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NSC Home Page > EUAS Contents > Perceptions of the industry
INDUSTRY
Perceptions of the industry
There is a widespread assumption in the industry that the 'public' has a generally negative view of the industry. This appears to be generally echoed by press coverage - one only has to contrast the response from the press to a proposal to extend a quarry compared with a similar plan say to build a new factory.
To some extent however, public promotion/educational events at quarries over the last decade or so have achieved good coverage and rising environmental standards in the industry appear to have somewhat reduced negative reporting.
Furthermore, in more recent years, there appears to have been some transfer of adverse media treatment from the aggregates sector, to parts of the other extractive industry (e.g. building stone producers), but without a survey of the nature of press coverage, it is difficult to be dogmatic on this point. Almost all views are anecdotal. Such studies of public perception of the industry that have been conducted have been of limited extent or privately commissioned, not reported in full and as far as is known, the results are not in the public domain.
By very many commentators, it is taken as read that quarrying industry still operates to relatively poor environmental standards. Even the quarry community recognises that the 'public perceptions of our industry are all too often negative' - Simon van der Byl, Director General QPA. In the QPA's advice to members on building relationships with local communities, he goes on to comment that such views are out of date in the context of advances in environmental standards over the last 20 years and that this situation is particularly frustrating for the industry. In addition to the many environmental improvements in the industry, there has been a distinct change of tone within the industry. The following is an indication of this change. About 10 years ago, during a course in Community Relations, the manager of an inner city asphalt plant indicated that his response to the public and especially school children, was to keep a Rottweiler in the yard. By the late 1990s, that company was investing considerable amounts in the preparation of educational materials, public open days and in hosting school visits.
Whereas numerous references are made to 'public concerns over the environmental impact of quarrying, particularly traffic, dust and noise', e.g. in an MPG11 consultation paper by DETR (2000), a Groundwork study for DoE(1991) and many publications by environmental bodies such as CPRE, very few attempts have been made to gauge systematically, public perceptions of the industry. Studies by Hertfordshire County Council and the Sand and Gravel Association in the early 1990s suggested that most members of the public had no hard views on sand and gravel working, very few indeed were directly affected and that traffic was the most widespread concern.
Logically, one would expect most complaints about dust, noise and blasting to arise within a few hundred metres of a site, whereas offending traffic could be registered over a radius of several kilometres. Concerns about landscape intrusion could be voiced both locally and much further afield, e.g. by environmental pressure groups. Examination of complaints logged by one company in 2001 and 2002 indicate a great variation from year to year in some categories and no clear differentiation between the main causes of concern apart from traffic receiving the lowest number and blasting, the highest
Further information is given in Appendix 15.
Views of other stakeholders
The survey of company educational initiatives for the EUAS Report also took readings from others including planners and the educational (particularly higher) community.In summary, most mineral and chief planners were extremely keen to promote educational links, these being seen as valuable and legitimate means of contributing to the local community. They generally welcomed inclusion of educational facilities in planning applications and many were very keen to offer examples of good practice to the researchers preparing this report. In the case of Cornwall County Council, the minerals plan actually includes a policy encouraging educational uses of mineral sites; Essex and Lancashire County Councils both operate 'good site award' programmes, in which education features, in one case being one of the explicit criteria.
Surveys of teachers, adult/continuing education and university lecturers were almost totally positive about relationships with operators. These were almost all in the context of organising visits to sites and in particular, relating to geology, Earth and environmental sciences. However, a fair proportion did point out that relationships had improved greatly over the last 6-7 years. There was now a better understanding of the industry/academic situation by both parties and especially operational and increased safety aspects.
See also Education Section.
Views expressed in Educational textbooks
The government supported Council for Science and Technology (2002), survey of 576 science teachers, indicated they used textbooks as their source 'often'. More closely related to the subject in hand, the survey of KS3 school science teachers by King (2001), indicated that they relied on information to underpin their Earth science teaching to a considerable degree upon text books; c37% upon KS3 science text books and c43% upon other general science text books.From these findings, it can reasonably be assumed that text books, particularly those produced by well established publishers, probably have a profound influence in shaping the opinions and perceptions of teachers of externalities such as specific industries.
Most text books can be assigned to one of two main categories:
1. General or reference materials
2. Texts suitable for class sets - set books adopted by a school or teacher for a particular course.The cost, content, quality, relevance to exam specifications, need to establish a standard scheme and LEA school or departmental policy and teacher views all usually influence the choice of set book. As a result, there is a high level of competition from the now relatively limited number of publishers in this field, the main houses being, Cambridge, Pearson, Longman, Oxford, Nelson Thornes, Hodder/Murray.
It was therefore considered appropriate to conduct a short survey of school textbooks in an attempt to gauge the coverage of the quarrying industry. This was conducted in January 2004, of the main texts then in print. The nature of that investigation cannot claim to be statistically robust (the population is far too small and time was limited). Neither was it feasible to search the whole of each text (many books extent to 200 pages or more). Instead after initially scoping various science texts, it was observed that virtually all references to quarrying were to be found in chemistry texts or sections of texts and in particular those parts dealing with lime or limestone. So this provided the main focus for the search, which was restricted to GCSE/AS/A level material. The NC requires teachers at KS 2-4 science, to take into account environmental effects of science and technology and to do this in a balanced form (at KS4 recognising that different groups have different views).
Sixteen textbooks were examined the results of which are set out in Appendix 16.
In summary:
- All made references to the use of limestone
- Nine made reference to the quarrying versus environment debate, of which seven contained detailed treatment.
- A few were out of date or in error in matters of detail.
- Where the issue was treated, most did so in a balanced way but the total coverage given was generally slight and almost always missed some vital pros and cons (contrast this for example with the JESEI web site Limestone Inquiry exercise)
- Some references were unfortunate in not properly representing normal current environmental practice.
- One reference (to a quarter of the Peak District limestone outcrop being worked out in a lifetime) was unbelievably misleading.Bearing in mind the increasing role of geography in delivering the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), a comparable survey of geography texts was contemplated, but could not be conducted within the timetable of this report.