Wasteful use of compressed air is costly to industry and the environment

Break-on-through to the other side: the art of good communications

Waste not want not

Offices have impacts too

Mock Court held in Bradford in association with Business Link

Drains, Drums, Tanks & Bunds The Unofficial Laws

How to wrestle with a Bigfoot

Employment law is a complex subject and it's vital to know where you and your employees stand.

It is estimated that wasteful use of compressed air is costing industry £100 million per year. Companies who fail to tackle their compressed air efficiency will place themselves at a serious disadvantage.
Compressed air is an expensive form of energy and it is crucial that factories examine and monitor their consumption. Approximately 10% of industry's energy bill - around £340 million a year - pays for electricity used to generate compressed air - and according to the DETR up to 30% of this is wasted. The elimination of this wastage would be a useful contribution to industries attempts to offset the climate change levy.

Most factories use compressed air, many cannot do without it, yet surprisingly, few companies monitor the costs of compressed air as closely as their expenditure on materials, labour or company cars. Some compressed air suppliers can provide an auditing service that precisely logs air demand. The audit results can then be used to determine the optimum combination of compressor plant and control equipment. This can mean significant energy savings.

Many companies with reasonably modern compressor installations can save thousands of pounds in energy use per year simply by reconfiguring the programming of the compressed air installation to suit current production conditions. The cost of an air demand analysis can be easily offset by the enhanced profits it can bring. In many cases, finding and fixing leaks alone can amount to considerable savings. The DETR estimates that as much as 20% of compressed air energy is wasted this way. Other sources of unnecessary waste consumption include, for example, blowing down surfaces. A vacuum cleaner is much more efficient. Eliminating wastefulness of energy such as this will become increasingly important once the climate change levy begins to bite.

Profitability and complying with legislation however are not the only things at stake. The extreme flood events that recently hit the UK have been attributed to the effects of global warming and are expected to become commonplace. If we don't recognise that our actions dramatically affect the environment it could have a drastic impact on our climate.

WHAT TO DO:

• First, ask your compressor supplier to carry out an audit, not only of energy consumed and compressed air used, but also of on-load and off-load running time and the patterns of peaks and troughs in air demand.
  
  
• Review how your machines use compressed air:
  • Are there heavy users that leak a lot of air and
    need overhaul?
  • Is compressed air used wastefully, for dusting off
    for example?
    
    
• Look closely at the maintenance records:
  • Are there trends towards greater unreliability, higher
    spare costs, more frequent lost production?
  • Is it worth renewing the compressor installation?

Most environmental issues are communication issues. Effective communication is vital if we are to influence and alter behaviour, whether this is simple, such as encouraging the correct use of segregated waste bins or complex, such as a manager attempting to factor the concept of sustainability into long term business projections.

Good communication practices are paramount if we are to move towards sustainability and forge win-win-win outcomes from social, environmental and economical interactions.

For example: if you want to introduce or maintain an environmental management system you need effective communication between all your stakeholders, if you are an environmental trainer you need good communication tools and if you have green products you need to communicate this to your potential customers. Despite this, one of the biggest barriers to achieving models of sustainability is communication.

Communication is the provision of information, the transfer of a message. However, as environmental issues can be quite complex and have a high scientific content - upon which the scientists themselves occasionally cannot reach consensus - the information can often be distorted or misconstrued by the time it reaches its destination. Seven key reasons can be identified for a communication breakdown:

1. The wrong message is sent
2. The message is sent in the wrong format
3. The message is delivered to the wrong destination
4. The message does not reach its destination
5. The message cannot be read
6. The message is read but not understood
7. The message is read but misunderstood

Therefore in order to overcome these causes of communication breakdown, a communications policy and a communications strategy needs to be developed and monitored. Unfortunately this is rare. Substantial amounts of capital are spent on marketing products but only a small amount of money is made available for the consideration and communication of environmental issues. Consequently these communication problems manifest themselves as ineffectual policies.

