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Environment, Housing and Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel
Reducing Use of Plastics in Jersey Witness: JPRestaurants
Tuesday, 2nd October 2018
Panel:
Connétable M.K. Jackson of St. Brelade (Chairman) Connétable J.E. Le Maistre of Grouville (Vice Chairman) Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence
Witnesses:
Director, JP Restaurants.
[11:44]
Connétable M.K. Jackson of St. Brelade (Chairman):
Well, welcome to the Environment, Housing and Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel. We thank you for coming in. I am going to just go around the table, you probably know who everybody is but for the record, I am Mike Jackson , Chairman of the panel.
Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence :
Kirsten Morel , Deputy of St. Lawrence , member of the panel.
Connétable J.E. Le Maistre of Grouville :
Constable John Le Maistre, Vice Chairman of the panel.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Dominic Jones, Director of JPRestaurants.
[11:45]
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Brilliant, thanks. I am going to start off by just whipping through the terms of reference within which we are working and we are trying to keep it as close to those as we can. So essentially to consider what work the Department for the Environment is currently undertaking to help reduce the use of plastics in Jersey and to address the threat they pose to pollution to the environment and its wildlife; (2) to determine whether a suitable cost benefit analysis has been undertaken by the Department for the Environment in relation to the cost of public awareness initiatives, campaigns and any resulting benefits this has in reducing plastic waste; (3) to consider the role that businesses can play in the reduction of plastics and the benefit to the environment this could bring; (4) to consider Jersey's importation of plastic materials and the potential limitations and challenges this may pose for Jersey's ability to significantly reduce plastic waste; (5) to assess whether recycling initiatives in Jersey are fit for purpose, specifically plastics, and to identify what improvements can be made and what other initiatives could be introduced; (6) to explore how plastic waste is treated and assess what environmental benefit this has; and finally (7) to explore what other countries practice in terms of reducing and eliminating use of plastics and identify what lessons Jersey could learn from this. So really we are here to learn about your side, from the hospitality industry, so if I may kick off by just asking what the concerns customers raise in respect of the impact of single use plastics in the hospitality industry and what the feedback is to you.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, so I have looked at this in the context of what our customers are asking us and what we are seeing people are asking and the first thing I wrote down here, which sounds probably a little trite, that there is lots of talk but there is not much walking unfortunately. I think that is understandable and hopefully I can explain some of that and what it is. First of all, there is certainly anecdotal evidence that it is very well received by customers. We reinvigorated our campaign in March 2018 W"e have had environmental initiatives in place for over 10 years in our business but we woke up on 1st January this year and really thought it was something we needed to do more about because of what was going on. Importantly - and I think this is very important, as a business we believe in it. It is not just that we think it is right for customers, because the cynicism will come through, I think, if you just do it for economic benefits. There are many economic benefits and they can come through, there are also economic costs but we do it because we believe in it and we think it is right. We feel, as a business, we are part - and every other business here should feel - of living in the Island and the part of our whole society, and whether it is the living wage or looking at waste management or plastics we have to work together to do that. Obviously as a higher profile business we get held up
well, our customers expect better standards I guess than they do of the rest of the industry. So
lots of anecdotal evidence that people are supportive of it. When we put out our social media campaign, which is our main way of communicating with customers here, we got very supportive comments and we felt that it was a positive thing. I guess we feel, especially since some of these initiatives have cost us money and have involved prices increasing, not as much as things like the living wage but even the living wage has shown to us that by increasing our cost base and having to increase prices to do that customers react well. So our business has grown this year rather than shrunk, despite two strong social benefit initiatives, if you like, that have resulted in us increasing costs, which shows to me I think that the public have an appetite for this. We hear a lot of talk about, you know, everybody wanting government to sort things out by reducing G.S.T. (Goods and Services Tax) and reducing costs and everything else but we feel that there are things that the general public will pay more for if they feel it is doing a benefit for the Island. So that is anecdotal. As I said we launched our last initiatives in March this year and that is 7 years after launching the first keep cup, which has obviously been there has been a lot of publicity over the last few years on the use of single use coffee cups for hot teas and coffees. Sadly, sort of 7 years after we launched it and with a big push in March this year, and a lot of publicity both in the press, on radio and TV, only 6 per cent of our customers use reusable cups. That is despite the fact it is cheaper for them to do so. So I calculated that if you were drinking a coffee every morning in one of our coffee shops and you took advantage of the 25p discount that we give, you would save yourself £60 a year and you would probably save yourself £120 a year if you were having a coffee twice a day, which many of our customers do. What was interesting is that after the publicity and we provided the discount of 25p, the number of keep cups that we sold went up significantly and the amount of people using them went up significantly. But that has dropped back by about 30 per cent. So both numbers have dropped back 30 per cent since March of this year, I guess with people feeling that it is difficult to do. We can talk a little perhaps about what we are doing in the office as well, because we have to walk the walk and not just do the talk as a business. But, personally, there is some initiatives which I find very easy to do and others which I find more difficult. If I forget my keep cup and it does not become part of my daily routine, then it is easy to slip into leaving work, not having it and then going and having of course there is nothing wrong with that, I have probably saved 200 to 300 cups this year myself personally but this morning I did not use it because I was rushing and I did not think about cleaning my cup. So there are times when I think it is understandable it does not work. I liken it a little bit to the use of plastic bags. Potentially - and I suppose this is something we can get into - you need to force it to force change rather than just giving benefits, because even 25p, which is quite significant - and that 25p has cost us money as well as a business, and I can come on to that a little bit if you would like later because there is a cost in all of this - but even if you are giving a customer £120 savings a year, they are not going to do it because we all want convenience. We have busy lives and I think we need to understand that.
