104. Why flexible plastic might never be recycled

James Piper 0:00

Hello, welcome to Talking Rubbish, a 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 the delay to flexible plastic collections. Are paper coffee cups rubbish or not? I have a question about items covered by EPR and how will instant coffee be packaged in our dream shop. I'm James Piper and I'm joined by Robbie Stanaforth, my far from rubbish friend. Good morning, Robbie. Hey James. How are you today? Very good. Many happy returns for a recent birthday. Yes, it was yesterday. It was very good. We went to the cinema. Oh yes, to see. Toy Story 5. Ah, very good. And you might think we took our young son with us, but no, we dropped him at nursery, and it was just me and Ellie having a lovely time. Great. And um, yeah, the cinema was empty. It was just us. Hot day. We got away with it. It was great. It was like a private showing. Amazing, yeah. What a what a treat for your birthday. The only annoying thing was I ordered a coffee. Of course. They they had to bring it free because the coffee machine, because no, because no one had turned up to the cinema yet. They hadn't turned on the coffee machine. Oh, they had to let it warm up for like 20 minutes. And we were running quite late, so I said, Well, look, I've got to go in. Are you okay to bring the coffee or I can come out and get it? He said, Look, I'll bring the coffee.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Wow, what a service. Cinema to yourself, coffee brought to your chair.

James Piper 1:19

I know. They served the coffee, but the coffee was served in paper cups. Ooh. As you know. I mean, we're both really into reusable packaging, but I've long felt cinema should never serve single use. Yeah, it's not going anywhere. It's completely pointless. So I was actually mildly miffed. But the film was very good. I had a lovely time. It was a good birthday. Oh, great. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Only mildly spoiled by the single use cup.

James Piper 1:51

Trash talk. Our trash talk today asked the question, it's quite a depressing question. Why might we never recycle flexible plastic at scale? We're asking this question because on Friday, Defra announced that they would be delaying the rollout of mandatory collections of flexible plastic from the planned 2027 all the way to 2030.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yeah, I know. It's not just like, oh, we're not quite ready yet. I'll give you an extra six months, a year.

James Piper 2:16

It's like three years. Three years. It's a long time. And it's a decision that has hit the talking rubbish co-hosts surprisingly hard, I think.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Very hard. Yeah. I actually happened to be in Vienna when the news dropped.

James Piper 2:29

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

And so I was at an open-air opera when the text message came in.

James Piper 2:35

Very nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

A tear shed in my eye. Not because of the opera, but because of the news that I got from uh a colleague saying, literally, it's just gone into the news media, they've pushed it back to 2030. And I was just head in hands, couldn't concentrate on the opera actually. Just absolutely disconsolate. I couldn't believe it.

James Piper 2:58

We have first juice of disconsolate on this podcast. Very nice. Um, yeah, and it is worth noting. I mean, I look, it's frustrating. Yeah. And we're gonna go through it today. And I just to address kind of the elephant in the room that we've been working on with for a long time. So we are we are very biased towards feeling like this should happen. I think it is worth just saying that we are not financially biased towards this. I actually think our company and our work will continue more by a delay. So actually, financially, we're probably better off from a delay, but emotionally, we are not better off from a delay. We feel very strongly that launching flexible plastic collections was the right thing to do. But I do just want to make sure people understand it's not like we've got any skin in the game.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, it's not that we've set up and built a recycler or anything and we're now like sitting on the plant like they are in Australia, thinking you've got to feed the plant, you've got to make sure that there's more material to be recycled. But as you say, emotionally, we've talked for many years, the two of us, long before the podcast, about the fact that flexible plastic packaging is going to be necessary in some applications. As much as we need to decrease the amount that it gets used and we need to change food systems so that there's more reusable packaging, etc., there is still gonna be some that is used. And given that, let's recycle the stuff. It is possible.