If business is going to be serious about communications it needs to make a commitment, which means allocating finance, time and effort. However, effective communication has to be audience appropriate. It has to be tailored to the needs of the receiver. The audience may differ in terms of age, literacy, language and gender. The timing, format, content and presentation of the message have to be appropriate otherwise communication breakdown will occur.

Effective communications are often in a loop. We can only assess the effectiveness of our communications by making them two way. In linear models the message distributor is distanced from the audience which invites breakdown. Only with audience feedback can you be sure that your communications have been correctly recieved. The Centre for Environmental Communications is here to act as an interface. As a message shaper, advisor and carrier. For companies that are serious about environmental communications, who want a communication breakthrough rather than breakdown, the Centre offers a comprehensive service including: video production, multi media, publishing and eco marketing.

WASTE NOT WANT NOT

All industrial operations generate solid, liquid and gaseous waste streams, which have a range of impacts for the environment and industry itself. These wastes have the potential to create a wide range of local and global environmental problems. It is imperative that industry becomes waste aware if the rate of resource consumption is to be reduced and pollution and waste levels prevented. Wastes not only represent losses from the production processes of valuable raw materials and energy, but also trigger the need for investment in pollution control practices. In our increasingly environmentally aware society, business can no longer ignore its impact on the environment through the misuse of resources. Recent years have seen a flood of environmental legislation that has waste minimisation at its core. The Environmental Protection Act and the more recent incorporation into UK law of the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control directive (IPPC), obligate thousands of businesses to prevent and minimise their wastes and reduce energy consumption.

Being waste aware is not just about meeting legislative responsibilities, it can also bring significant financial and strategic benefits to your organisation. It's estimated that UK business is throwing away £15 BILLION in lost profit every year. It trickles away unseen - it goes down the drain, up in smoke, or in the skip. Eco-efficiency should be practised throughout all levels of industrial operations to improve performance. Those who can minimise their consumption of electricity and water and their production of solid waste emissions and effluent will save money, improve their image and contribute to conserving and protecting our common environmental resources.

THE BENEFITS

• Cost Saving:
  • Increased efficiency and reduced production costs
    
    
• Competitive Advantage:
  • Improved company image and improved profits
    
    
• Regulatory Compliance:
  • Attainment of and improvement on regulatory requirements
    
    
• Risk Reduction:
  • A better understanding, control and management of existing risks and future liabilities. A minor accident today could become a catastrophe in our increasingly environmentally responsible society
    
    
• Environmental Responsibility:
  • Instilling responsibility throughout an organisation can improve staff moral

If you would like to find hidden profit in your business and help the environment at the same time why not contact the Environment Agency or SEPA for a free waste minimisation video:

'Money for Nothing - Waste Tips for Free'
Environment Agency
Tel: 0345 337700

'No Time To Waste - A Practical Guide to Waste Minimisation'
SEPA
Tel: 01314497296

OFFICES HAVE IMPACTS TOO

When many think of pollution and environmental impacts the image that springs to mind is that of a factory pumping effluent into a nearby water course, churning out mounds of solid wastes and releasing bilious clouds of smoke into the atmosphere. The environmental impact of the typical office is often lost amidst this dominant imagery. All businesses regardless of size or sector have an office or administration of some kind. Most businesses spend over 4% of their turnover generating waste. The cost of waste is not just in disposal but also includes wasted energy, water, raw materials, consumables and labour. The true price of waste can be between 5 and 20 times the disposal cost and in the average company it is around 10 times. You can save money for your company by using resources more efficiently and therefore, producing less waste. Offices are no exception. The less waste the office produces and the fewer resources it uses, the smaller its impact on the environment and the greater the financial savings.

