite easily, in his view, from the dreaded slurry and other waste materials from mine tips which my noble friend Lord Aberdare has mentioned. The Aberfan disaster seemed to me to be the worst thing that has happened in my adult life, which does not include, say, Hiroshima or Buchenwald.

Our interest in conservation, our desire to clean up the country, seems to me to take that as its essential human aspiration. As a non-expert I see my job this evening as an attempt to reconcile the positions taken by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, and by my noble friend Lord Erroll of Hale, because I am greatly alarmed by the notion that in an area of this importance there should be any real conflict between the Government and local authorities, on the one hand, and the free play of market forces or commercial enterprises, on the other. Surely in something of this importance, co-operation and a concerted plan are what we need.

My Lords, we live in what could be called in "ecologese" the "motor-sphere", and I draw my examples from waste rubber, which for all practical purposes means waste scrap tyres. There is a great problem here. Any of your Lordships who might have a genius in the twin arts of inventing and of treading the maze of international patent laws would shortly become as rich as Croesus if he could find a solution for the commercially viable re-use of all the tyres in the motorsphere. At the moment we do have re-uses, but many of them, although economically viable, will certainly need subsidy and encouragement. Some of these uses are attractive. Playgrounds have been suggested. One could make a form of asphalt which would negate the likelihood of bruised knees and tears in children's playgrounds. Then gymnasia, and similar institutions, could make use of textile-free rubber grist—rubber which has been reconditioned and from which the textile element has been removed.

My noble friend whom I may not thank, Lady Emmet of Amberley, told of her training as a farmer. There are attractive possibilities for tyres for farm buildings floored in reconditioned textile-free rubber grist. It provides a non-skid surface for animals, and it also carries attractive insulating possibilities. I am encouraged to learn that the floor of the new terminal (otherwise, in my view, a hideous building) at Euston Station is made of reconditioned rubber grist—a product of the firm of Pirelli. If the marriage between Pirelli and Dunlop is to go ahead, it augurs well for endeavours of this kind in this country. There are also tyre carpets and building blocks. And a lot of interesting work is going on in East Europe at the moment, particularly in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, where research is going forward into reconditioned rubber. Indeed, the Hungarians believe that they may have to start reimporting Western scrap rubber in order to fulfil some of their projects.

No doubt many of your Lordships will think of other things in the sphere of rubber reclamation. Some of these are commercially viable, and market forces will apply; others are not. There are some like the creation of road-building material, which again provides an insulant and attractive non-skid surface for motor cars and has the poignant recycling effect of old tyres going back and making roads. Some fall into the arenas where both Governments and private contracting industries are involved. And I would urge that in making contracts Governments and local authorities must be aware of the creative re-use of material and subsidise endeavours of this sort by giving preferential treatment to them.

What can the Government do? Research. Obviously, in a speech of this sort, research is the first priority that comes to mind. Here at least it is global, and I would say that there are encouraging diplomatic possibilities for this kind of global exchange on conservation. I mentioned the interesting work in East Europe. This excellent Czech pamphlet has come into my hands relating to a material called Gural, used for making building and insulating material from waste rubber, and it outlines tiles, carpets, bridges, pavements, playgrounds, floors. It adds, in poetic English: All these areas covered by Gural are noiseless, dust-free, non-slippery, greatly abrasion resistant, have a good chemical resitance, durable, monolith and corrosion resistant. It seems to me that our embassies or diplomatic representatives might well do research on what is going on in other countries in regard to these common problems.

How else can Government and market forces co-operate? Where reclamation processes are physically possible but economically less attractive than the use of existing materials, the Government can help firms capitalise for reclamation and recycling equipment. The equipment to reconstitute rubber is the most expensive item. The Government could add to those incentives help in the form of tax allowances.

Rubber is a special case of a global difficulty. Glass, I understand, is less so. It has disturbed the ecosphere of children, I imagine, that it is no longer so easy to get pennies and sixpences for collecting old bottles and taking them back. Alas! glass-bottle users find it un-economical to sterilise and re-use old beer bottles, coco-cola bottles and the like. I do know that the Schweppes-Cadbury firm gives £1,000 a year to the anti-litter campaign. I am very much in favour of the firm and their products, but this does perhaps seem a little stingy. No doubt, however, they are otherwise heavily committed.

To judge by a pamphlet issued by the glass manufacturers' association, the whole glass industry is creditably aware of the problems. It makes the following points about the disposal of glass waste. Glass can be easily crushed and incinerated in modern incineration equipment. The residual ash from other incinerated material adheres to small molten glass globules, to give body to what could becomes useful road-making or similar material. I think it was my noble friend Lady Emmet who spoke about the work on road surfaces in America with glass as well as rubber. Roads seem to come into both areas. It has the negative advantages that glass will not burn and pollute the atmosphere and it will not rot or decompose in soil or water. It does not give off nasty smells. And it can, even allowing for expensive equipment, be reduced to small particles and be returned to the soil in virtually its original state.

