101. PPWR - why packaging will never be the same

James Piper 0:00

Hello, welcome to Talking Rubber, show weekly podcast, delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and one-sided stories. In this episode, we will discuss PBWR. Are Panini stickers rubbish or not? I have a question about hummus slides and how will eggs be packaged in our dream shop. I'm James Piper and I'm joined by Robbie Staniforth, my part from rubbish friend. Good morning, Robbie.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Hey James. How are you today? Pretty relaxed, actually. This is a lot lower pressure environment than the live episode, so feeling relaxed.

James Piper 0:36

Apart from the heat wave that we are experiencing in this very hot room. Relaxed yet extremely hot. So if you want to see Robbie and I in our shorts, you've got to look at the video because we've moved to video. Absolutely, yeah. So this is a good reminder that we've moved to video. And if you're listening to us on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, you can unlock your phone now or device and you'll be able to see our faces, which is very exciting. Hello. Um, a funny thing happened, speaking of video, when we were recording episode 100, because we recorded episode 100 live and we had some people, right? This is a bit behind the scenes. We had some people hidden in the house next to us.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Oh, yes, okay, watching.

James Piper 1:23

Yeah. And we'd said to them, if we have any technical glitches, any issues, can you make sure that you just send us a text so that we can quickly solve it?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah.

James Piper 1:34

But we had forgotten or neglected, I should say, to tell them that we were gonna do a jokey glitch at the beginning. You know, we were gonna cut to our faces frozen, we were gonna say, oh no, something's gone wrong. And we'd forgotten to tell them that. And so as soon as the episode finished recording, I went next to her and they were like, How dare you? We were all ready to text, we were panicking, we were gonna run in the studio, say, it's not working.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

I'd forgotten all about that. It was uh definitely uh a little bit last minute. Those last 10 minutes just got eaten up before we went live. And yeah, the glitch screen, I'm sure they must have been panicking much more than we were.

James Piper 2:13

Yeah, so I'm very sorry to our friends who we did not inform we would be doing that. Pastor. We are on the edge of one of the biggest overhauls of packaging rules in modern history. I think I think it's fair to say that. This is across the EU. I'm not gonna say worldwide, but across the EU.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Do you agree? Yeah, definitely. And I think possibly worldwide, isn't it? Packaging rules, at least, it's got a massive impact on the whole of the EU bloc. And if you look at other countries that are just as big, lots of packaging, like the USA, they're doing it all state by state. So, yeah, in terms of affecting so many countries, it probably is the biggest shift.

James Piper 2:58

And it's fair to say when you have a change as big as this, not everyone is going to be happy about it. And that's really what we want to talk about today. Under the umbrella of PPWR.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Oh, yes.

James Piper 3:10

Which I can't believe it's taken us a hundred. Well, we're on episode 101, so 101 episodes, to get to this massive topic, PPWR. Absolutely. And I'm look, just to preempt this, it will have lots and lots of episodes because there's loads of timings for things coming out, there's loads of rules and regs. So we're just sort of going to give a bit of a history, some challenges, and some of the immediate things that are happening in the regulation. But we will have more episodes as more and more deadlines come out.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, I think trying to explain the whole of the magnitude of the packaging and packaging waste regulation in a 25-minute trash talk is biting off way more than we can chew. So this is probably just a start of a 10.

James Piper 3:54

Yeah, and we have regulations going all the way to the 1st of January 2040. So, Robbie, if we were still doing this podcast, 1st of Jan 2040, what episode do you think we'd be recording? Hundreds. Hundreds. 750. 750? You are very close. I mean, you're not within my, what did I say last week, within two episodes banding? You're not quite there, but episode 805. 805. So we will have just celebrated episode 800. Oh my word. We're not committing to that, are we? No, we will. And we will look weathered. We'll need bigger studio lights to hide the wrinkles that have developed from our stress. I think I'll look as bald as you.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Okay, so this packaging and packaging waste regulation, I think the main thing to start with is how important the name actually is. The packaging and packaging waste regulation. And the reason I paused to start there is because when the original packaging laws came out in the beginning of the 90s, early 90s, it was actually, rather than a regulation, it was a directive from the EU. What that then meant is that each individual nation within the EU, and of course the UK was within the EU at that time, then had to write their own regulations to kind of transpose that directive into their national law. And that meant there were lots of different foibles with how each of the EU countries implemented these new laws. Whereas this one, so this time around, it's a regulation. So it means it's directly applicable in each of those nations, and we'll see a lot less deviation between how each country applies the rules. Yes, they will be enforced slightly differently because they all have different regulatory enforcement bodies. But the main thing is this is a genuinely unifying piece of legislation that's kind of universal across the whole EU block.

James Piper 5:58

It's worth noting as well, this is not just about recycling now. It's about how packaging is designed and whether it should be reusable, how much packaging can actually be used. These are really important questions. So previous packaging laws have largely asked what happens when packaging becomes a waste? What happens after packaging has reached the end of its life? PPWR is asking a much more fundamental question, which is should this packaging exist in the first place? Should it even have been allowed onto the market?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah, and I think that's where we have to recognize that the EU really is a global leader in not just packaging legislation, not just recycling legislation, but also reuse legislation, the fundamentals of questioning whether we need all this packaging or not. We might get into the levels of bureaucracy that are behind it. The fact that we have to do multiple episodes on it probably indicates that it's big and it's complicated, and that's probably the downside. But the upside is that the EU really is a global leader lifting global standards, and we'll see many of these things apply, not just across the UK, but across many other parts of the world, because they will just follow where the EU goes on this kind of stuff.

James Piper 7:17

So just giving a bit of history on PPWR, in the 1990s, which is when packaging laws first emerged, I think we said the work that we've been doing in PRNs comes from a 1998 regulation, which comes from a 1994 directive. So this stuff is all pretty old. But what they were focusing on when they came out with that was this focus on recycling and the design requirements, I think it's fair to say, took a bit of a back seat. And we talked about this before in episode 53. We talked about the packaging essential requirements and how that was a piece of legislation that came out at the same time as the packaging laws. But that design piece was just about customer acceptance, and so we ended up with, I think, what did we say at the time? We've had five prosecutions or something under that.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Handful, yes.