As the office is often the interface of a business or organisation it is increasingly important that it attempts to make its operations as environmentally sustainable as possible and thus project a responsible and modern image. Customers, financial institutes, employees and suppliers have a growing interest in companies' environmental performance. The way its operations are managed and how it responds to questions about environmental impacts, easily affect your company's reputation. A typical office environmental policy could be based around five key criteria:

1. REDUCTION
   1. Reduce the amount of energy used as much as possible. Computers, lights, copiers and printers to be switched off when not in use and heating and ventilation to be used effectively and efficiently.
   2. Reduce the amount of office supplies used and attempt to gauge what is really needed. A stationery amnesty is a useful way of doing this: everyone empties their desk of unwanted supplies, which are put back in the stationery store.
   3. Discourage unnecessary usage of company vehicles.
   4. Reduce amounts of paper used in the office by using both sides of a sheet and sending information in an electronic format as and when practical.
   
   
2. RE-USE
   1. Could incoming packaging materials and cardboard boxes be used for outgoing products, or could boxes be used on site for storage purposes?
   2. Use shredded paper as packaging.
   
   
3. RECYCLE
   1. Provide waste segregation facilities.
   2. Make anything sent out to clients as recyclable as possible.
   3. Routinely collect for recycling all paper and other recyclable materials.
   
   
4. PROCUREMENT
   1. Buy recycled and recyclable paper products.
   2. Account for the energy consumption of new equipment to be when purchasing.
   3. Look at environmental criteria for new office supplies.
   4. Assess cleaning and maintenance products for their environmental performance.
   5. Make recyclability a key factor when purchasing new products.
   6. Assess new vehicles from an environmental perspective prior to purchase.
   
   
5. RAISE AWARENESS
   1. An office environmental policy may well be thought out but it is useless if its aims, objectives, procedures and targets are not communicated to the workforce. Carry out an environmental training needs analysis for your staff and develop and implement a training programme. Integrate the policy into the induction procedures for new staff and use posters and other awareness raising materials to support the policy you wish to instil.
   2. Liaise with clients, customers and suppliers to make environmental issues an important part of operations and relations.

Mock Court held in Bradford in association with Business Link

The jury, drawn from conference delegates that filled the public gallery, had to decide if demolition rubble used for landscaping a golf course was controlled waste or simply construction material.
And had there been a deliberate attempt to illegally dispose of drums containing hazardous chemicals buried in the same skip?

	The jury was out for twenty minutes before returning a verdict of... guilty.

Produced by Shot in the Dark with assistance from Alan Littlewood Associates, Business Link, John Andrews of Christeyns UK, Environment Agency, Schofield Sweeney Solicitors, University of Huddersfield, Vox Humana.

The Unofficial Laws

Alan Owen, Co-founder of Shot in the Dark writes . . . Drains, Drums, Tanks & Bunds is a new training video, produced by Shot in the Dark, to help reduce the risk of pollution from the storage and handling of materials that could cause contamination of land or watercourses. Demand for this programme has been considerably higher than expected and a glance through the prosecution section of the Environment Times suggests why. Every issue carries a catalogue of prosecutions for water pollution incidents from across the country, caused by spillages, overfilling of tanks or drainage and containment failures. Often these incidents are a virtual carbon copy of previous accidents. This constant repetition of history has allowed us to derive some basic laws on the nature of effluent and materials management.

DRAIN LAWS
1) Effluent drains never connect to what you think they do.
2) Effluent drains are always connected to storm drains.
3) Storm drains are always connected to effluent drains.
4) Effluent drains always leak where you can't see them.
5) Effluent drains always leak when you're not looking.
6) If everything seems to be OK you're about to experience a one in 300 year flood.
7)If you had a one in 300 year flood last year you will get another one this year.
8)Storm drains always block when they are needed the most.
9) All your drains will always overflow into a watercourse upstream of a fishing area that has just been restocked because of a previous pollution incident.

DRUM LAWS
1) Drums are never stored where you think they are.
2) Drums always fracture, leak and fountain where you can't see them.
3) Drums always leak when you're not looking.
4) Drums thought to be empty are always full and about to leak.
5) Drums thought to be full are always empty and have leaked.
6) When the contents of a drum that is inside a bund jet out from a fracture under pressure, the fountain will always spurt over the bund wall.