From a European report on solid waste disposal it is clear that the numbers of sophisticated procedures and equipment such as the Deepham incinerator, which costs approximately £9 million for the disposal of glass, are far too few. The main handicap to the development of sophisticated machinery in the United Kingdom is lack of funds. There is a firm which is developing a machine to be issued to public houses, hotels and the like, which will dispose of glass and broken bottles fairly cheaply and fairly noiselessly. The blueprint indicates that such a machine should not cost more than £100. I would remind your Lordships that the dishwashing machine which most catering firms have would probably, in the commercial size, cost them about that sum. There are appeals not simply for more research— the priority—but for more money to develop the idea of using glass as a fertiliser, to involve it in breaking down the chemical constituents which render otherwise intractable refuse into fertiliser. That has foundered, I understand, because of the large capital cost. It argues that there is a case for the amalgamation of the resources of various authorities for the disposal of waste products, similar to that conducted by other public utilities, such as water, gas, electricity and sewage undertakings.

From the speeches made this after-noon, it would seem that most people connect waste with what they deliberately throw out, and when they have bought a product in a container they are more indifferent to throwing away that container. Here again there is an excellent case for co-operation, and in making the case I should like to associate myself, if I may, with the wise closing remarks of my noble friend Lord McCorquodale. The re-uses or re-cycling uses of glass are various. I have mentioned fertilisers. I have mentioned the possibility of using it in road surfaces, and there is consider-able research going on in America at the moment which I see no reason why we should not probe. Compost has been referred to. Glass, if given a break, is a far more tractable material in almost all references than rubber, but we should not neglect it for that reason. I have given a brief synopsis of this information.

My real point is to ask whether such information is readily available to manufacturers and consumers of these actually and potentially wasteful products. I should like to know how much the Government are spending on advertising the dangers of waste, and how much they are making firms aware that they can consult MINTEC for industrial intelligence. Lord Leatherland talked about the manufacture of disposable or paper panties. Your Lordships may have read an interesting article published to-day in New Society under the snappy title of "The jettison set", in which an advertisement is portrayed which says: Give your dirty laundry to the dustman". In my view, the dustmen have to come up with something equally propagandist to counter that.

May I close by going back to my self-appointed task of peacemaker between my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Byers. If there are all kinds of exciting and profitable possibilities open to private industrial concerns, then in my view the Government's role must be essentially a co-ordinating of human effort—a decent political aim—and a propagating of the results of recent scientific research—some of which results I have tried to outline to your Lordships. The Government are a large manufacturer (particularly, it might be said, of waste paper) and its task is an urgent one. Several years ago an association of British glass manufacturers tried to get co-ordination with representatives of packaging industries, but, in the words of their own report, the time did not seem propitious. My Lords, to say that the time did not seem propitious is just not good enough so far as the representatives of the pack-aging industries are concerned, but it does suggest a way of bridging the gap between my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Byers. The job of Government and Parliament is to make sure that commercial enterprises, in their own interest as well as in the greater interest of the community, see that the time is not only now propitious but long overdue.

6.40 p.m.

LORD DELACOURT-SMITH

My Lords, if I am to observe a reasonable time limit, it will not be possible for me to deal with every point raised by noble Lords in this interesting and constructive debate. I can, however, assure your Lord-ships that every point which has been made will be carefully considered, and that where appropriate, and particularly where questions have been put to me which time does not allow me to deal with adequately, I will communicate individually with noble Lords.

In surveying this debate, and in trying to comment upon some of the major points which have been raised, I wish to re-emphasise a point that I sought to make when I intervened earlier. It appears to us that this is a field where there is much scope for valuable action but no simple solution, no single key which will open up an answer to all the questions. This is a field for selective rather than indiscriminate action. We regard it as important to try to identify the fields where useful and effective action can be taken, and seek vigorously to support and encourage action in those fields. In so doing, of course, while I would not accept the view put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Erroll, that one can leave this entirely or overwhelmingly to the forces of the market, it is common sense (and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Byers, would agree with this) to take into account practical and commercial factors when making one's decisions and deter-mining one's priorities.

I would ask noble Lords who have made proposals in particular fields, to ask themselves in respect of each proposal what would be the practical problems and the costs of collecting the raw material or the scrap concerned and transporting it, which is often a substantial problem; what would be the cost of processing it, where necessary, to make it suitable for manufacture, and what its attractiveness would be in all terms against virgin material, or possibly some other alternative scrap or waste material available from some different and perhaps nearer source.