James Piper 8:05

We've had hundreds of prosecutions under the recycling piece. So the government would say, hey, we introduced recycling and design, because we've got two pieces of legislation, but experts would say, yeah, but one is regulated, we make sure people comply with it. And one is so woolly and so subjective that hardly anyone's been prosecuted by it.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

And I think in terms of both of them together, it's just something that was happening to businesses. They didn't really respond to it and change the way they worked very much. Yes, we probably had some light weighting, maybe, uh, in terms of, you know, they're paying for how much they place onto the market, so they're trying to get those tons and kilograms down. But otherwise, there wasn't really that much of a change that it instigated. And just to be clear, back in the 90s, this is all history for us, because we were both in school at the time, just in case people think we were around in the 90s when this first round of legislation came through.

James Piper 9:02

I was seven when the directive came out. So you're in primary school. All I wanted was cardboard boxes then. I wanted all sorts of presents. Like, yeah, I wasn't, I didn't care at all about airspace in a Game Boy. Absolutely. I guess because of this focus on end of life, packaging volumes have increased exponentially over those years. E-commerce has transformed now how we buy things. You know, people are obviously um people are much more likely just to click something on Amazon and get an extra cardboard box that they wouldn't have had when they were just buying things from a store. That has meant all sorts of material use has risen, but particularly plastic use has risen, and obviously that's caused all sorts of concerns. So it is very clear that recycling alone is not going to solve this problem, which is why the EU has worked to create PPWR. And it has three main focuses. So its main focus is to prevent the creation of packaging waste. Now, this encompasses a lot because this is about restrictions on what can be used, it promotes refillable, reusable packaging. Um, there's all sorts of things that come under the category of we're preventing waste. You then have boosting high-quality recycling, and then you have creating rules across the EU. As you mentioned, this is a regulation, so everyone has to do the same thing. And this is where we're getting things like harmonised labelling. So in the UK, we have OPRL, which we talked about a lot. It's recycle, don't recycle label. At some point, that label will switch to the harmonised one, which I have to be honest is way more complicated. But we'll do a separate episode on labelling, I think. Um, it's going to restrict things like the amount of air that can be found in packaging, which we talked a little bit about Jude's interview back in episode 95, recycle content, all sorts of things. And there's actually quite a lot of protectionism coming from the EU at the moment. I don't want to get into too much detail here because I think we can have a separate episode on it. But as an example, I don't know if you read this. There was a Financial Times article the other day that said if you want to put recycle content in your product, it has to be recycling that happened in the EU. And this is because they're trying to prevent the importing of recycled material, basically, cheaper recycling material from outside the EU. But obviously, for us, that poses a very unique challenge because of Brexit. We now can't export very good recycled material to be used to meet recycled content requirements because the EU is saying only material in the EU counts.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Hopefully, though, when it comes to the EU, the UK will have a relatively easy ride given there's lots of trust between the two um states.

James Piper 11:40

Let's hope so. And I guess it's worth in terms of timings, we're talk sort of talking about PPWR as if it's coming in. But it is already in force. It came into force on the 11th of February, 2025. However, different parts of it go live at different times. And the first big milestone is just over a month away, the 12th of August, 2026.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Yeah, so there's four major things. I think the first one is the declaration of conformity. This is basically a document that explains you're an economic operator as part of the system. It outlines the packaging type, the components and things, and a declaration with these uh specific texts to say you are meeting certain thresholds and certain boundaries. The second one is the substances of very high concern, and those are really nasties that we don't want getting into our packaging. So food contact packaging has to comply with these strict limits, including PFAS inclusion within the products, which we've talked about previously, and uh heavy metals and things like that within the packaging. The third one is packaging minimization, and this is the classic stuff that no, we don't love to hate. We just hate. I think. It's like double walls, false bottoms, unnecessary layers, things that people probably receive from e-commerce in the post all the time and write into talking rubbish to say, oh my God, you'll never believe how much airspace there is in this packaging. So that's coming in. And then finally, and very interestingly, um specific rules around compostability, which we know is a bit more widespread uh across the EU than it is in the UK. And so there'll be things around single-served tea and coffee bags uh intended for use in a machine. So those um really need to be compostable. And then things like very lightweight carrier bags, so the single-use, extremely thin carrier bags moving to the compostable ones like the ones we talked about previously, uh, that the co-op do.

James Piper 13:49

And already we have companies who are annoyed about this rollout. Already we have companies who are saying some of these things you're asking for are just not practically possible. They're not technically possible currently. And so a letter got leaked that was signed by 138 companies that was asking the EU to delay the 12th of August rollout. I don't think anyone's going to be surprised by the names on this letter. I mean, it's 138 of the biggest companies, so Coca-Cola, Burger King, Heinz, McDonald's, packaging manufacturers. It's people who are saying, look, we can't put our product on the market with these current rules. I guess to be fair to industry, some of these concerns are legitimate. If you're redesigning packaging formats across 27 countries, and you therefore are investing millions in machinery, and the technical guidance around that is still evolving, that must be so frustrating. You're like, look, we can't just switch these things on overnight. It takes years. I mean, we talked about it with Lucas Aid Rabina when they changed their labels. It was like, what, a four-year project just to make a label smaller. In our mind as consumers, it's really, really simple to do. And in reality, it's really complicated. So if we're still defining what the 12th of August looks like, you know, a month to go, that doesn't really work. So I can understand why they're why they're frustrated. But obviously, regulators are then saying, Yeah, but when you're changing this much, we need uncertainty. You need you need to keep evolving it. You need to work with brands and retailers to see what works.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

I've spent 10 years, 10, 15 years now, looking at policy, trying to lobby for better packaging and recycling and reuse policy. And the one thing I will say is that universally everyone says that the laws need to be more nimble, they need to be more flexible, they need to be able to be changed, not all the time and tinkered with every year, every few months, but we need to not let it just gather dust on the shelf. Now, the moment that a government and governments turn to that kind of tactic, then suddenly the businesses that have been saying they need greater flexibility totally flip 180 and say, no, no, no, we just want total certainty. And it's one of those things where you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, if you're in the EU.