The Connétable of Grouville :
I am sorry to interrupt, your keep cups you sell them to people at
Director, JPRestaurants:
At cost, yes. The same with the yes, we sell them at cost. So we have brought them in at we sell them at the cost that we bring them in for and then we give customers a 25p discount on their coffee. Our disposable cups cost us well, net, without going into too much detail, it is probably costing us about £1,500 a year, something like that, for the current uptake. So that is a cost to us as a business.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
If the numbers were to increase, would it be sustainable?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Well, we would have to pay for it. I can equate it against the living wage. The living wage has resulted in significant increasing costs, we have had to put our prices up around an average of 6 per cent for the living wage in our cafes, to take people from, you know we were not paying the minimum wage, we were over but we have had a 30 per cent pay rise in our cafes across all the businesses and that has involved a pay increase and we have seen no slowdown in customer uptake at all. Again, I think there is an issue for people when you communicate to them and they understand why they are doing it, they are willing to do it. Obviously what it does is it concentrates the mind and then you become more productive. So if you are putting costs elsewhere it is even more of an incentive to make yourself more efficient in other places. Obviously, as a bigger business, we are able to manage that probably better. Not because we have more money, just that we have got more ability to create productivity and I think that is a really important thing. Along with a living wage, it is a similar initiative here that if you have less businesses acting more efficiently you can create these wins. Sometimes just the stick approach does not work, sometimes you need to do it in the way of having more efficiency and more productivity, if you like. That can help with those wins and pay for the benefits that you want.
The Connétable of Grouville :
The Co-op have just announced they are going to do way with their disposable bags in 2 years time, whatever it is. You could not really do that in your coffee shops because people would not come in the door.
Director, JPRestaurants:
No, you could not, but I guess you could put a tax on cups coming in that would make it significantly unattractive to use them. I think that is probably the only way that you would change consumer behaviour.
The Connétable of Grouville :
So the Government would have to put that tax on?
Director, JPRestaurants:
I think so. I was thinking about it, yes, I think you would have to do that on import. I appreciate all of the the technical issues. Obviously we want to make our tax regime as simple as possible here but I am not sure how else you would do that. But you cannot ban them. Well, you could ban them, I guess, but it would that would severely impact the business and people would have to bring their own cups but the bag example is a very good example. I think a lot of people do remember their bags and we will definitely have to remember them when they do not have any there, if we don't we will be buying a larger one.
The Connétable of Grouville :
So you are saying the tax would have to be somewhere around 20p a cup to try and level out the 20p, 25p
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, so if you put the 25p tax across the whole I think we are showing the 25p as an incentive which, I agree, is slightly different from a tax. It is funny, is it not, people think differently of it but it has only created 6 per cent take up, even 25p. So it may be to achieve the elimination of cups, which is equivalent to bags, would be impossible because you would have to put up tax so much that it would become sort of counterproductive.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
There is probably a break point, is there not?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, I think it is an interesting one. I am talking about cause and effect here, not the journey how we get there. I would not want to be seen as saying that we would be encouraging a tax because I could see that was a challenge but I think one has to argue from the statistics that we have had looking at them, that that is what would make the difference. That being said, if you like I can come on to this, if we look at our single use cutlery, so forks, knives and spoons for instance, we have had some quite spectacular results there by taking them away. So what do not do now is we do not put them out, so people have to ask for them. They are under the table and wewe have also swapped all of our single use plastic cutlery to biodegradable corn ware. There is a whole issue which I would like to talk to you about, about what is environmentally friendly or not, and how you get that information, because I think that looking at cornware, which we have put in, I was sitting on the fence about whether it was a good thing to do because I looked into so many environmental resources to see whether incinerating cornware was better than incinerating plastic, given that we have no landfill here and we cannot biodegrade plastic cutlery. Ultimately, our plastic cutlery, although you do not see it in the street, it is going into the bin and it is ending up at the incinerator. So that is a whole different question. But if you look at where we have taken it away and replaced it, we have taken
so based on the 5 months extrapolated over a year, we have seen a 30 per cent reduction in the use of single use plastics from people not having them to take. Maybe because they were grabbing handfuls and we were handing one out , et cetera. In terms of numbers, we have taken 130,000 pieces of single use plastic out of Jersey and we have replaced it with around sorry, if you gross them up it is more than that. Let me just get the figures, so we have take about 200,000 pieces of single use cutlery out of the Island and it has been replaced by sorry, about 300,000 out, is that right that is right, and then 30 per cent of that, 200,000, is now the cornware that we using. So we have had a 30 per cent reduction in use and we have replaced it, if you like with 200,000 cornware
The Connétable of Grouville :
Is corn ware combustible? Compostable?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, it is compostable. The issue you have, and it goes right back, is that you need to grow corn to do it, which means you get deforestation and all the other issues. So you can look at these things
it is a very complex issue and one thing I would say is that Government could probably help us in leading that initiative because there is a lot of "green-washing". One of the things that we say, we very much feel, is that holding yourself out to be green is not a good thing to do because you will always find someone who is greener than you. I think there are a lot of people who jump on the green bandwagon if you like that it is very easy with a bit of science to tackle that. We always , before we get the product to the market, we also have to sit and try and understand that what we are doing is right and we enter into debate with people, it has taken up a lot of time because we get
you know, apart from the general public, we get a lot of the local action groups contacting us, asking us to do various things and we have vigorous debates with them about this. We do not just do it because they are going to stick a nice label on the front of our shop and say it is right thing. We want to make them think and us think that it is the right thing to do.
The Connétable of Grouville :
It is quite clear that your business is taking a lead in this area. Are you unusual or are there a number of businesses?
Director, JPRestaurants:
I think there are some niche places that do it. Again, I am talking from my own personal experience, I think a lot of people talk about what they are doing, you know, whether it is banning straws and other things. Whether it happens is a different thing. Even with us when we announced this, you still find there is a packet of straws somewhere and you think: "Oh, why is that still there?" It takes time to filter through. I think there are some specific foot outlets here that very muched focus on healthy eating and lifestyle and they have customers who are very keen on that sort of thing, there are lot of other places that do not. Again, even the places that seem very keen on it, there are things that they may be doing, which if you were to self-examine what you are doing may not be as environmentally friendly as they may hold themselves out. So I think it is a difficult thing. It needs to become a norm. It does not need to become a green initiative, it needs to become something that we are all doing bit by bit. I guess the example with the single use disposable cutlery is quite how effective that has been. I just see myself I thought at the beginning of this year when I was using my keep cup if you sit there and you think about all those cups piled up alongside you for a year, that is quite a lot for one person. Little things can make a difference, that 6 per cent has made probably this room full of cups difference in terms of the numbers of customers.
