Market Potential and Demand Interviews
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
SPMT12_002: The Market Potential and Demand for Product Re-use Appendix 2: Interviews 1 SPMT12_002: The Market Potential and Demand for Product Re-use Appendix2: Interviews Project no: 1859 November 2012 Resource Futures CREATE Centre, Smeaton Road, Bristol BS1 6XN Tel: 0117 930 4355 Fax: 0117 929 7283 www.resourcefutures.co.uk 2 Document details/quality control sheet Report prepared for: Collaborative Waste, Resources and Sustainable Consumption Evidence Programme, Defra Report prepared by: Billy Harris, Resource Futures Checked by: Sam Reeve Operations Director [email protected] File name: SMPT12_002_Interviews Version: 01 Status: Confidential Date: November 2012 . Confidentiality: The contents of this report are confidential. It contains commercially confidential information and information has not been given for public circulation. 3 Contents 1. Furniture 6 1.1 Alistair Bromhead, British Furniture Manufacturers’ Association 6 1.2 Ann Beavis, Premier Sustain 7 1.3 Daniel O'Connor, WARPit 8 1.4 Richard Ryll, Clear Environment 9 2. Large WEEE 10 2.1 Sepp Eisenreigler, RUSZ in Austria 10 2.2 Sean Feeney, Environcom 11 2.3 Andy Reade, CREATE 13 2.4 Eric Long, Comet 15 3. Small WEEE 17 3.1 Eco computers 17 3.2 Scott Butler, European Recycling Platform 19 3.3 Dr. Colin Fitzpatrick, University of Limerick 20 3.4 Corey Dehmey, R2 Solutions 21 3.5 Gary Griffiths, RDC 23 3.6 Richard Peagram, HP, speaking on behalf of ZeroWIN Initiative 24 3.7 Sarah Commes & Willie Cade, PC Rebuilders & Recyclers 26 3.8 Sean Nicholson, Microsoft UK 28 4. Textiles 30 4.1 Jane Gardner, CRUK 30 4.2 Alan Wheeler, Textiles Recycling Association 31 4.3 Matt George, Oxfam 32 4.4 Ross Barry, LMB 33 4.5 Mike Webster, TRAID 34 4.6 Paul Ozanne, Salvation Army Trading Company 36 5. Construction & Demolition 38 5.1 Thornton Kay, Salvo 38 5.2 Richard Mehmed, National Community Wood Recycling Project 45 5.3 Rebecca Owens, Recipro 47 5.4 Stuart Proud, Surplus Match 48 5.5 David Rose, Portal Power 49 5.6 Mono Sanger, Bath Stone Reclamation 50 5.7 Kate & Richard Snow, Oxford Wood Recycling 51 4 5.8 Steve Tomlin, Independent Salvage Dealer 51 5.9 Howard Button, National Federation of Demolition Contractors 52 5.10 Gilli Hobbs, BRE 54 5.11 Charlie Law, Chair of UKCG Waste Working Group, BAM Construction 56 5.12 Sharon Parsons, B&Q 58 5.13 Julian Allwood, Group Leader, Wellmet, Cambridge University 59 5.14 Bill Addis, Buro Happold 63 5.15 Bill Dunster, ZEDFactory 66 5.16 Andrew Pitman, TRADA 67 5.17 Alastair Kerr, Wood Panel Industry Federation (WPIF) 68 5.18 Peter Butt, Wood Recyclers Association 69 5.19 Sarah Burgess, Federation of Master Builders 69 5.20 Tony Hutchinson, Rural Industrial Design and Building Association 69 5.21 Mark Collinson & Malcolm Waddell, Waste and Resources Action Programme 71 5.22 Adrian Murphy, National Industrial Symbiosis Programme 72 5.23 Andrew Pears, Kotuku 72 5.24 Maxine Narburgh, Bright Green 73 5.25 Cat Fletcher, Freegle 73 5.26 Emma Hill, Why Waste / Bradford Environmental Action Trust 76 6. Miscellaneous 76 6.1 David Beale, Warwickshire Re-use Forum 76 6.2 David Roman, British Heart Foundation 78 6.3 Cristina Osoro Cangas, Charity Retail Association 81 5 1. Furniture 1.1 Alistair Bromhead, British Furniture Manufacturers’ Association Describe what BFM does It’s a trade association of British Furniture Manufacturers and represents member views and provides advice on issues such as health and safety, environment etc. Do you have figures for the amount of furniture sold in the UK each year? The UK market has a value around £8 billion: £5billion domestic and £3billion imported. In the current economic conditions, is the market for new furniture growing or contracting? It’s very sector specific. The buoyant areas are furniture for older people and older persons’ leisure market (e.g. cruise ships). More generally though, it’s contract furniture (e.g. coffee shops). Office furniture is doing badly though, as people are holding onto furniture longer. Are you aware of any research on typical product lifetimes? We’ve done some work on previous research for DTI‘Zero Emissions from Furniture’. It's clear that the industry has been making progress on environmental issues, in terms of embedded carbon and recycling.Has any progress been made on reuse or design for remanufacture? There’s very little work in this area. Orange Box and Herman Miller have been doing some workon office chairs. Due to transport and labour costs however, it tends to be high end furniture. Do manufacturers operate takeback schemes for furniture? In theory, yes. Blue Line office furniture used to offer it but there’s not so much uptake. Generally, it does not get pushed too