James Piper 16:12

And it's interesting you raise this point of certainty because one thing I've noticed over the years is that companies will often describe regulation as confusing. And sometimes they genuinely are confusing. Sometimes regulations can be confusing. Often what they really mean is we understand what this means, we just don't like what it means. And that happens all the time where companies are saying commercially this thing is really challenging to do. So I'm gonna sort of it's easier for me to have a press statement saying, I wish there was more clarity than hey, I'm gonna make less money if you do this. And and I think I can sympathize with brands and retailers, definitely, who are you know ultimately responsible to their shareholders for creating value. And so anyone coming along saying you're gonna make less money is gonna cause a problem. But um, but at the same time, I get frustrated by how that is dressed up to the public, which is the EU are just not being certain here. When actually I think the EU have been quite clear on a number of points, and I think we all know what the policymakers are trying to achieve from a kind of spirit of the regulation perspective. Just to give you an example, I guess the PPWR is putting responsibilities on the manufacturer. And it's saying, look, the manufacturer needs to make sure all these things are happening. Now, if you're a brand, you can say, Well, hang on, I'm not the manufacturer. This factory over in China is the manufacturer, they're the ones making it. But of course, you've instructed the you've instructed the factory in China to make your thing. So the people the EU would say, Well, look, it's very clear in the spirit of the regulation, the brand is the manufacturer, it's your product. You're deciding what it's packaged in, where it's placed, all those kind of things. And the brand could quite easily say, Well, I'm going to pass all that responsibility on to the factory. So that's the kind of thing that the EU have had to get really defined on. And I think one of the things we're seeing from brands, and I hopefully this isn't unfair, but one of the things we're seeing is that they'd quite like to keep the status quo. So I went through the points raised in the letter, and there are, as I say, lots of technical challenges to the things the EU are trying to do. However, if you were willing to evolve your business model, you wouldn't be talking about technical challenges, you'd be talking about practicalities of evolving your business model. So, as an example, one of the points they make, the brands in this letter, is that they say, well, it's going to be almost impossible for us to serve single portion packaging which contains liquid. So think of sauces, preserves, coffee, creamers, those kinds of things, but sachets essentially. Great. From a consumer, stop serving sachets. Yeah. You know, you don't why do you need them? If you if you've got someone who's taking something away to have at home, they've probably got a bottle of ketchup at home. If someone's having it take away to eat it over their lunch, there's probably an alternative. I think I said to you, I've started carrying a bottle of ketchup round in my backpack just because I hate sachets. And like to me, that's really straightforward. I know that's quite weird, and maybe everyone shouldn't do that. But I guess uh what they're looking at is a business model as it exists today and saying, how do I make PPWR fit into my business model? When what they should be saying is, how do I change my business model to reflect the spirit of the regulation, which is let's stop putting single-use packaging on the market.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah, and my guilty pleasure is the occasional bacon roll at Greg's. Oh, yeah.

James Piper 19:44

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

And honestly, it's still, I had one this week, it still fills me with joy when the person behind the counter says, What sauce would you like with that love?

James Piper 19:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Because it's like red or brown, they tick a little uh thing on the on the pit on the paper bag that they put it in to remind themselves, and then they go away and they put the source on for you.

James Piper 20:05

And so after this letter got leaked, which is the 138 company one, there was another letter from 120 organizations, and this was signed by more of the recycling industry, so Veolia, Recycling Europe, interestingly, IKEA. Um, saying you your alumni, saying you must continue with the timelines. So we got 138 companies saying, look, we need to delay this. We've got 120 companies saying, keep going. And uh Tove Anderson, the CEO and president of Tomra, which is one of the signatories of the later letter, said, at a time where European industry faces growing economic pressure, certainty is crucial. PPWR provides a long-needed harmonised framework for investment in recycling and circular business model. And what Europe needs now is the confidence and drive to make it work. Delay, risk, compromising this, ultimately threatening investment in the infrastructure required to keep pace with and curb mounting packaging waste in Europe. Here, here.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

I mean, it's just absolutely exactly what I hear all the time in the UK and also across in Europe.