TANK LAWS
1) Tank contents are measured by dipsticks.
2) Tank contents are also not measured by dipsticks.
3) Tanks are never big enough for what's been delivered.
4) Tanks are often filled remotely, which means the operator is elsewhere with a bacon butty.
5) When a tank is overfilled that's the day the bund will leak.
6) Tanks always leak 90% of their contents but only 10% can be accounted for, except by the man walking his dog or the owners of the car showroom next door that has just exploded.

BUND LAWS
1) Bunds are always positioned over or near storm drains.
2) Everyone on site has poor sight.

3) Bunds always begin to leak in the early hours of a Saturday morning or Bank holiday.

4) Leaks are never discovered until the early hours of a Sunday morning by someone walking a dog or a Monday morning when the gas boiler ignites in the car showroom next door.

EMERGENCY LAWS
1) When anything leaks, spill kits can't be found 80% of the time.
2) When spill kits can be found, those attending the scene only know how to use them 20% of the time that they couldn't be found and none of the time that they could be found.
3) Leaks always reach the surface water drain faster than the emergency spill team 100% of the time.

~ ~ ~ ~

If you have never had a pollution incident arising from your site then those laws will seem a little exaggerated. If you have, they will probably strike a chord, a sort of unsettling, jangly, hangover kind of chord.

Don't worry, that's a normal reaction. After all you were responsible for the death of 10,000 fish. It's something to do with the way humans perceive risk and how they manage it. And when it comes down to managing drainage and containment it seems we have to tax the outer limits of human ingenuity.

We made 'Drains, Drums Tanks & Bunds' as a short no-nonsense training video in a documentary style - but it could have been made as a farce of epic proportions. During the shooting of the programme we explored a world built on a comedy of errors.

Let's take bunds for example. A bund is a containment, usually a wall that surrounds tanks or a storage area, which is designed to temporarily retain any leaks until repairs can be undertaken. It may be several feet high, or no more than a single brick. But it should be constructed to retain the whole of the drum or tank contents if there is a leak - with an additional allowance of at least ten-percent for any rainwater or fire fighting foam that could enter the bund. All taps, filling points and joints should also be within the bund.

It sounds so simple but very few, if any bunds, on any of over a hundred sites we visited during the making of the video, were entirely intact. Most of them fitted into one of two distinct classifications, which we dubbed the 'siege bund' and the 'colander bund'.

THE SIEGE BUND
This is a fortress like, four-walled bund, intended for drum storage, however no one thought about forklift access during its construction. Nothing can get in or out of a siege bund. This kind of bund can be easily identified, as drums of material are usually stored against one of the walls on the outside of the bund.

Where the company employs a management team that emphasises creative thinking, the four-walled siege bund is overcome by turning it into a three-walled bund. Removing one of the walls entirely is an immediate improvement as it enables forklift access and removes the problem of having to pump out rainwater.

Unfortunately, like many old fortresses the purpose of this kind of bund is long forgotten... until there is a leak. This is a result of Murphy's third law which states: 'If anything can't go wrong on its own, someone will make it go wrong.'

THE COLANDER BUND
These are also known as 'perforated' bunds and they have been modified over the years by hole-fitting engineers. This rather shy body of in-house professionals lurk within their company and specialise in giant sieve manufacture and minimalist brick sculpture.

Their objective is to remove as many bricks as possible while still leaving the bund standing. The holes are created to pass more holes through them in the form of pipes, which can carry any form of liquid or gas or sometimes nothing at all for no apparent reason. These holes become invisible to anyone working on site, even to hole engineers who are always willing to provide more.

Where hole engineers are lurking around from the very beginning of the bund construction, they will make sure it will be fitted over another hole in the ground, usually a surface water drain to improve the efficiency of rainwater removal.

Extra holes will also be fitted between the courses, between the walls and between the ground and the walls. Materials will be selected according to their porosity, with breezeblock being an all time favourite. Any adjustable holes such as valves or potential holes such as joints and couplings are always fitted on the outside of the bund to maximise the colander effect.

