Packaging’s positive face

22 December 2011



Dick Searle, The Packaging Federation’s chief executive, tells David Longfield that the conversation around packaging is beginning to move into a new and more constructive phase


Negative coverage in the past has, suggests The Packaging Federation CEO Dick Searle, meant that the packaging industry’s contribution to the economy has been overlooked. “It’s so much at the crossroads of everything that happens,” he says. “And it represents 3% of UK manufacturing.”

But as fast as events have been shaking up the world’s economy, so the emphasis on packaging in the debate over waste has been changing. “2011 has been the first full year of the [UK] coalition government,” says Searle. “And a huge change has been a recognition – the first for a very long time – of the importance of manufacturing to the economy. As a subset of that recognition, we are recognised as a very important part of manufacturing.”

In the first half of 2011 there was a Parliamentary debate on the packaging industry, which, he says: “Was the first one I recall which has been a positive reflection, of the economic importance of our industry.” The industry employs 85,000 people, he adds: “That’s 10,000 more than the pharmaceutical industry, which is often quoted as one of the UK’s success stories.”

With his office located in London’s Victoria, he is handily placed for Westminster – indeed he was due at another all-party Parliamentary group session in the next time-slot after our conversation. Being a part of the political discourse is central to Searle’s role, yet there is perhaps some frustration with the reluctance of politicians to address what he describes as ‘the real issues’.

“How do we convince people that packaging, far from being a problem, is actually a solution, and an enabler for the way in which people live?

“There’s still a widely held belief out there that packaging is a major environmental problem, but on average the impact of packaging is miniscule by comparison with the impact of products.

“The environmental impact of food waste in this country is at least 15 times that of packaging waste – or ‘used packaging’,” he adds, stressing his preferred terminology.

One major item on the Federation’s agenda for 2012 is fighting proposals in the Government’s Waste Policy Review for extending producer responsibility. “It says ‘industry must be responsible for its products’,” Searle quotes. “Well firstly, packaging is not a product. It’s there as a delivery system for products; we don’t sell packaging to consumers.

“And secondly, what about consumer responsibility? Manufacturing exists only to satisfy consumer demand for goods and services. The more we put responsibility onto the supply chain, the more we disengage with consumers. It increasingly takes away the responsibility from consumers for their actions.”

It’s a point that Searle considers important enough to have made it the subject of the first of his new blog entries on the PF website in October 2011. Yet he is realistic enough to know that the political classes are unlikely to choose a path of telling consumers (voters) that they have to change their behaviour and consume less because of global warming. “It behoves us as best we can to get the right messages out there,” he says.

To this end, Searle flags up an initiative that will bring together all parts of the supply chain to present a unified message to consumers – a work in progress, but he expects it to be complete in the New Year.

Other items high on the priority list for 2012 include the effort to deter the UK Government from enacting unilateral carbon and energy targets – certain if brought in, he says, to reduce the competitiveness of UK industry.

Then there’s the ‘resource efficiency agenda’. “Through the government Advisory Committee on Packaging (ACP), we’re looking at the whole issue. Nothing should go into landfill that can be used, however resource efficiency means people doing the right things, such as being prepared to recycle. We need to learn very quickly that when you stop being a throwaway society, you can start to think, what do I do with the resource now?

“The answer is, utilise it in some way to replace virgin materials. Or, use it to generate energy. That’s going to be a focus on what we do in the coming year,” says Searle, “but we still have a massive education task on our hands.

“I don’t expect to be made redundant any time soon.”


Dick Searle Dick Searle

Dick Searle Dick Searle


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