James Piper 21:15

And so confusion and uncertainty seem to be the words of the moment. And what the EU are now doing is issuing kind of guidance documents to say, okay, you've said this is confusing. Here's our clarity. And I do think there's a bit of be careful what you wish for here, because the EU are definitely taking a more okay, we're just going to get stricter. So it's a bit weird. Yeah, it's a bit odd. So there was a document released in March and one in June. So there's been one in March, one in June. And each one has made PPWR slightly harder for the brands and closed off kind of the more unfocused wording. So, for example, the brands complained hey, there's no way of us testing PFAS in our products. So, how can we reduce PFAS? And the EU came back and said, Well, this is how you're going to do the test. And suddenly it's way more complicated. And said, Hey, Anci, you've asked for a transitional period on PFAS. No, there's going to be no transitional period from the 12th of August. You cannot sell products on the market that contain these levels of PFAS. And so it's just getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And the deadline is getting closer and closer and closer. So what we have is strict PFAS limits now, coming in now, harmonized labeling coming in in 2028. We'll do an episode on that. All packaging needing to be recyclable by 2030. And again, we'll do a separate episode on that. So this is just a starter for 10, this PPWR episode. There's going to be loads of this. The interesting thing about the recyclable piece is that we're moving away from I'm putting packaging on the market that is recyclable to I'm putting packaging on the market that is actually being collected, sorted, and recycled. And so you end up with organizations like TetraPak is a good example, who have invested 42 million euros in 2025 in recycling facilities for their materials. And we talked about them in episode 99 about how, you know, if you go on TetraPak's website and it says, look at the world map of recycling facilities, there's the UK recycling facility that's now closed. So TetraPak will be furious about that, I would imagine. We haven't spoken to them, but I guess they're furious because they're saying we're moving into a world where we've got to prove our packaging is actually collected, sorted, and recycled. Can you not close the one plant that's actually recycling it in the UK, please? And so TetraPak are investing huge amounts of money, but on their website they're saying, and this investment has led to a global recycling rate of 27%. That will need to be much higher for PPWR. PPWR is looking for 60, 70% recycling. And so people like TetraPak, the flexible plastic guys, all these all these companies who are putting things on the market where they're saying, yeah, it's recyclable, take it back to a supermarket. It will not be good enough for PPWR that people will expect things to be collected, sorted, and recycled. And again, as consumers, I only see this as a positive because we're going to get more opportunity to recycle our material. And if something's on the market that isn't being recycled, it can't be sold. And it's a really important distinction between like how the UK have managed these laws, which is kind of your EPR piece, where the UK have put in place a recyclability assessment methodology and said, you will pay more if you're putting something unrecyclable on the market. So the red fees are much bigger than the green fees. You will pay more. The EU are saying there's no it's not a payment thing. You actually just can't sell this product. And that's going to trickle through to the UK in the same way that Tether bottle caps did, because a lot of what we put on the market goes to the EU. And a lot of what the EU put on the market is also sold in the UK.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Yeah, I think we'll see that hardline stance trickle through to what we experience as consumers and citizens in the UK. And I think, to be frank, that's probably quite a good thing. And the UK will continue to look across to Europe as the benchmark that it needs to meet.

James Piper 25:12

And there will be, and are already, lots of legal challenges to PPW. I think we're just going to have to do a separate episode on them because we're just going to run out of time. But I think it's the recyclable, it's the is my packaging being collected, sorted, and recycled where we're going to see most legal challenges. Because if you're a brand, you're saying, well, hang on a sec. That's the one thing I don't have control over. So I can put in place the best recycling systems. But if in one country consumers engage with it and loads of recycling happens, and in another country consumers aren't engaging it and no recycling happens, well, I'm now not allowed to sell that product. That's going to feel quite legally tricky, I think.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting into some of those legal challenges because the practicalities of some of this stuff really is very difficult to get your head around. And certainly, yes, I understand that this is a lobbying tactic of the brands, but I do have some sympathy around how is this actually gonna work? Because it seems quite hard, far-reaching, and difficult.

James Piper 26:17

And so just to wrap us up, PPWR is no longer a future regulation. It is here, and everyone has sort of imagined it. Oh, it's so far away, we don't have to think about it. I mean, now you have to think about it, right? And the debate is no longer is it going to happen? Because I'm pretty confident it is going to happen. Industry groups are pushing for delays, environmental organizations are pushing for faster implementation, and regulators seem determined to keep moving forward on their planned timeline. Over the next few years, we're going to see lots of battles over recyclability, recycle content, reuse systems, refill targets, PFAS restriction, harmonized labelling. Gosh, it sounds like a lot when you say all that stuff. I mean, it is amazing. It is a lot. And that's the point of it, right? Some requirements will undoubtedly change, but ultimately I think we know where we're heading. And so for decades, packaging regulation has focused on managing waste, and PPWR is trying to redesign the packaging system itself. And I think for us as consumers, that is very, very exciting. The real question now is whether it delivers what it promises. Less waste, more recycling, and a packaging system that actually works. Well, I've I've got an addition. This is very nice of you, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Yeah, so I love it when you start us off. It's great. Go for it, Robbie. In episode 98, do you remember we talked about the dead and what to do with a dead animal? Oh, yes. It was sort of a question, because it wasn't like, is it rubbish or not? That was fairly obvious. It was more, what's the right thing to do? And this is what my husband does at the moment. Anyway, imagine my surprise when I get a knock-knock knock at the door and I see that it's someone from Bristol Waste. Really? So immediately I'm getting excited. Like, yeah. This is gonna be brilliant. I'm gonna be talking about this on a podcast very soon, no matter what it is. I open the door and they're like, wait, aren't you? Fortunately, they did not recognise me at all. I don't think they're listening to the podcast yet. Knock, knock, knock on the door. So I open it, and the guy says, Here, mate, you've got a dead fox for me. And I was like, You what? And I there was a moment of confusion, and then I suddenly remembered that on our community WhatsApp group, earlier in the week, someone had found a dead fox just sort of lay on the ground in one of the communal areas, sort of at the front of the houses of the street. So, unbeknownst to me, because I didn't follow this trail, they had double-bagged the fox and they had put it into the general waste bin.

James Piper 29:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

However, I didn't know that at the time when the guy from Bristol Waste knocked on the door. So we're run walking around surveying to try and find and match this photo that he had of this dead fox on his uh tablet because it had been reported to Bristol Waste to say, hey, this is what's going on. Anyway, we eventually, through a series of messages, worked out that it's in the bin. Unfortunately, because it was in the bin, the guy said, That's fine. It's okay, double bagged in your big general waste bin, it'll just be disposed of, ultimately burnt with the rest of the rubbish, so that's fine. But if they had have got to it before it went into the bin, what they do is they take it back to the sorting centre and they can scan it for a chip. Okay, yeah, yeah. Just in case it gets tracked by local community sort of wildlife groups and things like that. So that was a slight addendum. If it's a very big mammal and likely to be chipped and tracked, then the best thing you can do is phone your local council and report it. Hopefully, they can get there quick enough to kind of check and then see what happened to this animal.