[12:00]
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I think you said 200,000 items removed from the business
Director, JPRestaurants: Yes, the single use cutlery, yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
To me that paints an enormous picture.
Director, JPRestaurants:
It has been replaced by the corn ware obviously so 30 per cent less than that, yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Perhaps better for burning or can be composted. So slightly better for the environment. If I could just go back to the public awareness, and you talked about the 30 per cent uptake in keep cups from public awareness, and when see things like The Blue Planet - in many ways that one series is what has put this entire issue on the menu, so to speak - how important do you think those public awareness campaigns are? You also talked about the pull back after awhile, can you think of any other initiatives or ways of encouraging people to achieve ?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Obviously it is very easy for the - without getting political - States to spend a lot of money on these public awareness campaigns, we have to pay money to communicate to people because we cannot do it for free, even though social media works to an extent but you have to pay. The reality is that, I think, you have an initial hit with a lot of coverage and media. We are going through it now with allergens, which has been a big thing we have been doing and obviously it is a big issue in the so everybody is talking about it, everybody is focused on it. We are one of the only Island restaurant businesses that does publish allergens so we are not needing to address it but the thing is that it drops off and then it becomes important only to the people who think it is important. I am not sure public awareness campaigns will necessarily have the long-term effect. What they may help you do is bring the structural changes that you need to do. So probably the ability for the Co-op to ban plastic bags has been 10 years of public awareness that finally means that people accept it and do not complain. Whereas if you were to ban coffee cups tomorrow realistically, why should we be using disposable coffee cups? There should be ways around it. I have thought about lots of things, do we offer people a dishwasher they can have 2 cups and leave one that we clean and pick up the next day. I do not know. That is one of the big so you have to think of those challenges and it is the same with smoking and people dropping cigarette ends. Sometimes you have to think about clever ways of trying to address them. From our experience, I am not convinced that public awareness will do anything other than reinforce the actions you need to take, which is just banning them in the end, just like you would with lead in petrol or anything else.
The Connétable of Grouville :
What encouraged you to set forth on your journey in this environmental friendly vision?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, I guess to an extent it was public awareness because as a group of individuals in the business we believe in these initiatives, maybe reinforced by the fact that like many people here we are a Jersey family and our children and grandchildren are going to live here. It is one of the things I tackle people, business owners, about when I challenge them about these issues. Are your grandchildren going to live here? When they look at me slightly sheepishly then you know that I have won a point in the argument. I think a lot of it is to with how we maybe it was slightly political in the sense that it is just how we feel we should be operating as individuals. Yes, it is the same question you would ask: "Why do we believe our customers think this is important?" We have been sensitised to it, we are looking into and then we are deciding we think it is the right thing for the Island. But also we resisted it for a bit as well, because I think we have challenges with the environment all over the Island, with farming, with our waste management and all sorts of things, and you have to be careful about how you plan and go into it and not just knee jerk react into it. But I think just as a general matter we tend to think that the objective is worth getting there and we need
to think how to get there, rather than just trying to ignore it because getting there is too difficult. The waste charge is an another example,we stick our neck out a lot in the hospitality industry, living wage, waste management charge, plastics. We are not similar to most or the view of, for instance, the Jersey Hospitality Association, they feel very strongly against these things. If you look at things like wastage, waste charge, for instance, yes, it is going to increase costs for tourism and tourism is potentially an issue but how honestly can it not be right if you are trying to reduce waste to have a user pays system? It has to be right that how many bags I put out on the street and how much I pump down into the sewers must be something I should pay for. We just feel that is the right thing because otherwise, going back to this issue of public awareness, you are never going to get change unless people are hit in the pocket. It is a bit like enforcement and fines sometimes I guess. You need that to create the change. Then people just accept it after that, do they not, like plastic bags?
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Just taking you back to the cups and the fact that you are offering them at cost price, and the fairly low take up, I am just interested if that take up was to be phenomenally more it would seem to me that that would be unsustainable, would you agree with that?
Director, JPRestaurants:
We just have to adjust as I say, at the moment if we look at the keep cups, I think it is probably costing us - we have to deduct the cost of the cups that we are not using, but I guess it was costing us for the around 6 per cent take-up, about £1,000 a year. So if you extrapolate that up to 100 per cent then you are going to be getting towards £10,000, £15,000 a year and then that starts to look like that is just out of pure profit and it has to be something that you need for investment and other things. There is a real cost in this. As it becomes the norm, then you adjust your charges. If the Co-op were making money on selling bags before then I guess they are having to make that somewhere else. It is just the law of economics, is it not? I suppose that is what happens and the living wage is a very good example of how that happened.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
But it might have stimulated a behavioural change by then so
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, I think it is 2 things. It is a public awareness you know, I think pure tax for tax sake is obviously not popular but I think this idea that we know where we are trying to go and this is why we are doing it, I am not sure you will get the resistance that you would get. You might get it from the business owners but it is consumers who are the really important people, not the business. This is what we proved with the living wage is that our business has gone up since we have introduced the living wage - sorry to keep harping on about it - but it is a really good analogy of how a step change in cost for something that is perceived as a social good in the Island has increased our revenues rather than reduced them, and not just by the price increase. It is because people like to spend money in businesses which they think are socially aware and doing good for the Island.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
That is what is fascinating from what you are saying, that customers have not deserted you as a result of an increased costs, whether it is the living wage or the cost of cups. You are seeing more custom not less. I find that fascinating.
Director, JPRestaurants:
That being said, there is no doubt about it that our business is focused on a higher spending demographic, there are cheaper places than us. Value is a different thing. Sometimes we are perceived as expensive, interestingly, when you do the comparisons we are no more. If you look at our average restaurants, compared to many in the Island they are not much more expensive, we just happen to be more efficient which enables us to have the profits to be able to carry out these initiatives. So it is a snowballing, if you like. That is part of the problem here. It is a whole complex issue that needs to be done together and I would not for one moment say that it should happen immediately, ,while we would love it to happen tomorrow, because we are doing it already. We see the challenges and I think they need to be looked at in quite some depth, if you like.
