My Lord Chairman., ladies and gentlemen, first it is a very great pleasure to me to be asked to present these awards, and secondly to do it in the home of this rather remarkable foundation, which many, many years ago brought together the arts, manufacturing and commerce—quite a remarkable thing, an unusual combination, one might have thought, although each as important as the other because now as we know design is every bit as important in manufacturing as things being able to function well. So years ago they brought these things together.
Now we have to add another, which many will think is inherent in any event in manufacturing—it is harnessing science for the future, not only for discoveries and for particular problems, but so that we may do our very best to conserve the environment which we have inherited on a global level, and also on a regional and local level so that we may make use of the very latest discoveries to see that we do not pollute either the seas or the rivers or the air, and so that we are able to keep that remarkable inheritance that previously we have taken for granted. [end p1]
I think first, although we have to think in a new way about the environment, now we know some of the things which are happening, due mainly of course to the vast increase in the pollution of this earth and the remarkable scientific discoveries that have enabled that to happen, and the remarkable standard of living we have which will be added to by the Third World countries which have yet to achieve that—we have to think in a new way, but we have to think realistically. I find some people thinking of the environment really in quite a kind of airy fairy way, as if we could go back to some village life, because some people might like it, which really is quite impossible to do, actually. We have to think of having growth, any kind of growth in the Third World, and think how we can best protect the environment.
One of my staff very kindly found a poem by Andrew Marvell of how not to think—although the poem is very beautiful. It is a poem of a man who retreated from a world of incessant labours to a solitary garden retreat, and he did remind me of just one or two of our greens. It was this:
‘Meanwhile the mind withdraws into its happiness, yet it creates far other worlds and other seas, annihilating all that is made into a green thought in a green shade’.
It is a lovely poem; it is really very beautiful, but it is totally unrealistic. For somebody looking at Kipling, which I always quote in every almost speech, to see if I could find something much more practical which suits us very well, I thought [end p2] ‘England is a garden’. and gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful’, and sitting in the shade—
‘How better men than we can rise and start their working lives
With grubby knees and gravel paths and broken dinner knives’. I thought that was probably more likely to create a better environment than by sitting and dreaming of a green shade, although it is very nice to sit in an armchair and read a poem which is constructed in that beautiful way.
First of all we have to be realistic in our approach, and the fact is that it is only now that we have got to the present standing of living that we now enjoy in this country and elsewhere, that we then have created enough wealth to enable us to consider very carefully how to reduce pollution, how to design things better, how to tackle those problems which are still outstanding, how to have more economical engines in cars, how to reduce the pollution of the air and waters, and to cure that which we have. The amount of research which is going on is most encouraging, both in fundamental research and applied research; but in this sphere more than any other, as many of you here will know, it is easier to get the facts than it is to interpret them. We observe what is happening to the flora and fauna, we observe what is happening to the forests, we observe where the pollution is, we observe what is happening to the ice caps, we observe the ozone layer, we are looking back at climatic changes which have gone on throughout the years, and they certainly have. We have had the ice age, we have had times in this country when it was quite tropical. [end p3]
The most difficult thing now on the great global environment is to make the right interpretation of the facts which are before us. I try to keep closely in touch with these things, and I have just read a report on the Polar Research Institute, the Scott Institute at Cambridge, the other day, where there is a marvellous team working. We really have some wonderful scientists. They had observed—there are some satellites, and on the ships which we send out to do the requisite measurements—that the ice cap had diminished in area and in thickness—very considerably in thickness. We were all about immediately, immediately, to conclude that this was the greenhouse effect, the carbon dioxide effect which we all want to sort out. Then at the end there was just a little conclusion: “It is thought that this could be from the greenhouse effect, but we have come to the conclusion that it is more likely to have come from a completely different pattern of winds across the seas in the Atlantic” . They did not go on to say what that was due to.