As ridiculous as these descriptions may appear, they are typical of many of the containment facilities we have featured in the video.

Without proper training and awareness the results can be devastating. What appears at first to be a minor concern can turn into a full blown crisis for any business that stores materials without an adequate training programme.

Where a void is left in the minds of those responsible the imagination will rush in to fill it. For example, one company had a serious fuel spillage, which spread across the yard producing a pond of diesel. The responsibility to manage the problem was given to the new lad who had recently joined the workforce. He was simply told to 'get rid of it'. So he did... by setting fire to it. This in turn caused a very visible air pollution incident, which resulted in prosecution.

Of course the spillage shouldn't have occurred in the first place. Which takes us back to containment. Why are bunds often left to fall into such a terrible state?

Part of the answer is that those on site often don't understand the function of a bund. It is just assumed that they do but when they are asked the answer is often: 'To stop vehicles driving into the tank of course.'

There is a similar ignorance about drains, most people simply don't know where their site drains go or why. Most are under the impression that all drains run to the sewage works. There are basically two types of drain: surface water drains for rainwater runoff; and foul water drains for process effluent and sewage.

Surface water drains are designed to take rainwater and prevent flooding. They usually run directly to a river, or canal which can be some distance away from the site. If any oils or chemicals, or just about anything else for that matter, find their way down these drains they can pollute controlled waters.

Some surface water drains, known as soakaways, discharge into the ground. If pollutants get into these drains they can contaminate groundwater and the surrounding land.

Foul water drains on the other hand can run to an on-site effluent treatment plan or in most cases, to the sewage works. So it's essential to know exactly where drains run to and what condition they are in.

And what about wrong connections? Building, maintenance work and development by previous owners, can result in a complex network of drains, often very different from the original plans and yet it only needs one fault to cause a problem. For example, sinks connected to a surface water drain instead of the sewer. Anything that's poured down the sink could pollute a watercourse. And what's going down the foul drain? High strength effluent can dissolve some drain materials so you might find that you not only have a missing drain but a contaminated land problem. Or it might just be rainwater that's going to the foul sewer but are you paying for its disposal? All too often it's a case of out of sight, out of mind.

This leads us to the first four laws of environmental training:

1. Environmental training is the result of the right person catching the blame for a pollution incident. For example if the boss gets it in the neck by the Environment Agency a training programme quickly follows, in the hope that someone else will get the blame next time.

2. This is accompanied by a policy that states, among other things, that the company is committed to training and the development of its workforce. However, don't for one moment believe that the word commitment means spending real money.

3. Environmental training budgets are usually inversely proportional to the money that could have been saved if the money had been spent before the prosecution, fines and clean up costs that followed the lack of training. In other words: 'We've just had a massive fine, and the share price has plunged, we can't afford training now!'

4. On those rare occasions where a training needs analysis (TNA) has preceded the design of the training programme, the time allocated for training delivery will be reduced by two thirds accompanied by the words; 'Get Real!' or in a more sophisticated outfit: 'Revisit the TNA again until it comes out at no more than half an hour per person off the job'. Local Authorities have to be more cryptic... er... transparent, so the answer is usually more like: 'Sorry but the training budget has been diverted to unadopted roads - it's a hung council what can I do?'

'Drains, Drums Tanks & Bunds' is a solution that bypasses the excuses.

It's designed as a fast, low cost method of reducing the risk where training resources and time are limited. The objective is to reduce pollution from the storage and handling of materials that could cause contamination of land or watercourses.

This programme runs for 15 minutes and has been produced in two parts for flexibility and to accommodate individual trainer preferences and requirements.

Part one runs only two minutes and can be used for interactive group training sessions. It highlights several examples of bad practice and invites the audience to spot them. The trainer can stop the video at this point and discuss the examples with the group. This will provide an opportunity for the trainer to assess the existing level of knowledge of the audience, stimulate discussion, add interest to the session and help with motivation prior to running part two. This is also an opportunity to compare the examples in the video with actual situations on your own site.