The Connétable of Grouville :
Can you just tell us a little bit about your company, you have a number of restaurants, have you not?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, we have 5 restaurants now, 3 cafes and one in a bank, so 4 cafes, and then we provide catering to about 9 of the Island's schools. That is a separate business called Capsicum. In the restaurants, we serve around probably 20,000, 25,000 a month, something like that, and the cafes we are probably serving 1,000 people a day, something like that, I would think. They are good numbers but a tiny percentage of the whole island market.
The Connétable of Grouville :
I was roughly aware but it is nice for the record to have that.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
You have mentioned your plastic cutlery, you have also changed away from plastic straws, I understand as well?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, plastic straws are a very good example where there has been absolutely no customer kickback again, we do not see it as any drop in service because of that. We resisted it for a while, first, because we thought it was tokenism. I think I have been convinced against that now, so we resisted for a bit but then I thought: "No, tokenism is quite important to all of this, it makes a statement", even though what we really wanted to say to everybody was: "Do not just stop the straws, look at everything you are doing and try and make it better." The problem with the replacements are that they are unpleasant. Paper straws collapse, people who wear makeup or prefer not to get their lips covered in whatever do not want a glass so it has been a compromise in potentially enjoyment of drinks and other things, but people have accepted it and it has worked well. I do not think it has been a big problem. I think that was a pretty easy one that we probably should all have thought about a long time ago and just did not until somebody brought it to our attention.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It seems to be becoming the industry norm over here now, more and more restaurants and pubs, cafes are going to have paper straws so it seems to have caught on. Cutlery, I think there is still a lot of cafes which do not use corn starch cutlery or whatever.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Clearly corn-starch cutlery is more expensive to produce
Director, JPRestaurants: Yes, yes, it is.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
are you satisfied with how has there been an effect on the business in terms of costs from that point of view?
Director, JPRestaurants:
The costs are roughly similar overall to the introduction of the 25p charge at the moment. So across the whole business it has been sustainable, not that expensive. Again, what I do not know is whether corn starch is really environmentally friendlyI do not know what happens when it gets incinerated, what it releases, I do not know how you know, you read a lot about when it is produced that it is causing deforestation and other issues and they still produce greenhouse gases potentially. I do not know what the inputs and outputs of it are. That is maybe something where you could help steer people to make the view. We have tried to look into this, I have trawled through the internet, and I find it very confusing, so the public must find it confusing and certainly business owners must find it confusing too because a lot of them do not have the luxury that we have as a larger business to have people thinking about these sort of things. They have to run their businesses.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
There is a risk it is a bit faddish, is it not, and then we move on to the next thing?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, there are lots of different types of ones. There are so many different versions of different prices and they have different colours and they do different things and there is wooden we looked at the whole lot. The ones we have now are better quality, they are nicer. I understand they take 25 years to break down in landfill, which is I guess better than 150 years for plastic. I still do not know the absolute but there is a cost to it.
The Connétable of Grouville :
There is washable cutlery, is that definitely out? Is it cheaper washing the cutlery? That does not take up room like a cup would.
Director, JPRestaurants:
No, no, the problem is for takeaway. Obviously when people are taking it away, but in the restaurants that is not an issue.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
You have also noted in your submission that you are looking at the harder issue of packaging and offering a greener alternative?
Director, JPRestaurants: Yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Are we talking about sandwich boxes and things like this? Cardboard use.
Director, JPRestaurants: Yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can you tell us, what are the main issues you are facing with those, and also are you getting any input from government, from the States, about the advice you were talking about earlier, helping you on this journey?
Director, JPRestaurants:
No, I think there are lots of communications but I am not sure directly we are. There is quite a lot of activity on social media and in the press about things that are seen as good initiatives but it is hard to get concrete help, if you like no, it is us going to suppliers and suppliers deciding what they can provide us. Packaging, we are sort of less far down the road than we are with others. It is a tricky one to look at, getting the right benefit but we are always aware of it and trying to make it better . We have a lot of sandwiches and hot foods that are wrapped in paper, all our soups that are served out that used to have plastic lid, they now come in completely cardboard containers. We have looked at those sorts of things. Packaging as well, you need to look at the whole thing. One of the positive things about the hospitality industry which people do not realise is we buy a lot in bulk. A lot of our vegetables, for instance, do not come 3 carrots wrapped in plastic, they come in big paper sacks and in netting bags and in boxes. So the inputs that we are getting, there is probably a lot less packaging than there would be if that food was being bought in a retail environment and, of course, there is a lot less wastage as well because we have virtually zero food waste in our business. Anything that we do have gets eaten by staff and even the sandwiches that they sell on the shelf they go to staff to pick up. We deliver them around to our different outlets. I think there is not an issue there. When you get one step back further you have then got to say how are those potatoes being produced. Is a Jersey Royal that is sitting under plastic that is being ripped and going into the fields, which it undoubtedly is here, better or worse than an organic later potato that is coming from the U.K. (United Kingdom) and shipped in here? I cannot answer that question but I think it is a valid one that we should be examining in ourselves and looking at the whole supply chain, if you like, and how it is done.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Going back to Kirsten's point about governmental influence or assistance, if you like, do you think as part of a planning obligation when a business was applying for, shall we say, a takeaway licence there could be conditions put on that perhaps stipulated the use of non-plastic materials in terms of we see takeaways with the polystyrene boxes and the littering that goes on?
[12:15]
What would be the effect of Government controlling that? Would it force costs up into another ...
Director, JPRestaurants:
Well, apart from my general cynicism that a lot of planning obligations are not enforced, but that is another matter of how you would do it, I am not sure that would be the best way of going about it. I think it should be more at theoutset, you either ban something coming into the Island, like leaded petrol or whatever, or you create a tax, which I think very importantly must be put ... ringfenced and put into environmental initiatives. I think from a customer perspective would be the better route and where you could achieve the same thing. I think it would be better for Government to spend time ... and we will come on to the whole recycling and waste management. There is a lot there that could be done to make that process easier for businesses. It might surprise you with some of the things that we have to do to try and attempt to comply with
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Going to the importation of plastic packaging, if you like, do you think it is controllable? Even in the hospitality industry you are buying in bulk, probably from U.K. suppliers. Is it manageable? How could it be controlled?