James Piper 30:08

And the council will send resource to mugshot a fox.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

This is what I've learned. They turn up with an iPad and went, Is this the fox you're looking for? So it was actually when my neighbour had reported it, they had taken a photo saying, Here is this fox. Amazing. And they will they'll turn up with the mugshot and say, Is this the fox we're looking for? No, that's not the fox.

James Piper 30:28

Leave that one.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

It's a different fox.

James Piper 30:32

Wow, this is uh super interesting. I can't believe this happened to you straight after the episode right now. It's amazing. And uh an episode later, episode 99, we talked about oat milk, and we were talking about cartons specifically. We had an email from Linda. Thank you very much, Linda, and she was sharing a company called Overheard. Have you come across Overheard? No, not heard of. Not overheard. Not overheard of overheard. Yeah, so overheard is H-E-R-D, not H-E-R. Yeah, exactly. It's good. Um, she shared this company, and I had come across them in my research, but I thought they don't really apply to cartons, but they're a perfect addition. So thank you, Linda. They basically produce their their or their argument is that oat milk is 90% water. And so what they produce is a powder that you add water to to create the oat milk. And sometimes in my life, I'm a big fan of a plastic pouch. And this is one of those times where I am like, plastic pouch is the perfect packaging for this material. If we were doing our green grocer section, creating our dream packaging for powder, I suspect, and when we come to that, I suspect I will be saying a pouch is the best thing to use. Because think about, I mean, just think about a carton of oat milk. You are basically getting in one pouch, one pouch of powder, you're getting eight cartons worth of um, eight cartons worth of oat milk. Wow. So it's ten times less packaging by weight.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

That's pretty impressive. And I suppose it is does come down to that you're just transporting water, you've got that coming out of the tap at home. Why do that?

James Piper 32:12

Yeah, it's the same as like soap when we've talked about soap before, and you think, why can't we just use a bar of soap? You know, or why can't you use uh something you're adding water to for your detergents, as people often do now? Uh it's definitely a question we should be asking all the time. Why are we transporting water? And one of the beauties of this is you'd mentioned, I think, that you take oat milk camping. Oh, yes. And that was and one of the advantages is it lasts 12 months. Yes. But of course, it doesn't last 12 months once you've opened it. Once you've opened it, you've got to refrigerate it, and you've got maybe a week once that carton's open. Well, the beauty of a pouch with powder is even once opened, the powder will last 12 months. Yeah, well, you don't need to refrigerate it. You can just take it to your campsite and use it, use it as you go.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Wow. And presumably you can prepare just a very small portion as well. You don't have to do it a litre at a time. Exactly.

James Piper 33:02

So Linda ordered some for a holiday. She, I think she was saying to me that her husband just like puts a little bit in his coffee just to make it a bit creamy. But doesn't add the water, yeah, literally. Just use it as like a milk powder, uh, which is amazing. Apparently, the taste, you know, there's not much difference in taste between this and and buying just cartons of oat milk. Really, really good addition. Um, so very, very pleased that Linda sent this in. Thank you, Linda. We'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, EcoSurety, who are on a mission to rid the world of unnecessary packaging. They help brands navigate the tricky world of extended produce responsibility, but that is not all. They also collaborate on some incredible recycling projects and consumer awareness campaigns for those tough to recycle materials. If you're an organization looking to make smarter packaging choices, check them out at ecosurety.com. And the best thing you can do to help our podcaster grow is to tell your friends and family about it, or you can leave us a review. And if you leave us a review, you could be Robbie's review of the week.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Oh, I've got a great one for you here. Five stars on Apple. It's always good if it's five stars, isn't it? And this one comes in from Free Donkey Rides. Yeah, an interesting username. Okay.

James Piper 34:13

Free Donkey Rides.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Must be a beach lover or something. Anyway. Oh, wait a minute. I'm not sure I like this that much, actually. Get past the laugh, and this is the most informative and engaging podcast out there. Did you just read this for the first time?

James Piper 34:29

Yes. This is a great review. Five stars. Better scroll on.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Wait, hang on a second.

James Piper 34:35

Hang on.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

This headline is bad. They're having a go at my laugh. I just always like it when it's a five-star one. Um I've just clocked 30 years in the paper recycling industry actually making paper from Curbside Collections, which is very cool. Nice. And find this such an informative and really well presented and funny podcast. James and Robbie both make the topic so relevant and manage to keep the content so fresh and engaging in a topic that a lot of people get the wrong information or headline grabbing sensationalism. Love it and listen to every episode. So I hope people are getting past the laugh, and now they're even seeing the laugh to irritate them even more.

James Piper 35:18

But hopefully it's Can you see a laugh? I think I think seeing the laugh actually improves the situation. Do you think so? Yeah, because I think I think we got early reviews, didn't we, saying you were putting it on? And I just think, look, we're 101 episodes in. You can't fake this much laughter. And I think seeing it gives it that twinkle in the eye. People are going, oh no, it is real. He does just laugh a lot. Anyway, you can follow us at rubbish podcasts. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. Also join our Discord. It's the easiest way to engage with us and listeners of the show. And the link to all those things is in the show notes. Rubbish or not. So we are in the middle of the World Cup. Very pleased with England's quite convincing win after we recorded our live episode. Slightly less pleased with the performance against Ghana. And we haven't yet had the performance against Panama as we're recording this. But one of the things to come out of World Cups, and traditionally has come out of World Cups, is Panini stickers. Ah yes. And we had Becky on WhatsApp alongside a few people on Discord, I believe, asking us about panini stickers. Now I don't collect them because my personality type is such that I would be absolutely addicted to completing the collection. So I fully am aware of my weaknesses in life. I've passed that addictive personality on to Lego. I don't need anything else in my life. So I don't collect Panini stickers. I try not to buy them because even if I got just one, if someone gave me a panini sticker, I'd be like, oh no, here we go. I need to go and get them all now. What about you? Have you collected Panini stickers before?