When it comes locally to consider local pollution, things like acid rain, pollution of of the North Sea, then I think we are on much, much firmer ground, and we are taking action to deal with these things, because is it vital to conserve all the things that are in the seas; and our rivers are getting very much cleaner.
We also need to look—sometimes when I talk to the press about this, I say: “You are now putting quite a lot of trees through my letterbox with the number of newspapers that come in [end p4] every day!” Remember, you cannot go on recycling indefinitely newsprint, only to a certain extent. But we also must have a look at the use we are making of those trees and the way we must either replant to keep them going, or look at the forests.
So we are thinking in new ways, how not to pollute the atmosphere, how in our highly complex world when you have a lot of industrial waste, how to treat it so that it becomes harmless; whether it is nuclear waste—there is technology to treat it—or whether it is another kind of waste, or different chemicals—of course we are all concerned about hydrocarbons. It is thinking in a new way.
The great encouragement is that the consumer is urging us to think in new ways, and insisting that they do not like products which heavily pollute the atmosphere, by the fact that they buy things which are ozone friendly, or want catalytic converters on cars, or they want more efficient engines, and so on. We are not going to do without a great car economy; much of our economy would collapse if we did without that; but we are going to have to find more economical ways of using the fuel—more economical engines or more economical use of the cars. There are so many things, so many products, either in the manufacturing process or in the use. We have to employ all the scientific knowledge and common sense, and all our powers of imagination to their development, so that neither in the process nor in the use do we get too much pollution; or if we do, we have new industries converting those chemicals into chemicals that are harmless: and then we have to find where to dump them and what to do with them. [end p5]
It is very important too that we do not solve one environmental problem by creating another. We are sometimes a little bit inclined to do that; and then you just have to make an assessment of what is best under all the circumstances. For instance on acid rain, where we put desulphurisation in the power stations, we have I am afraid to get a whole lot of limestone, take it all in great big lorries to the power stations where it is converted into gypsum, and we do not know what on earth to do with the gypsum yet, and in any case it makes the power station less efficient and it adds to the greenhouse effect. So we have to consider: is it right to do that? The answer was: yes, it was, because in fact it is the sulphur dioxide that causes so many problems with acid rain.
I mention these things because it is not always easy to find the right way forward, and we are very conscious that it is no good just us doing them, the other countries in the world, the great users of coal, India and China also, have to do them; it does not absolve us from taking the lead, because the industrial nations must take the lead and set a good example.
I was very interested in your two last year's winners—the Baxi fire from Birmingham—who were finding that they did not like some of the effluent that was given off, and they have managed in fact to use it in the process and in fact found that they did very much more efficient castings. So by turning their minds to the environmental problems of production, they made use of something which actually increased the efficiency of [end p6] production and gave them a better product. That was a particularly good piece of environmental work.
Also I think that British Telecom found that they were using up too many trees in their telephone books, and found a way of cutting the number of trees by about a tenth, and getting a better product. This is excellent. It is truly both the arts for the design, the manufacturing including the science, and the commerce, thinking in a new way, having the consumer with us absolutely, and enabling us to have the consciousness and satisfaction that we are doing what is right, and we are doing it better than has ever been done before.
I think people do want to know that not only are they earning their own living, but broadly speaking they are doing it in a way which is right not only for them, but for everyone else.
I have a load of people to thank, and I would thank them all, but I know we have to thank Shell, the Financial Times, the CBI, the Environment Foundation, for having sponsored these things in the past and in the future. We have to thank the Royal Society for Arts for the interest they have taken over the years, and we have to thank all of those who have made this very difficult judgement about the winners; and even more important, all of those who have striven in their daily work to improve the environment and therefore in doing so improve the products.
I think this year we are giving last year's awards, the winners from last year, and therefore before I sit down in case [end p7] you should think it will not continue next year, I have to announce that it is continuing next year, and that all the sponsors have duly been found among those who I have mentioned.
Thank you very much for giving me the privilege of being here today.