Director, JPRestaurants:
I think Jersey is going to ... we will probably go on the coattails of legislation that happens in the rest of Europe/the U.K., depending on whether or not they are together in the future, and obviously consumer demand is important and we can address all these sorts of initiatives, if we can buy something that has got less packaging or better credentials then we are going to be keener to do it if it is at a similar price or, as we have said, even if it is a bit more expensive if we think that is something that our customers would like. I guess there is definitely ... takeaway food outlets compared to restaurants are a very different animal, if you like, and I suppose there is an argument for saying that there may be additional constraints and in many ways takeaway food outlets have ... there is huge competition here so I would not say necessarily that the profit is there to do that but there is probably also over-capacity as well which means that profits are being reduced because there is too much competition and that does not necessarily translate into cheaper things for the public, by the way, because what it creates is lack of efficiency. If you do not have that efficiency then it is difficult to be subject to these other things. But interestingly I do think regulation in the wider sense with planning and conditions and things, maybe not just focusing on this, can achieve the same objective, if you like, in making businesses more efficient and making sure that only businesses that can satisfy those criteria ... the problem you have here, and we have seen it very much in other environmental factors such as if you look at the outlets and kitchen extraction units that are required to be put in now and the filters that you need to pay for and the cost of them ... we are spending £1,000 a month on filters in restaurants. We are putting systems in that are costing us £100,000 to make sure that there is no smell coming out of our restaurants and yet you can have a 25 year-old chip shop next door that is not subject to the same regulations. That creates an unfair playing field and disincentivises people like us. We fight against anything else that is environmental. So it would need to be ... you cannot just apply it to new businesses, if you like. You can do it if you want to control the numbers of them but then what you are not doing is creating a level playing field and I think it is so important that that happens, otherwise you do not get the benefits, I think.
The Connétable of Grouville :
You must employ quite a large number of staff. Have they bought into the whole concept if they help themselves to a coffee in the shop, which I assume they do?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes. As I said, I am sure many of them are like me and we do not always do what we should do all of the time, but we have had several initiatives we have brought in including ... we used to have plastic water bottles available for all our head office staff, bottled water because we did not have anywhere nearby and there was not a kitchenette. Strange for a restaurant business but there was not a kitchenette and we cannot have our head office staff wandering into the kitchens. We have our offices above Banjo on the top floor in the old servants' quarters. They are not as salubrious as everything downstairs. But what we have done is we have brought in ... we found a waterpipe and next to the photocopying machine we have put a water dispenser and we got rid of them. So we were probably getting through 20, 30, 40 bottles of plastic mineral water a week and that has all gone and people ... you just think: "Why did I not do that before?" It is just nothing for anybody. It might be a bit of chlorinated St. Helier water rather than nice mineral water but it really was not an issue. We have also done the same thing for all the kitchen staff and everybody working back of house. We have provided them all with water bottles, which they refill, and there has been a good uptake on those. So I think it has been good. Just interestingly, if you look at our head office staff and particularly the last 2 employees we have had thar are involved in our customer services and employee relations. notemployee relations, customer relations and all of our communications and is part of our marketing team and everything else. Particularly the younger members of staff that we get in are very, very keen on these initiatives, so they badger us as well to do it. So I think that is a really positive thing and shows that what is interesting is the younger group probably are more focused on this because old habits die hard, but it is much easier for younger people to adopt it and embrace it.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Do you think water fountains in public places would have a good take-up?
Director, JPRestaurants:
I think water fountains in public places and dedicated smoking areas and bins and things like that would make ... yes, I think it would be a good idea. Interestingly, if you ... so that is fine there but the issue you have inside, there is a relationship inside a restaurant with providing bottled mineral water. Interestingly, you can provide water like this and tap water, and of course if somebody asks for it there is never a problem. But customers do not ask for it. They do like ... there is something about a cold bottle of fizzy water coming out that people like and the reusable alternatives, if you like, that you can get are very ... the bottles start looking tired and a bit dirty on the table from wear and tear. Interestingly, we do not think there is a take-up of that but of course if you were to ban it altogether ... these are glass bottles but I am giving it as an example. If you were to ban these things, you ban the sales of drinks in plastic, for instance, water in plastic, it would have an knock- on effect on profitability which you then have to make up somewhere else. If you are providing free water, you have to put the cost somewhere else. It is just the dynamics of the food business. You cannot take it away and expect not to find that price going somewhere else.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
You suggested that in terms of recycling of waste you pay a local charity to collect cardboard and used cooking oil.
Director, JPRestaurants: Yes.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Due to the fact that you say some parishes do not carry selected recycling from pickup. Do you think there is a need for a more united approach?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, I do. It is interesting, I was reading the article from your submissions, I think it was either yesterday or the day before, about somebody saying that they did not feel that a ... the parish system worked well and they would be loath to get rid of that. That is fine as long as it is consistent. If it is not consistent then I think you need to be signing up to a single provider. So at the moment, we sort all of our glass, oil, aluminium cans and cardboard. Plastic, unfortunately, goes with general waste because it is not picked up separately at the moment but of course we are showing you that we are doing glass. So we have standard pickups. St. Helier is the best by a long mile. So they will pick up glass refuse, aluminium cans and some cardboard and separate it. Well, we hope they are separating it; we are assuming they are.
The Connétable of Grouville : Do you pay for that?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Well, we pay for it through our rates, but it is not sufficient for our needs so we have to pay somebody separate to come and clear it in addition. All our aluminium cans at the moment are also compacted before they are thrown away, so we have a compacting machine that compacts them and then they come and get picked up. In St. Brelade and St. Martin there is no separate collection and interestingly when we have written - I will not say which parish - in the past to request this, the answer was: "What do you think we should do?" We said: "With all respect to the ratepayer, I think you should be coming up with that idea not us. We are doing the sorting. Come up with a plan to come and pick it up. There are obviously people doing it." So we do pay a charity. On top of the general refuse collection and where we can have it ... where we are paying, it is probably costing us about £100 to £150 a month to have the other separated oil, cans and cardboard picked up from other places on top of what we are paying already. Indeed, some of the correspondence we have had with some of the private contractors here has been: "I am too busy at the moment. I have not got a round I can come and do it for you." So we tend to do it through a charity rather than ... glass we do through a private contractor. Les Amis do a lot of the other stuff, but it is a charitable thing and they are probably doing it at lower rate than would work Island-wide . But again it is a charity doing it and it is a way of creating labour and benefits and everything else and I think it is a really positive idea. So I think there is a lot more the Island could be doing.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Maybe we need to have a further conversation in St. Brelade .