SPEAKER_01 37:03

No, I've never been a massive fan of the Panini stickers, but I must say, in a weak moment, this World Cup, Marks and Spencers are doing a collaboration with Panini. Oh, okay. It's a special book with just the England team, various England players from both the women's and the men's team. Ah. So when you spend a certain amount, I can't remember how much it is, you get a pack of these stickers. And once we got the first one, then my daughter says, When you go past MS, if you're shopping, can you get me the stickers? So we've now probably got about 20 or 30 of these stickers all together. And I've made a bit of a rod for my own back, having said previously that it's not the kind of thing we should be collecting.

James Piper 37:44

Gosh, MS have got you, eh? They've absolutely got me. Well, you do them, buying like biscuit tins with clocks in there, things like that. You're just like, we just need another clock in the pantry.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

Absolutely not. But when it comes to the rubbish or not, we talked about it in episode 53, didn't we? Just general stickers. These panini stickers are very similar to ones that you'll be buying for children just generally doing their kind of sticking activities and stuff. And I think they're so small, if stuck to a piece of paper, I think it would still be recyclable.

James Piper 38:18

So the book at the end, when you've attempted to fill the book or filled the book, and you're like, I'm not going to keep this. You think that paper could be recycled even with the stickers stuck to it.

SPEAKER_01 38:27

Yeah, that's right. So, like m it will go along with glossy magazines and things like that. Now the problem is definitely, and we talked about this again in episode 53, is that the backing, the sticky backing, which has a silicon coating on it, is not paper. Do not put that in your household paper bin. You can get specialist recycling for it if you collect up enough of it at like an industrial scale, it could technically be recycled somewhere. But you need to be putting that in your rubbish bin when your child is peeling these stickers and putting them into the panini book.

James Piper 39:03

And this World Cup is the biggest in terms of teams. And that means there are 980 stickers to collect. Really? Even if you were super lucky and didn't get any duplicates, which obviously wouldn't happen, you would have to buy 140 packs. Oh my word. So it's a pretty serious, it's a pretty significant quantity of stickers. And one thing I noted was we've had this heat wave, and I went out and bought Coke Zero the other day. Just a 500 milliliter bottle. Confession, occasionally, we buy a bottle of soft drink. We're not perfect. And um I got to the end of it and I was like, there's something on the inside of my label. And so for the video, I'll just hold this up. But this is a Coke Zero label, um, and on the inside is a panini sticker stuck to the label. So if you're looking on video, you should be able to see that now. I'm just holding it up to the camera. So it came like that. It came like that, and you can just peel this sticker off and put it into the book. Now, I'm just gonna peel it off now for the first time. There you go. Oh, wow. So that can just be stuck straight in the book. And there is a special page in the book for the Coca-Cola stickers. In the panini. But these are exclusive. So it's like, even if you were collecting the 980 stickers, you still wouldn't have completed it. You'd have to go and buy at least 12 bottles of Coca-Cola, and I think they're in the 500mm and two-litre ones. You'd have to buy those bottles of Coke to get the stickers. But I must admit, hiding it behind the label, stuck to the label, is quite impressive from a packaging perspective.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

That's crazy.

James Piper 40:30

And it makes me wonder, I'm gonna have to go visit a MERF to find out if the Coke bottles have started coming without labels on. Because obviously, to get to the sticker, you've got to cut the label off.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Yeah.

James Piper 40:42

So I'm intrigued. I reckon people are ripping the labels off before they get put them in the recycling, which ultimately creates a more recyclable bottle. So it's not a bad thing.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Yeah, it might cause a problem for DRS in future, though, if you haven't got the label on it and it can't be read or something. Interesting.

James Piper 40:57

Absolutely. So we are adding, I've got a pack of panini stickers here, which I'm not opening because it's not allowed to open those. Yes, and I'm just gonna add those to the Ron wool, which is the rubbish or not wool, but that's what we're calling it. If I'm adding it to Ron, it means it's gone on the rubbish or not wool. So panini stickers just behind me there, and that can there they can rest permanently on the RON wall. Never to be stuck. Never to be never, I'm never opening that pack. Rubbish news. I spotted a really interesting story about flexible plastic recycling from Australia. Just to give some background, Australia had a scheme called Red Cycle uh for a number of years. Um I saw this while travelling when I was in Australia. Red Cycle just put bins in supermarkets, so similar to we have in the UK, and they were collecting up soft or flexible plastic, depending on what you call it. Now, four years ago, unfortunately, this scheme collapsed. And at the point that it collapsed, and it was because they couldn't find an outlet for the plastic, at the point it collapsed, suddenly lots and lots of plastic was discovered in warehouses that had been stockpiled because they hadn't been able to find recyclers. And so rather than just mothball it and say, well, this is the end of flexible plastic recycling in Australia, a new national recycling scheme was set up. And that recycling scheme initially was like, we need to clear out these warehouses of flexible plastic, and then we'll introduce bins into supermarkets. Maybe they did it at the same time, but we'll get bins into supermarkets, we'll start collecting it again because actually this is so important to collect and recycle. And they have been able to build up three times the recycling capacity. So they've gone from 8,000 tons, which is what Red Cycle were doing, to just over 20,000 tons, and they're soon going to hit 24,000 tons. And interestingly, that means they've cleared the stockpiles, but they now have the opposite problem to Red Cycle. So where Red Cycle was getting too much material, now this national scheme is not getting enough material because they've built so many recyclers or they've increased the capacity of recycling so much. And so now they're looking at curbside recycling and the kind of things we've done with Flex Collect. But a very, very interesting story in how if you and look, I'm gonna be careful because I thought Red Cycle was amazing and what they were doing was great. So I'm not undermining anything they were doing. But if you increase that capacity of recycling, suddenly your problem is I'm not getting enough material back. And so all these people who are fearing flexible collections coming to the UK next year and saying, well, actually, we're not gonna be ready, we're not gonna have recycling. Well, this story just goes to show how quickly that situation can change.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

I've got a story this week that is from the world of recycling. It's actually from the North Devon Gazette. You know I like to troll some of these publications for the very best stuff.