Part two is the main body of the programme. When time is tight it can be screened without showing part one.It covers:

Preventing the pollution of controlled waters

Identifying and protecting drains

Good housekeeping

Storage and handling of materials

Emergencies and spill kits

Bunds - purpose, inspection, maintenance, capacity and design

The message is quite clear - your drains, drums, tanks and bunds are a valuable asset for your business, but they need to be treated with respect. Good advice can be taken from the many reputable companies that sell them, or from the Environment Agency. Don't mistreat or neglect your drains, drums, tanks and bunds. They deserve better than to become the cinderella of your factory floor and yard.

Drains, Drums, Tanks & Bunds is available from Shot in the Dark
on 01484 651111 or write to:
Shot in the Dark, The Lodge in Beaumont Park, Beaumont Park Road, Huddersfield,
West Yorkshire HD4 7AY
or visit the website: www.shotinthedark.co.uk

Biographical note: Alan Owen is a film maker specialising in environmental issues and co-founder of Shot in the Dark and the Centre for Environmental Communications.

HOW TO WRESTLE WITH A BIGFOOT

Alan Owen of Shot in the Dark takes you round the world to explore the waste skips in your back yard and explains why we need to go "Back for the Future"

A blurry video of a guy in an ape suit, footprints in the snow, is it a Bigfoot? A Yeti? A Sasquatch? The Abominable Snowman? A hoax - or a rarely seen, hairy, ape like creature that leaves a trail of very large foot prints as the only evidence of its existence? These footprints have been 'found' all over the globe and in some parts of the world it's good business for the tourist trade, so hoax or not, the locals like to perpetuate the story of a giant unknown ape living in the mountains that leaves massive footprints. And it's by the size of those footprints that we can estimate the size of the creature that supposedly made them.

Our impact on the environment is a bit like that, we can't see the whole animal but we can see the trail of damage left behind, a footprint if you like, and it's from the size of that 'ecological footprint' that we can estimate the degree of environmental impact. Ecological Footprinting is one of the tools used by environmentalists as an indicator of sustainability - or the lack of it. It can be defined as a measure of the land needed within a year to supply all the materials and dispose of all the wastes of a given community. Unlike the dubious evidence for the mountain apeman these environmental tracks are very real and they are getting bigger by the day.

For example London needs an area 120 times larger than its size, that's a pretty big footprint. It's estimated that if the rest of the world were to follow the consumption pattern of the USA and other wealthy economies like the UK, we would need two extra planet Earths to support the equivalent lifestyle. Developing countries have a right and the expectation to share the same lifestyle that we do and with a world population of six billion and climbing, that's going to be a massive footprint and that's the Bigfoot that we're going to be wrestling with - unless you've got another planet in mind, that is.

If you can pull your eyes away from the Environment Times for a moment, look at your feet - or more precisely your footwear, and consider the number of different components that go into something as apparently simple as a shoe. A typical shoe can use rubber, leather, brass, cotton, plastic, woven polyester, cardboard, dyes and adhesives. There might be cotton grown in Pakistan or West Africa, dyes made in Germany, brass eyelets made from Namibian copper and Australian zinc. Perhaps a polyester insole made in France but rubber for the sole from Malaysia and maybe a cardboard insole laminate produced in China. The uppers might be sewn in Tunisia with thread made in Ireland.

The raw materials could be extracted from at least ten locations; processed and refined in another ten; moulded, rolled, milled, mixed, stamped, spun, dyed, tanned, pulped, pressed, woven, laminated and printed in another thirteen before final assembly and packaging.

Then it's on to the markets and your feet before they ultimately end their life in a landfill. Our shoe size is bigger than we think.

But that's only a pair of shoes, what about your products? How much material and how many components are used and contribute to the manufacture of your goods?

And what will happen to them at the end of their life? By considering these questions you have just taken a step towards understanding how we can manufacture products that have a lower environmental, social and financial impact.

