"In the long term, the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it’s unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is the rule of nature." Mollie Beattie

I found this quote a few years ago whilst trying to demonstrate to groups of sceptical furniture buyers why they should purchase furniture made from sustainable sources, rather than buying it in cheap from China, hoping that their supply chain would hold out along with their profit. Showing the bottom line viability of environmental credentials has always been important to the sustainability and environmental sectors so it has been hard to communicate little else whilst being taken seriously. Yet in the business world, altruism is for the wet liberals – and philanthropy is still reserved for those whose healthy bank balances are so because of some hefty exploitation of something-or-other. There is no doubt that there are companies who have embraced the challenges of adopting more sustainable practices and there are local authorities that strive to achieve green goals, but there are still many barriers to address before we, in the business of communicating the sustainability message, can rest on our recycled laurels.

We are working in a sector buzzing with enthusiasm and general buoyancy for the behavioral changes that are underway in the way we view waste. The environment is firmly on the government’s agenda, and the public is diving into ethical consumption. The Cooperative recently reported that UK ethical consumerism was worth £29.3 billion in 2005 – overtaking the retail market for tobacco and alcohol, which stood at £28 billion, for the first time ever.

It may well make more economic sense on paper to go green, but is it easy? For some people – business or not – the ease of this transition, not the cost, is the main deterrent.

The Defra New Technologies Programme was set up to offer waste stakeholders in England impartial information on waste technologies, not previously used within the UK, for the diversion of the biodegradable portion of municipal waste. The six original work streams cover education, research, data collection, support and demonstration to give a holistic overview of what each technology can provide and how they can be implemented. It is an important programme offering access to technical information and cross-industry advice in a non-sales environment.

For three years, the supporter element of the New Technologies Programme has been working to ensure that local authorities faced with making tough decisions on waste contracts have had support and information on all the issues surrounding new technologies, minus any spin. The support can range from how a technology works, through to risk, finance and funding options. But to truly understand how something works there is nothing better than actually seeing it for yourself. In the UK, we are immediately at a disadvantage because of the lack of emerging waste technologies that are up and running. To combat this, the Demonstrator Programme, set up by Defra, will provide fully working new technology plants that will either prove or disprove the claims of each waste treatment method. Contracts for nine plants have been signed with the aim that they are all up and running by 2008. The plants cover five treatment methods: gasification, in-vessel composting, mechanical biological treatment, and anaerobic digestion. Within each plant there is provision for a visitor centre to allow stakeholders to learn about the technology and the context of the plant within the national framework.

To the new technology team, the visitor centres offer the opportunity not just to tell the story of the technology, but also to show how new technologies fit into the larger waste picture and act as a best practice exemplar of how to procure sustainably. This has obvious benefits as the centres can promote other elements within Defra’s waste strategy for stakeholders – whether they are local authority officers or community members. In terms of sustainable procurement, the initial idea was to be able to kit out each centre with a series of recycled items that would be a visual reminder of the importance of a closed loop policy in recycling. Whilst being inspirational, this would show procurement officers that a sustainable policy doesn’t necessarily have to equate to a huge budget. We even had ideas of eco porta cabins housing the centres, renewable energy gadgets and hundreds of enthusiastic examples for best practice in green purchasing.

And here’s where the reality kicked in. As with many projects it is never lack of enthusiasm or drive that stalls a good idea, it will be the real life factors. In our case, the desire to procure everything from sustainable sources using a realistic budget has given us invaluable insight into those barriers. We are, at the same time, trying to convince the business audience such sustainable procurement barriers do not exist. It’s not at all bad news though: these lessons have fed directly into other projects where we now have first hand knowledge of some of the problems associated with buying green goods.

To kit out a visitor centre you need a space first, so the research that we undertook for all the items was for the Greenfinch Biowaste digester in Ludlow. It is now up and running, and with a good communications campaign run by the South Shropshire District Council, local support for the plant strong. The plant has a viewing gallery and training room for lectures, tours and teaching. After initial discussions about what was required in the centre, and an analysis of potential audiences, a shopping list was drawn up. The list was by no means extensive, but we included as much as we could, right down to energy efficient appliances. It took hours upon hours of extensive research on our part to get hold of the majority of what we required; simple items like recycled bins could take a day of solid googling to find – usually in the US! I am committed to buying recycled, but never realised how hard it could be to find the stuff that you need. If you think that there is one dedicated site for everything I can safely say there is not, certainly not to the degree that a procurement officer or buyer in business would want to see. We have managed to obtain some wonderful items that for our budget are actually less expensive than their non-recycled equivalents, but we have also had to commission some of them. If I think about my cynical furniture buyers of five years ago being told that they should buy recycled because it makes sense and costs less – but they would need to dedicate at least four weeks to finding the items and then have to go and get them made, negotiating material and unit costs – I know they would have laughed me out of the room.

The centre now houses some fabulous items both from consumer sites like Ecotopia and business ones like Blue Line Furniture, but we have had to get some items ourselves. The benches we have used in the viewing gallery have been made from recycled plastic from Smile Plastics with a sustainably sourced sycamore frame made up in Manchester by the Furniture Workshop. The latter also designed the presentation lectern in house from a recycled wheelie bin with a sycamore workstation top. It is incredibly versatile as it acts as podium and information point for the centre, and it’s eye catching. Although most of the information at the centres will be stored on an accessible database, allowing visitors to email themselves documents at their visit, leaflet dispensers were required for other information. We commissioned a design from exhibition stand company Wild Card Creative who make recycled cardboard exhibition materials. The dispenser is made from 99 per cent recycled card, can have company or organisation graphics added to it and is produced with minimal waste from one sheet of board cut and folded. Having the items made for the centres and with no increase to the budget was a major positive. These products will now be available on the market for other organisations, so there is a degree of stimulating market development that has been important, but issues like materials for products and manufacturing time can still cause major holdups to the supply chain.

There are initiatives countrywide that have been set up to address the barriers that are part of buying recycled, and we are lucky enough to work with two fantastic regional initiatives, Recycling Action Yorkshire (RAY) and Remade Northwest. Having first hand experience of procurement issues like product quality, price, lead time and sourcing is information that we can now pass on directly to these organisations in order to make the process smoother for future projects. One project that Lorna Peacock, the procurement manager at RAY, has been working on is to develop the WRAP recycled product guide into an extensive and usable product guide for the Yorkshire and Humber region. We have worked with WRAP to reorganise some of their data to make it more user friendly, and the RAY guide now sits within the Buy Recycled part of the RAY website, alongside other procurement support. New companies are added regularly, and if you are a company producing recycled goods you can add your own updated product lists. Having access to a central point for recycled and sustainable procurement is needed for people who have little time to browse for hours. It also needs to meet expectations for the user to come back or to recommend it to others.

Hopefully, by the time the final Defra visitor centre is ready for a kit out, the enthusiasm and determination of the recycling sector in all its forms will be mirrored by the logistics of buying recycled. It can and should be a pleasant experience – it is shopping after all!