The Connétable of Grouville :
Strangely, in the law, a parish is not required to pick up commercial waste. Some parishes do.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, because they are paying rates, I guess, that people pay ... yes, that is an interesting point.
The Connétable of Grouville :
It is obliged to pick up domestic waste but not commercial waste and parishes do vary.
Director, JPRestaurants:
I guess it is equivalent with rates, is it not? You look at the rates you are paying commercially and I suppose you say: "What am I getting for my rates?"
The Connétable of Grouville :
In my parish anyway the domestic collection is subsiding the business collection because in the houses it is £1 a week they pay for the cost of picking them up and they pick up a dustbin or 2 dustbins but a business generates 6 or 7 Eurobins quite easily.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes. That sorting and the collection obviously is going to add a cost and again it is the same issue that it is an extra cost for business and it will be a challenge to some businesses and less to others, but if you want to get there my sense is, it is the only way you are going to do it. How that happens, and the transition to do toit, is the big question. It is like with all these initiatives that we want to do, but I think ... and the other importance is that it takes place. The problems we have seen with glass here that if people chuck everything in then it all goes to ... they put things in the wrong bins and it goes down to the incinerator, then it is not working and there needs to be ways of making that work.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Do you have any ideas about how the recycling could be made easier from a business perspective, whether it is the sorting, whether it is the collection side of it?
Director, JPRestaurants:
I think the collection is probably the easiest bit. As you can see, we are doing stuff already which is not ... we have not got the flipside from those responsible for managing our waste, which we are paying for or not paying for as the case may be. That is not happening. I think there are some practical issues. If we were to sort plastic as well, that would start to create more issues. I am not saying we cannot do it but it will incentivise us to buy stuff with less plastic, I guess, but it will be more of a challenge. Also a lot of restaurants, particularly in town or elsewhere, have physical constraints on space, so once you start having additional sorting done, it is like at home, it becomes a problem. I was looking at domestic refuse bins on Amazon yesterday and there are some that are about this wide because you have got plastics, cardboard, and you are separating them all out. So there is a physical logistics issue there, I think. Maybe we just need to be looking at the things we can be doing easily and then doing it little by little but I would not underestimate the challenges for that.
The Connétable of Grouville :
You probably do not get many but do you separate your plastic bottles?
Director, JPRestaurants:
No, we do not. They go into the general waste at the moment because we are not aware that they are picked up separately. I guess we probably could get them picked up and deliver them but we do not have much plastic bottle waste because everything that comes into the ... 99 per cent of stuff into the restaurants is glass. We purposely choose that because they are more environmentally friendly. In the cafes, people who are buying plastic, although we are trying to reduce it with different types of .. we have got water in cans at the moment, for instance, in metal cans. People are obviously taking it away and we are not then dealing with the waste disposal because they are not eating or drinking on location. It is takeaway food.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Plastic bottles are quite successfully recycled and some parishes will pick them up. It seems to me, in terms of plastic, that the bottles are the successful bit but the rest perhaps not so much.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes. As I say, in our business probably plastic bottles have been the easiest thing to get rid of. In the food service industry you probably could almost ban them, I think.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I do not know if it is just premium suppliers but you do see a lot of water now in glass bottles. The manufacturers or the providers have done that.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Do you think within your business, apart from bottles, there are other sorts of plastics that could be recycled?
Director, JPRestaurants:
I am not a technical expert. I am sure there are and I am sure we could sort them and that is probably something that needs to be ... that it would be interesting to ... I have no idea but it would be an interesting thing to look at to see how much plastic waste we generate and of what type it is. But, as I said, there is a lot less than you might expect, I think, than the retail side because we are buying things in bulk and not in a lot of big plastic bags. A lot of it is coming in other types of containers.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
You are satisfied that all the plastic that you are generating in the businesses is either going into recycling or incineration?
[12:30]
Director, JPRestaurants:
It is probably all being incinerated, I would imagine, unless it is being dealt with ... because it is not being sorted, I do not think, in the general waste collection. I am not aware. I am pretty certain that plastic ... we are not separating plastics at the moment because there is not a way to do that. Our plastic initiatives have been more on the inputs rather than the outputs, if you like. We try to reduce them, which we have been relatively successful at, I think, which is good.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
As a slight aside, you just made me think about litter. Like you said, your takeaway customers, they leave the shop and obviously it is their responsibility to dispose of the litter. Just out of interest, do you try to ... do you take any measures to encourage them to dispose of it properly? I appreciate you cannot control that.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Probably not, no. No, I do not think we do. I think we are keen to show about what we do for customers to make that choice. We probably do not tell them, like we would not ... if a customer said that he wanted to put salt in his food, we would not tell him not to. That is his ... if they want ketchup with their bananas then that is fine. We are not precious about that sort of thing.
Deputy K.F. Morel : Not that pejorative.
Director, JPRestaurants:
No, I do not think so, but I guess helping ... I find even just as a personal matter when I am walking down King Street and I am looking at bins and at airports, I am always confused about which one I put it in. I do not know why I am confused but it is sort of: "What is this? Is it plastic, is it this, has it got paper? Do I put it in there?" And then you just think "general" and ...
The Connétable of Grouville :
Paper often has a kind of plastic layer on the outside of it and I am sitting there going: "Does that count as general waste or is that paper?"