To take one example, reference has been made to the possibilities of composting. Examples have been quoted of local authorities who have had successes in this field. These authorities have succeeded in finding a market. But this method tends to be expensive, and that factor has to be taken into account. There are authorities whose experiences have not been so fortunate. May I take another example in seeking to apply this general approach, and respond to the many noble Lords who have referred to the waste paper situation? I am sorry to say that, despite the well-informed and realistic speech of my noble friend Lord Leatherland, I cannot accept his suggestion that I should sound a trumpet for a comprehensive, indiscriminate, universal campaign for the additional saving of waste paper. But that is a quite different thing from saying (I think he himself used these words) that there is no scope for well-planned activity, well-planned campaigns to increase our collection and our use of waste paper.

In this connection, I should like to mention particularly the recent suggestions that voluntary organisations should go in for waste paper collection, both for their own advantage and also for the national advantage. I commend, in particular, the public-spirited work which has been done in this connection by the Boy Scout Movement. But, equally, I want to make it clear that, as I suggested as a general proposition in my earlier intervention, demands can fluctuate between one area and another, and I could not accept that the gap between the demand and the current supply of waste paper is so large as some noble Lords have suggested. I would therefore seek most emphatically to urge that all voluntary organisations, before engaging in such activity, should ensure that they have a reliable outlet for the waste paper they propose to collect.

Having made that proviso in respect of waste paper, let me go on to make particular reference to some of the initiatives which have been undertaken in this field. My noble friend Lord Archibald, made a reference to the Joint Waste Paper Advisory Council, which consists of representatives of paper mills, of local authorities and waste paper merchants, and which, incidentally, does not have upon it any Government representative. We have been in continuing touch with this Council, and we welcome the fact that it has recommended the use of long-term contractual agreements between waste paper suppliers and mills, and indeed has devised model contracts for this purpose. These contracts are intended to overcome the peaks and troughs which in the past have sometimes bedevilled the situation and which, as I have suggested, are a real problem. I should like most earnestly to recommend that all local authorities and all paper and board mills take a good look at these agreements and, if possible, seek to negotiate them.

A second most welcome development in this field is to be found in Greater London. Recently the Greater London Council circularised the various London boroughs, urging them to collect and to segregate more waste paper, and have offered financial incentives if this is done. Quite rightly, the G.L.C. claim that if waste paper is segregated and collected the residual costs of refuse disposal are reduced, and that this reduction in costs makes possible the financing of the incentive scheme. This incentive makes particularly good sense because, on the one hand, the Greater London area has considerable untapped resources in waste paper and, on the other, there is the con- centration in the South-East of the large waste-consuming paper and board mills.

Similar situations exist, of course, else-where in the country. There is a considerable complex of board and paper mills in East Lancashire, and at Liver-pool and Sheffield. It would be an ad-vantage for those mills which are short of waste paper material to make con-tact with a convenient local authority and to persuade them to enter into one of the long-term agreements to which I have referred. There are a number of local authorities who have made a substantial effort in this regard. I can think of Enfield and Waltham Forest; and Bristol and Sunderland also come to mind. But I would again emphasise that the waste paper problem is not a simple one. It is one that immediately catches the imagination, and certainly it is a field for well-considered action directed to particular circumstances; but it is not necessarily a field where widespread, indiscriminate action will produce the kind of results that we want to secure.

Now I would go on from waste paper to make a brief reference to hospital waste. I will see that the observations made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, are brought to the attention of the appropriate authorities. I echo the remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that in the hospital service there is probably scope for some recovery of silver from X-ray films. I understand that in fact about 3½ per cent. of the actual expenditure on X-ray films, which percentage itself amounts to about £180,000, is recouped, and it is hoped to improve on that figure in the future. I will see that the general observations of the noble Baroness are brought to the attention of the appropriate hospital authorities.

May I come now to the number of points made by my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy, and by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, about the possible use, for road-making in particular, of shale heaps and other waste from mineral ex-tractions. As I think my noble friend pointed out, the Ministry of Transport have drawn attention to the possible use of these materials for road-making purposes and have issued a commendable memorandum upon the subject. But here again the degree of use of shale is dependent upon its price as compared with available alternatives. The final choice in this matter must rest with the contractors. But the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Transport encourage the use of colliery and other similar waste for filling material wherever this is practicable. These two Departments are also considering the general question of the extent to which waste material from collieries and other mineral sources can be utilised as fully as possible for highway projects, and the contractors and British Railways have been brought into these discussions.

VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS

My Lords, I wonder whether I may interrupt the noble Lord for one moment. One of the difficulties about using this sort of waste material for roads, or fill, or anything else, is that under a recent series of decisions this now attracts rates; and sometimes it is this fact which makes it uneconomic. This is a major policy decision, but I wonder whether the noble Lord could also consider that.