The shoes were chosen merely as an example of the ecological footprints that virtually all products leave behind. We are now part of a complex interlinked global economy with global environmental impacts. From extraction, through many different refining and processing steps to assembly, market and final disposal, products criss-cross the world on a journey of mind numbing complexity.

Each trip between each of these locations and each process uses a massive amount of energy. Vast amounts of water are used in many of the processes along with pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals which also have to be processed and therefore leave behind air pollution, waste, pollution of watercourses, contamination of land and groundwater as well as the use of non-renewable resources.

Yet industrial economies are massively inefficient, for every tonne of product produced, about ten tonnes of material is wasted in the process. For some goods the ratio of waste to end product can be a hundred to one. Most of the 12 billion tonnes of material that we extract or produce on a global scale - such as metals, minerals and wood - is wasted.

The challenge is to decouple economic growth from the associated environmental impacts. That's an ambitious undertaking but we are coming under increasing pressure from the EU to turn this into a reality. And much of the responsibility for this will rest on the shoulders of my mate Harry.

Harry works at a depot nearby and he's the one responsible for the movement of goods in and out and the general maintenance and waste management. I say waste management but really I mean getting rid of the stuff as fast as possible to make way for . . . well . . . more waste. Now I can understand that it might not seem obvious why Harry is responsible for saving the world. So I'll come to that later. Let's get back to the imperative of reducing resource use.

For the last 200 years, we've been very good at producing waste because the emphasis has been on increasing labour efficiency - little attention has been paid to resource efficiency.

But in the future, materials will have to be used and produced, within a closed loop system, where waste is seen as just another raw material to be manufactured into new goods. So instead of a linear approach to manufacture of: produce, use and dispose, there will be a circular one. The milk bottle is perhaps the best example. Yes that's it - the old 'reuse and recycle' concept. I'm not suggesting anything new, its just that having identified a solution why don't we apply it? Sounds easy - it is in theory - but practice is another matter, otherwise we'd be recycling almost all our waste, wouldn't we?

We need to design products differently so they can be recycled and we need to develop more recycling capacity, techniques, products, markets and a recycling economy. But there is another more mundane and very major difficulty with recycling - it's called contamination. Mixing one kind of material with another can make each virtually unusable or at the very least downgrade the quality and recycling opportunities.

To most people recycling means simply putting out the green bin or taking the bottles to the bottle bank. But this is really only the beginning of the recovery cycle. What we are really doing is not recycling but segregating the waste. However, if we can't get this bit right, the whole closed loop concept starts to falter. We even have problems keeping hazardous waste separate. Take the case where aerosol paints and lithium batteries were dumped in the back of the lorry with a pile of general waste. When he woke up all the waste carrier could remember was a huge flash as he was flung against the wall and the lorry bursting into flames as the local residents ran for cover.

But it's not only cases of hazardous waste where problems arise.

Organic waste can have a similar effect. Some of the court transcripts make interesting reading: "the investigating officers could smell the sludge from a mile away", "they had to cut short their enquiries because they could not stand the smell for long periods", and "it lingered on their clothes for the rest of the day".

The Environment Agency prosecutes something like 700 cases a year, many of them are for waste related offences. But these are only the ones that come to light because of some kind of disaster or discovery . . . or odour.

And in the investigations that follow each incident the lame excuses also smell: ". . . he had missed out on the induction training", ". . . it was a one off event", ". . . they were not our usual contractors" , ". . . the site manager was ill that day", ". . . he was only trying to firm up boggy land".

Which brings me back to Harry. I've changed his name to protect my innocence, but I'm sure you know him. He has been brought up to understand that skips are for waste. It's ingrained. As soon as he sees a skip he thinks waste! He doesn't think resources, so no matter that the label shouts 'Polythene Only' or 'Wood' or 'Cardboard' in goes everything from banana skins to fag packets.

Harry is a brilliant 'fling and forget' artist and he's very creative in both the use and management of skips.