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes. That is another one of the challenges we have when looking if there are equivalents to bottled water that we can sell that have paper and then you suddenly hear that the plastic lining is worse than the pure plastic itself because it is not recyclable but then we are not recycling it so ... these are the challenges, I think, that probably need some Government support on to say: "This is what we are going to do as an Island and this is what we encourage you to do." It is like the question of ... if there is no difference ... should we just be reducing the amount of plastic we use and trying to find a way or should we be saying there are some other environmentally friendly alternatives that are fine? One of the things I have written down here on the positive side is that one of the areas here was our reliance on the importation of plastic packaging, but of course there is a reason for this. It is people like convenience, they want clean, healthy and tasty food, and plastics help in that area. Particularly our customers are very concerned and we are extremely concerned about the whole food supply chain and making sure it is healthy from when a crab gets fished to where it ends up. We are very shortly going to be tracking the temperature of all of our food from source all the way through. So if you come in and make a complaint about food poisoning we can say to you: "This is what the fridge was doing at this time and this is what the ..." Only one of our suppliers has wanted to do that here. Others have not and it is a very good example of where we have an issue with suppliers. In fact, I will mention this just in a generic way, that suppliers in Jersey ... even someone like us who is a very big buyer, we find a lot of suppliers when we want them to change things just go: "No" because there is not the competition. In the U.K. we would have no problems at all doing these things. So when we went to a fish supplier and said: "We would like you to track ... put these little things in your vans which track the temperature of delivery because of that chancre crab sitting out on a boiling hot day", some of them are just: "No, we are not going to do it." The ones that do get our business, but that costs us more because we have less competition and it is a constant challenge and sometimes it forces us also to import stuff and use suppliers from outside because we find that ... so that is a challenge here. Again, it is one of the challenges ... I do not criticise them. If you do not have to do it and you have only got one client asking for it because all the small guys do not ask you for that, why would you do it? You would just say it is too much hassle than it is worth, whereas in England these people have competition, so when they say: "We want our food packaged like that" they do it. Ultimately all of that comes down to the customer. Going back to the top of what we were saying, customers can say as much as they like about wanting this but they have to vote with their feet to make it worthwhile. So if we bring these initiatives in, people should be supporting us to do that rather than just saying: "That is all very nice" and then going to the one next door where we have got the extra cost and they have not, for instance.
The Connétable of St. Brelade : Going back to what has initiated a lot of this is The Blue Planet programme and the effect on the marine environment of plastics. In terms of your audit trail, could that be taken down to the fisherman route, if you like, and the amount of plastic pollution that may have occurred during the fishing process?
Director, JPRestaurants:
We have certainly come across, as I am sure you all have, the testing of plastics in some fish and it is not something that we are finding that ... we are trying to get to them to temperature control let alone find out whether any plastics are in it at the moment. The other big challenge, of course, is that a very, very small percentage of fish consumed in this Island comes from here. In fact, we cannot even get enough crab to supply our businesses because we export 60 per cent of it from the Island, but that is a whole other issue. That is another demonstration of this issue of we are trying to control these things in our own supply chain here. It is not just about the plastics and the packaging. It would be a very good point, would it not? If we could test Jersey fish and find that it was better than fish that we are importing from the North Sea because our environment is cleaner, or not cleaner as the case may be, that may be a positive thing but that is something that the Island needs to do. It is not just individuals.
The Connétable of Grouville :
What sort of packaging does your crab and shellfish like that come in?
Director, JPRestaurants:
The picked crab does come in plastic packaging. I do not think there is anything that would replace it at the moment, apart from glass that was reused and washed, which is just not ... again, that is going back to the issue of food safety. Likee fish comes ... we have it packaged but it comes ... yes, quite a lot of plastic is used because it is ...
The Connétable of Grouville :
Some of that comes in polystyrene, does it not?
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, in polystyrene. So that is reused and we are keen that food ... for instance, we are very keen on our suppliers that we want all food boxed and covered when it comes in. So if you cover food in a reasonable box that is then cleaned, then you do not need as much plastic wrapping either to control temperature or other things. So there are things that can be looked at there. That is more of a challenge for the suppliers than for us because all we have to say is: "What are the alternatives? What do you do?" We cannot be telling them how to run their businesses necessarily.
The Connétable of Grouville :
For that product it is a perfect package. It would take a lot of beating.
Director, JPRestaurants:
I think this is the point that we are not ... it is why I said I think it is really important that we do rely on it and we will continue to. If picked crab was not delivered in plastic containers, you could stop picking it and deliver it in its shell, of course, but then people do not want to pick it anymore.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Taking you back to business models, if you like, we appreciate broadly your business model but there are those in society less well off who are going to be eating at the less expensive restaurants or catering outlets. How are those catering outlets going to cope in a situation where perhaps they could nor or they found it expensive to import plastic cutlery, plastic cups and saucers, because the alternative is going to be significantly more, as you said before, which has to go on their prices? Is that sustainable?
Director, JPRestaurants:
I think the answer comes through to productivity and efficiency and less businesses. If you look at the capacity that we have got in restaurants on the Island, and it is a tricky subject but it is the same thing with the living wage and everything else, that where you have less capacity and therefore more business in more places you can have the luxury of being more efficient and making more money, which you can then either pay as tax, because you are forced to, if you like, or you can bring these initiatives in because they are required or you decide your customers want them. So I totally acknowledge that we have a customer group that have the luxury to be able to make these decisions, to an extent. We have a whole broad range of people and when you look at it one of the things ... people are very happy to say that going out to dinner is expensive but a pint of beer ... people will drink several pints at £5 a pint for a Peroni or whatever it is in a pub and that is also expensive. I agree with you, it is a challenge, but I think the way to address it is by making the whole industry more efficient and more productive and more able to invest in these types of things. I make a little bit of an analogy to our finance industry. We had lots of small trust companies 20, 30 years ago that were not particularly well regulated and we had problems. We as an Island decided that we wanted to sort out those problems and so the J.F.S.C. (Jersey Financial Services Commission) made it more difficult to operate as a small company, so we had larger, more efficient companies with higher compliance costs overall and a better outcome. There is no reason we could not be doing the same thing in our food industry here as well. Again, it is easy to say that is where you want to get to. I am quite certain if we got there that we could be better off because we are an example of that. We have been able to achieve these things and have a customer base and make good profits and invest in the Island and be able to take up some initiatives that cost us money. Realistically, if we are looking at it from a pure financial perspective now, I cannot say any of these initiatives have made us money. If anything, they have cost us money, but in the longer term we hope they are things that are not the wrong things to do, not least because we are preparing also for the time when it is going to happen. Going to my analogy of the living wage, when I talk to people about it I say: "It is going to happen." It is not a question of if, it is when it is going to happen. Obviously there is a transition and the sooner you can get yourself in a fit state to do it the better prepared you will be.