James Piper 43:54

Do you get editions of the North Devon Gazette? How are you finding this?

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Absolutely not. I I will not. Divulge my research techniques. Very good. You have research techniques? What? They're pretty rudimentary. And anyway, they're looking to name their new council bin lorries. Can you beat Bagatha Christie? That's the question. I love Bagatha Christie. That's great. So anyway, they're naming 11 new bin lorries, and they're using this well-established device of engaging citizens by asking them to name it. And of course, we all remember the Boatie McBoat face, which was very funny and big in the news a few years ago. Previous competitions have yielded some great names, but I'm not going to read them yet because I want to give you a fair chance before. So those are coming in a sec. But it's creating awareness and interest for recycling. It's actually Torridge is the local council doing this. They've got a form and a website where you can log in to go and name them. And on Sunday, June the 28th, so very soon, they'll be naming all of those uh winners, and it will be chosen by crews and the staff there.

James Piper 45:09

So, what have you come up with, James? I can't, I couldn't honestly get bin Diesel out of my head, which we had before, didn't we? When we talked about naming that guy named the fastest wheelie bin. That's right, bin diesel. The best I've come up with in the very short time you've given me is Lord of the Bins. The Ribins. The two caddies. There's got to be a subtitle. I can't come up with the subtitle. The Fellowship of the Food Waste.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Not too bad, but what's your favourite out of these so far? So these are classic names when um other councils have asked for this kind of name, the bin lorry. Grim Sweeper. Oh, yeah, nice. We've obviously had Bagger for the Christie. Bindiana Jones. That's great. Optimus Grime and Trash Gordon. Very, very good. Anyway, it's all a bit of fun and great to see a local authority trying to engage citizens in the very, very important work that these refuse crews do to make sure that our recycling gets picked up each week.

James Piper 46:14

Rubbish question. We had a rubbish question into the bin box from Eloise. Thank you very much for your question, which was, I think, more a frustration. I could sense it with the caps lock going on on the email. Why have manufacturers got rid of hummus lids? Does removing the lids really save that much plastic?

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Oh gosh, yeah, I can see why they're frustrated about this. And the similar happened with the yogurt pots, didn't it, in the last couple of years? There was an assumption that people knew the ban was coming, so they had saved up their yogurt lids for the generally the sort of larger yogurt size. I think they're just doing it to remove plastic, aren't they? It's just getting tons of plastic reduced as part of their commitments.

James Piper 47:01

Yeah, I mean, that was it. There was a good reason for doing it, and it was exactly that. And I guess there's a cynical part of me that says that, well, it reduces cost. I think in this example, my frustration comes from the fact that it actually reduces functionality. And I actually came across a study, I'm doing this from memory, um, rather than having the study in front of me, but there was a study that said actually it's not as hygienic not to have a lid. You know, it is not from a um health perspective, it is better to have a lid to stop bacteria getting in. So a lot of them say, oh, but the film has no impact, it doesn't change shelf life, it doesn't change time in the fridge. But I I do think part of that is because a lot of the supermarkets seem to have quite short times on their hummus and dips. So when I had a look in um Tesco just before recording this, they were saying once your hummus is open, you need to eat it within two days. Um really? Yeah, and if you search online, it's sort of like, oh, it'll be good for three to five days. So I'm not giving any kind of food health advice here because these are used by is not best before. So I don't want to suggest anything wrong here. But I would have said, as long as you're within the used by date, hummus and dips normally will last longer than two days. And I'd be interested to know if that kind of date changed as they moved from lids to films. And they said, well, actually, with a lid it could last a bit longer than two days, but with a film it's less. So as long as in the press release we say it doesn't change it because we've said two days, the question is, was it always two days? And that's the bit I'm not sure about.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Yeah, and I know, I mean, we have those like silicon lids, you know, the reusable lids that you can sort of put on various different containers, including glass jars too, not just those plastic hummus pots. And so that's how we would keep the hummus pot uh lasting a little bit longer. But that is expecting a bit of an investment for most people, and I wonder how many film lids have been peeled back, half the hummus pot used, it's put back in the fridge just with that film lid over the top, not airtight, obviously. They come to it a few days later and it's spoiled, and then the food goes into the pin. I'd like to see the food waste research on having switched from those solid, rigid lids to the film lid.

James Piper 49:21

Absolutely. We're gonna have to do this in Greengrass, so we're gonna have to decide would we bring the lids back? But that's for another day, I'm sure. So, I mean, as you say, there was a good reason for this. Just Tesco and Sainsbury's alone said it would save 50 million pieces of plastic, which is about 260 tons a year. But the challenge is to justify it, they said, well, this is unnecessary plastic. This because there was this um under the plastic pact, which was developed by RAP, there was this broad thing around reducing unnecessary plastic. And that's the bit I slightly challenge them on because I do think it made the product less useful. And it I believe, and I have no studies to show this, I'm telling you from my own experience in my own house, it has increased food waste at my end. And when I buy dips and hummers and things like that that have a lid, they last longer than the ones with the film. That's just my experience, that's not a scientific study, and therefore, for me personally, it has increased food waste. So I also have now resealable lids like you've got, uh the basilic ones. Um, I went online to try and find an alternative, and what someone suggested you could use a goo ramekin dish, which I have quite a few of the goo ramekin. You could use that, scoop the hummus into it, and then use like a Pringles lid. I think we talked about that before, but the Pringles lid fits perfectly on a goo pot. So that would be a good thing to do if you wanted to if you wanted to avoid uh food waste from just using the film. Greengrocer. Greengrocer. For people who didn't tune in last week, it's the new part of the show where Robbie brings an item each week that he's thought would be interesting for us to talk about. And we discuss how we would package it in our dream supermarket. So last week for the first episode, we covered cheese.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

And this week, what are we covering, Robbie? I'm just sticking with the kitchen staples and I'm going with eggs this week.