If it's a large amount of something unusual and there is no appropriate skip he'll use his imagination and bury it under something else. So mattresses that are occasionally fly-tipped over the fence can often be found secreted under green waste in the skip destined for composting. Or, if you can take the time to look over the wall at the back yard, you'll find he's built a makeshift incinerator. It works very well, particularly during the dark winter months. And if there is a complaint about the skip being left open in the rain and filling with water, Harry has a solution - he'll drill holes around the bottom to let the rain out along with any dissolved contents. In extreme cases he will even position the skip over a drain to make the process as efficient as possible. Skip lids are often left open in stormy weather, it means that as the lads run out of the back door in the driving rain clutching armfuls of packaging, they are stood in the wet for the minimum amount of time. No awkward opening and closing of lids you see. Obvious isn't it.

Harry is not unique, quite the opposite, he is so ubiquitous almost every company has one. Part of the reason is our very attitude to resources, we don't think of what we put in the skip as anything else but waste, even if we do segregate it. The skip label will often say 'Waste Cardboard' when it really should say 'Cardboard for Recycling'. So it's hardly surprising, whatever is in the skip becomes contaminated with the leftovers of someone's lunch or partly full drums of something of unknown origin. This attitude doesn't just cause risks of injury or prosecution, it can be expensive. Take for example the hospital that was undergoing refurbishment. The contractors were putting building rubble in the clinical waste skip, which was destined for incineration at a few hundred pounds a time. By the time this was discovered it had cost the hospital over £250,000. Harry is everywhere.

So how do we persuade Harry to start thinking about resources instead of waste?

Training would help of course, unfortunately for many businesses the idea of training is simply to tell Harry what's what. That doesn't really work, don't forget Harry is the most imaginative guy in the company, the only reason that he's not the Chief Executive is that he's too clever for the job. All that paper work seems incredibly tiresome, he wouldn't know how to lie about "all being part of one big family" and he couldn't read the autocue that badly for the company video. So whatever the rules are, Harry will find a 'better' alternative.

The answer of course is not just to improve training but to involve Harry in the challenge - then we might just stand a chance. This important step towards wrestling with the Bigfoot seems to have been forgotten and is not within the vision of Government departments and policy makers. Their solution at both National and Regional levels seems always to commission yet another study, just to answer the questions the last one threw up. This of course is not a solution but it saves making a decision, taking responsibility or spending money on developing environmental skills. You've probably heard the evasive comments: "In any case we're talking about waste aren't we? What's that got to do with the future? Landfill might still be better than recycling. We need to be sure. I think we need another study, otherwise we might make the wrong decision and waste resources". If you've never had that "Groundhog Day" feeling try the next conference on waste. Alternatively, you might think things are a little more urgent. Wrestling with the Bigfoot is not going to be easy and we need to act now. One of the first things we can do is to start to change attitudes in the workplace with better training and an understanding that today's wastes are tomorrow's raw materials.

To help Harry and everyone else on site understand the importance of waste segregation we have produced a new good practice training video "Back for the Future". This programme has been designed to develop an awareness of the need to maintain uncontaminated waste streams and what happens to the waste further down the line when it gets to the recyclers.

In the meantime if you see any large footprints don't worry it may only be a hoax... but just to be on the safe side perhaps we should commission a study.

Biographical note: Alan Owen is a film maker specialising in environmental issues and co-founder of Shot in the Dark and the Centre for Environmental Communications.

Employment Law

Employment law is a complex subject and it's vital to know where you and your employees stand.

To help address this need, Vox Humana have brought out a new Employment Law CD-ROM.

Part of the BUSINESS BRIEF series, the Employment Law CD-ROM distils employment legislation down to its essential 'need-to-know' components and offers:

• Instant, menu-driven access to more than 50 screens of clear,
• concise information
• Easy cross-referencing using active text links
• Video summaries of key topics
  
• UK Government and ACAS documents
  
  
  
  The main sections deal with:
  

• Recruiting staff
  
• General employment rights
  
• Maternity and paternity rights
  
• Entitlement to time off
  
• Dismissing staff
  
• Resources and cases

To find out more, or to order, contact Vox Humana:
www.voxhumana.org