LORD GARNSWORTHY

My Lords, before my noble friend replies to that, I think it might be more convenient if I were to ask him would he please undertake that there be some examination of the cost of not using this shale, because the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, referred to a million pounds expenditure for re-contouring. There is a fantastic expenditure on re-landscaping and re-contouring. I am sorry that I did not touch on this when I was speaking, but may I ask that there be some examination, when the contract is awarded to a contractor who uses borrow pits, to ensure that the price he is quoting provides for reinstatement of the borrow pit to a satisfactory condition?

LORD DELACOURT-SMITH

My Lords, we fully appreciate the importance of this complex issue, which has been raised by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and has been followed up by the noble Viscount, and we will certainly look into all the points which have been raised on this question. A number of factors are involved, and certainly not the least of them is the amenity factor; because, although I said earlier that I should seek to concentrate on the commercial aspect of the matter before us to-day, we are all conscious — and this has come up in many speeches —that the amenity and environmental aspects of this problem cannot be separated from that with which we have been concerning ourselves. I can assure my noble friend, and other noble Lords who have addressed themselves to this question, that the points they have raised, with the various aspects they have touched upon, will be fully examined.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, also made a reference to the possibility of encouraging the use of synthetic aggregates, particularly for concrete-making. There is a particular interest here in the possibility of using pulverised fuel ash for this purpose. Here again there is a great deal which could be said, and which it is tempting to say, but at this stage may I briefly reply that research is continuing in this matter and that the Government will continue to encourage the use of pulverised ash wherever doing so makes commercial sense.

The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, referred to a number of matters. I should like just to comment on his point about the prices paid by the British Steel Corporation for steel-making scrap. The prices which are paid—and this applies both to the British Steel Corporation and to the private sector of the steel industry—are a purely commercial matter, and form part of a voluntary agreement which has been made between the British Steel Corporation, the independent steel producers, and the British Scrap Federation. This agreement has been in force for a number of years, and at the moment it appears that there is every reason why the Government should not intervene in what is clearly a purely commercial matter but should leave the question of price to be settled by the parties to the agreement that I have mentioned.

My noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder asked a number of questions about the situation with regard to atomic waste, and its re-use and disposal. I am afraid that in the time at my disposal I shall not be able to satisfy him fully, but I will say on the subject of re-use that, as he will be the first to appreciate, the re-use of partially depleted uranium and plutonium in the fuel cycle of the reactor systems is an essential part of the operation of the Atomic Energy Authority. Apart from this, the Authority does make the fullest use of depleted uranium which is rejected from the Capenhurst plant, in the manufacture of metal components for use in a number of fields, and also in the form of various chemical components used for the manufacture of pigments for pottery, and as a catalyst in some chemical processes. Other radioactive isotopes could be extracted from the waste products of the fission process if substantial new uses for them could be discovered, but the present situation is that the relatively small size of the market has not justified the capital expenditure for the extraction plant that would be necessary.

On the disposal of radioactive waste, I will write to the noble Lord giving him more particulars, but at this stage I should say that the underlying objectives of the Government in respect of disposal are, first of all, to ensure that the need to dispose of the waste is recognised; secondly, to ensure, regardless of cost, that the radiation dose received by the population as a whole does not exceed the permissible levels; and, thirdly, to reduce the actual does as far below these limits as is reasonably practical, having regard to cost, convenience and the national importance of the installation concerned.

My Lords, I am conscious that in the time available I have not been able to reply fully to the many valuable contributions which have been made, but I would repeat the assurance I gave earlier, that all the contributions which have been made in your Lordships' House will be carefully studied. I am sure that all who have participated in this debate, or who have been listening to it, will agree that it has been very valuable in clarifying a number of issues, and particularly in focusing attention upon the importance of the issue to which the noble Baroness addressed her Motion.

6.57 p.m.

BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY

My Lords, at this late hour your Lordships will not wish me to say anything but a few brief words. First of all, I should like to thank those experts, whether they were in private industry or in local authority work, who have helped me and my noble friend Lord Sandys in the researches which we have made in the last month or two.

I very much appreciate the support that this Motion has received from noble Lords on all sides of the House. It was really fascinating to hear, in the Minister's summing-up this evening, what a very wide area of subjects have been included in this debate. I appreciate the sympathetic way in which the Minister spoke at the opening of the debate, and the trouble he has taken in summing up at the end. I am sorry that he will not follow the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, and blow a trumpet. I am sure he would look very well doing it and would do it very well. But I am quite happy to feel that he has shown us that his Department is wide awake to this problem, and that they will look upon this as a beginning and not as the winding up of the subject. I should again like to thank him, and I hope that he will be able to give us encouraging information from time to time. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.