hard by manufacturers, due to storage costs, limited resale value etc. One possible drawback of encouraging a reuse economy is that the environmental benefits of reuse are measured in terms of displaced new products. Does the industry perceive reuse as a threat to the established product-service model or an opportunity to develop a new model? The reuse sector has potential. Product design for remanufacture has lots of benefits, but the majority of mainstream companies are too focused on staying afloat. Take back would create a burden to them and it also has potential hygiene issues (e.g. bedding). What are the main barriers to expanding the sector? It’s hard to see how it could be done without increasing burden on companies. Manufacturers do work with companies such as Furniture Reuse Network, but it tends to be through‘informal’ relationships. Scale can be a barrier as can the clouding of main market, but generally UK companies are better placed to do this than overseas companies. What is the potential size of this market if these barriers were addressed? There are different figure for different subsectors. Office and contract are better placed due to batch sizes. Also, the ease of capture relative to domestic. Anything to add? Changing design from L shape to smaller rectangle. The Aeron takeback system in US is a great example of what we could be doing: creating a specific brand for remanufactured products. 6 1.2 Ann Beavis, Premier Sustain Describe what Premier Sustain does It’s a division of Premier Moves – one of largest office relocation companies based predominantly in the South East. We’re often tasked with getting rid of redundant furniture. Historically people would try to sell some, but they needed something more comprehensive, so we developed a service offering focus on reuse and prevention before recovery (i.e. based on hierarchy). Between April 2011/12 we resold 11,000 items of furniture donated 1,900 items and remodelled/resized 800 desks.Remodelling desks is much better than paying to get rid of them. Wecan remodel a desk for £50-60, which saves on buying a new desk and disposal costs. The easiest things to sell are good-quality office chairs. If they’ve hardly been used, they can be resold at high value, or can be refurbished and resold with a five-year warranty. We’re also talking to lots of facilities managers at charities, which often have very old desks etc. And we kitted out a whole BLISS office with new furniture. This can be harder to do though, as donation demand is mostly for household goods. We also donate to charities, schools and social enterprises. Especially homeless and smaller charities. With social enterprises, it depends on what they need. We work very closely with ReStore in London.Schools often struggling for furniture, especially where teachers have offices. The resale route is through trade partners, so some is online, some is in shops and some is in showrooms. Who uses Premier Sustain service, and why? Large companies (e.g. law firms etc.) tend to use us and we do desk remodelling for ITV and Vodafone. What challenges and difficulties have you faced? Trying to speak to the right people to tell them what we do is not easy, since there are not a lot people doing this type of work (especially remodelling).The main barrier we face is the perception of reused furniture. “Second-hand” is a stigmatized term. “Refurbished” seems to be an easier sale than second-hand. It’s good that public procurement is starting to look at reused furniture, but it’s still a barrier in terms of perception Herman Miller do well in the US, but it’s not economically sustainable to send UK Furniture back to US. So locations of manufacturing bases are a major issue. Market constrained by supply or demand? Both. Lack of economic activity means demand for everything is less. But tight budgets mean that people want second-hand things. Also, more people are considering second-hand for financial or environmental reasons. It’s also very dependent on quality. Stuff that comes out is often cheap stuff that should never have been bought in the first place: so there’s no point in refurbishing it. Is this market growing or shrinking? Refurbished stuff is definitely growing, especially resizing. What are the main barriers to expanding the sector? Cheap imports (for example, you can buy an IKEA chair for £80). The quality of reused items can far exceed this, but again reuse has a negative image. What could be done to stimulate the market? Public procurement is already trying to address this, it sends a message that reuse helps.Wider communications would also be good, focusing on quality and moving people away from cheap disposable stuff. What is the percentage suitable for reuse? We’ve recycled about 500 tonnes of material.