The Connétable of Grouville :
You did say your staff went on the minimum wage. They were slightly above that anyway.
Director, JPRestaurants: Before?
The Connétable of Grouville : Yes.
Director, JPRestaurants:
That we were paying before that?
The Connétable of Grouville :
Before that, but they were slightly above the living wage then.
Director, JPRestaurants:
We were paying above the minimum wage but we ... earlier this year when we increased everybody to the living wage, the equivalent of the Jersey living wage, the £10.20 an hour, and I see today that the minimum wage has gone to £7.88, so there is quite a gulf between the 2 there. We have managed to ... yes, we have managed to absorb that into the business. It has cost us some money as a business. We have put the prices up a little as well and the whole thing has worked.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Taking you back to your business with schools, is there much feedback from the schools with regard to the plastics side of things? I just wondered if there is any difference.
Director, JPRestaurants:
It is something I have not really concentrated on as part of this. One of the problems we have with schools is that we are a subcontractor to the schools. So we provide the service that the States of Jersey want us to provide, so whatever they do ... in fact, without going into too much detail, everything in terms of our service is managed by them, including what we charge and other things. We are prevented from talking about it. Obviously we can do that through the right channels. So I think it is more ... that really we would need to look to the States to drive that. We would be happy, of course we would embrace it and we would work to help those things but it is not something that .... for instance, when we took the decision ... when we took the living wage decision with the schools we had to get permission to do that even though obviously it was coming as part of the States. There were arguments about whether we were on location and whether it fell into States law on the living wage or the States policy. But we had to get approval for that.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
There is no direction with regard to the usage of plastics in the schools?
Director, JPRestaurants:
I would have to say I do not know. I am not aware of it. Well, no, that is not true. When you retender for the work, environmental considerations are an important part of the process. I do not know how important they were in terms of what we did but we have been successful and successfully retendered for ... I think environmental are just part of the whole thing from food safety to cost and profit that we pay back to the States and lots of different things.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
It may be a question we should perhaps be asking the Education Department.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, a good question. There is a very good example where you have got large food service for the States where you just say: "This is what we want you to do." The States could do that, a bit like the living wage. So you might say the whole industry is not ready but if you are providing a service in a captive place like a school or up at the airport then maybe what you should be doing is having stronger environmental ...
The Connétable of Grouville : Procurement.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, part of the procurement process. But I think it is part of the process. As I say, I am not ... it is something I could get back to you on but I would not want to say ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can I just ask on the schools as well, because a lot of those in St. Saviour I do not believe they have recycling collections there. Do your outlets in St. Saviour ... do you pay for your own recycling?
Director, JPRestaurants:
No. It is the same issue, I do not think they .... no, we do not have the same ... I had a quick conversation with our schools manager and I do not believe outside St. Helier that it is being dealt with.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Recycling is being collected. Just a quick question.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Well, it is in St. Brelade . In fact, I can tell you exactly what is happening in Quennevais. So in Quennevais we asked for a pick-up, ourselves to pay for again. We were told it was not ... the private contractor that was doing it - this is for cardboard - could not do it but they did tell us that Quennevais School has their own one and would we like to ask permission from the school. So I think what we do now is we walk it round and we put it in the school's bin, so it does happen slightly circuitously but again that was prompted by us not by the school nor by the States.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
But again this shows how, because parish recycling is different, your outlets in different parishes have entirely different recycling that is basically inflicted on them by the parish.
Director, JPRestaurants:
Yes, and I think that is a challenge.
[12:45]
I understand that sentiment that the parishes are doing something and you do not want to take it away but if the parishes could all get together and subcontract refuse collection or recycling on an Island-wide basis - and I appreciate that takes time and there are relationships and other things - it would make it much easier for business because we would have one set of rules, would we not, and one set of ... it is the same issue with this glass and the plastic. Some people are getting a thing on the top of their bins at the moment and some people are not, depending on which parish you live in, I think.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Just talking about lids on things, some people, some of the U.K. chain coffee people you buy a cardboard cup with a plastic lid on it. Is there any alternative to doing that? How do you view their approach to one-use plastic usage, if you like? Something like, shall we say, Coffee Republic, Morrisons we have now, Costa, these sorts of people.
Director, JPRestaurants:
I think they are all doing very similar to us. Some of them make great store of the fact that they have got these recyclable cups and then you find out that there is nobody to recycle them. For instance, there was a very trendy coffee shop in Shoreditch or east London that said they had got these special cups with a plastic lining that could be ... because I think there is an issue with plastic-lined cups that could be recycled, and then somebody said: "Yes, but there is nobody in Shoreditch who takes these." That is an example of green washing, I think, where all these hipsters think it is great drinking their coffee out of a recycled cup but then it goes into landfill because there is nobody to recycle it.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Good. I am just going to conclude by asking if there is anything else you would like to add?
Director, JPRestaurants:
No, I do not think so. I think we have covered everything. Just one thing I would like to emphasise is that I was very much talking about where we were to get to and what is the right thing, and we appreciate that it has been easier for us compared to other people. So, while we would love to see everybody doing it, we have to be smart in the way that we go towards that and I think it is not just about the plastics themselves. It is about the whole industry because it will cost money, because it takes time, and therefore it impacts on the whole way that businesses run. So if businesses have not got any spare fat on them they are not going to do it, but that is not an argument for saying that you should not do it. It is just like how do you create these businesses that do have spare fat on them so that they can take on these initiatives and that makes it a much wider issue really, I think.
The Connétable of St. Brelade :
Indeed. Right, Mr Jones, thank you very much and that concludes the meeting.
[12:47]