James Piper 51:19

Anyway, surely, Robbie, we cannot beat the cardboard carton. I mean, I think eggs are already in pretty good packaging. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Yeah, it's a great sink for recycle fibres. The way that they make the paper means they can use these very, very short fibers. They don't need to be using brand new paper. And so with recycled papers, there are limited numbers of products that you can make with the fibres. And this is one of those limited numbers. And it really is a great item, the uh recycled or molded fibre paper carton.

James Piper 51:58

And around the world you see all sorts of things, don't you? Polystyrene egg cartons are quite big in different parts of the world. I feel like, as this is episode 101, this is probably the apt episode for us to relegate those to room 101. Um, as you say, like the cardboard carton, as in the one that we think of when we think of an egg carton is perfect. It's basically like paper mache. You're taking a load of cardboard, uh like uh end-of-life cardboard, recycle cardboard, you're creating the porridge out of it that we talked about in those early episodes, how you make cardboard recycling work. But then what you're doing crucially is just moulding it. So instead of taking the pulp and turning it back into paper, you literally put it into a mold, dry it out, and it looks like that. And so you can use all sorts of things. You can use newspapers, you can use all sorts of paper that can't be recycled into like quite clean cardboard, but you can turn it into an egg board egg carton. So it is just perfect. Um I'm definitely seeing a trend towards more upmarket eggs. You know, these kind of like we've got a richer golden yolk. Oh yes, yeah. Um, because they are using like clean cardboard. And then and it looks beautiful. It's like a normal cardboard shaped into an egg carton, it's amazing. But there's no need for it. And I prefer the what looks like a cheaper packaging type, but is definitely better. So I think when we talk about our dream supermarket, we gotta go for the standard egg carton, haven't we?

SPEAKER_01 53:24

Yeah, I totally agree. And we we decided that we weren't gonna talk about reusables every week because otherwise we're just creating a reuse supermarket. But it did make me think that getting the eggs from the farm to the greengrocer could be in reusable packaging that just goes back and forth. And likewise, we as consumers probably only need one of those molded fibre egg boxes in whatever size we want, and we can be going back and forth with that packaging and picking our own eggs. Not for the greengrocer, but it is definitely one of those things that maybe in 20 years' time we will change the way that we go and buy eggs, particularly if you shop locally.

James Piper 54:16

Now that we have revealed that we've built a studio, I can finally go through all my construction residual rubbish that I've been hiding. So we had to apply for planning permission to make certain changes. And all really minor stuff, but uh what I found fascinating is the second we got that planning permission onto the Bristol website, I started receiving letters and posts from companies saying, Congratulations on your planning permission, use us to buy your lights or use us for your bricks or whatever it was. It was all construction companies and lighting companies and electric companies. Wow. Think of us when you're doing your work. So they get it from a like public register or something. Well, yeah, it must just be downloaded. They must just have like an API or something linked in that's saying someone's applied for planning permission, quick, send them a load of posts. I was thinking, what a waste of paper. Like, what an unbelievable waste of paper. It's crazy. Stamps, just time, energy. It it's just unbelievable. And I think with in one day I got five of them. And part of me was thinking, it's quite hard to submit planning permission without already having your builders or architects or somebody having done some work. So a lot of the decisions have been made. So I'd love to know how useful this actually is in terms of winning new business. I'd love to know how much it works. Because for me, I'm I mean, the lighting company I was already using. So that was like, well, just cross-reference your database. I've already been in and picked the lights. So what a waste of time, energy. It was extremely frustrating. So that was my yeah, that was my emotion that I felt this week.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

And I am gonna double up on that frustration because my emoji is also frustrated this week, and it comes from the heat wave that we're experiencing. There are a limited number of fans in our house, and only three, and one of them was doing the noise, you know, when it slightly gets um off-center or whatever and it hits the outside of the grill. So I thought, right, this is my opportunity to live my values. I'm gonna repair this fan. That was a mistake. I should have got someone who knew what they were doing. Anyway, I managed to get the grill off and deconstruct this kind of fan, you know, the safety kind of grill. And then um, the blades, it's like triple bladed inside a classic desktop fan. And I just sort of checked the part to see whether it was bent, one of these fans, and just gave it the most gentlest of tugs to kind of bend it into a better shape, and snap, it broke in half. Now that was annoying, and I tried to glue it, I couldn't manage to glue it back into place.

James Piper 57:09

Wait until the bin men hear about this. Absolutely. They must be like this guy. Why is he bringing us broken electricals every week?

SPEAKER_01 57:19

This guy is totally useless. Why is he smashing through bowls with a lawnmower and then snapping his fan? Anyway, I was so frustrated because then when I checked uh the screw that puts the at the front of the fan that puts the blade into the housing, it was just a little bit loose. So I didn't need to bend the fan at all and snap this blade. I could have just tightened it up and I th I don't know, but I think it would have worked. So I tested the wrong thing first, basically, or tried to fix the wrong thing first. Anyway, broken fan. I did try put it on with just the two blades. I sort of sealed it all back up, but of course, it's really unstable, the airflow, so this whole thing was just bouncing, bouncing up and down.

James Piper 58:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:06

Had to go in the bin, sadly. So, which bin? Very luckily, my neighbour said, I'm going to the local recycling centre, council recycling centre. Does anyone have anything to recycle just this Monday morning? Taking the fox. And so I walked down the road and took this fan to be disposed of. I didn't need to go and speak to my refuse crew to recycle, embarrassingly, yet another item of electronic equipment.

James Piper 58:36

As always, thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We love getting the opportunity to do this podcast each week. Join our Discord, follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com, or you can WhatsApp us. And everything we have discussed today can also be found on our link tree, and the details to all those things can be found in the show notes. There is nothing left for me to say other than see you next window. Bye. Bye.