James Piper 4:28

Just as a reminder, we've been working on this since 2019. Uh, we've been focusing on how to get flexible plastic recycled. My story is very much one of commercials and funding. And Robbie, yours is more around the local authority collections and specifically the collections we have up and running right now in 10 councils. And it is partly the work that we've been doing since 2019 that led the government in 2022 to announce that the collection of flexibles would be mandatory from 2027. And this was as part of simpler recycling, which is the same piece of legislation that's driving food waste collections. And we've talked about so many times. And ultimately, it comes down to one question: do you collect material first to create the confidence for recycling infrastructure to be built? Or do you wait until the infrastructure exists before asking people to collect it? It's a real chicken and egg problem, something we see a lot in recycling. Councils are against collecting things that don't have a home for recycling. And I'm sure there are lots of influencers listening who would say, I completely get that. And that's where we can bring balance to this. Because look, in some ways I agree.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Yeah.

James Piper 5:37

I don't want to be collecting things just to do what you were going to do anyway. It's a waste of carbon, it's a waste of road transport, etc., etc. Having said that, most things I will change my mind. With most things in the world, if I speak to someone and they educate me and they tell me something I didn't know, and I think, yeah, actually, I should change my mind, then I will. This is not one of those things. I will never change my mind on flexible plastic. In the same way that all local authorities listening right now, I'm not going to change their minds. Yeah, sure. We have a fundamental disagreement, which is quite friendly, hopefully, I would imagine, that I have a foundational belief that when it comes to low-value, difficult to recycle stuff, to build the recycling capacity from it, you have to prove that the feedstock is going to be there. Yeah. And what the government have done with this delay is shown that even if they've said something's going to be collected, that is not true. They will delay it at the last minute.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah, and ultimately what the government have done is they've balanced the scales. And on the one side, they've decided that if they delay, that's going to make them look bad, obviously. If people have started to get ready, citizens thinking I'm going to collect this stuff by 2027 and there's a three-year delay, that makes government look bad. On the other side, if they went ahead with the implemented timelines for 2027, they risk collecting the stuff and then it not having a home. And they've taken the decision effectively that the latter is much worse politically than the former. So they can tolerate a delay, and the local authorities have come out in support of it. And so it's not too bad a political decision. Whereas citizens en masse starting to collect and then finding out it doesn't actually all get recycled. There's only a small portion of it being recycled, would just make them look bad, and they don't want that.

James Piper 7:42

The intent was there. Four-fifths of local authorities said they expected to have collections in place by the deadline. Now, to be fair to them, three-fifths of them said, actually, we don't think we've got a home for this recycling material. And that is complicated because simpler recycling does require you to recycle what you collect separately. So there would have to be, for this to work, for our plan to work, there would have to be an exception made for flexible plastic that you would be allowed to collect it, but then send it off for burning while the recycling's built. So we don't really know what lobbying has happened behind closed doors. I guess what we can say is uh among those publicly welcoming the decision are LARAC, who represent the local authorities and the ESA, who represent waste management companies. And Gareth, who's the chair of LARAC, said LARAC welcomes the government's intention to move the mandatory collection date from flexible films and flexibles to the 1st of April 2030. This reflects the concerns that our members have consistently raised about the readiness of the wider system and the financial and operational consequences for local authorities. And what he's talking about there, financial and operational, is exactly how I want to focus this trash talk. So let's start by talking about infrastructure. We've sort of been touching on it so far. So the infrastructure challenge is that recyclers can't really build meaningful recycling plants, large-scale recycling plants, without guaranteed feedstocks. And councils don't want to collect material until those plants exist. And our work as part of Flex Collect, so what we were doing, tracking the 10 councils that are collected, forecast that we would get about 150,000 tons of flexibles coming in from next year from local authorities, which is a massive, all capital letters massive ramp up from the 400 tons that our trials had collected at the point that we were talking about them. So we we recognise the significance of oh we've done some trials, we got 400, 500 tons, something like that. And now we're saying it could be 150,000. That is huge. And so in the UK, we have a couple of recyclers investing seriously in flexibles. So J Plus have a site in the West Midlands that they say can process 75,000 tonnes. And they have recently received funding for a rigid slash flexible plastic recycling facility in Wales that potentially will do 100,000 tons. And that should be open in early 2028. And then EuroKey is looking to open a 38,000 tonne site in Corby later in this year. But I couldn't quite work out how much of that was rigid and flexibles. But in terms of the big players in flexible in the UK, really it's J Plass and EuroKey that have been investing in it. And most of our supermarket plastic will go to those two recyclers.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, exactly right. And then, you know, there's also chemical recyclers that are trying to get off the ground, um, such as up in Tea side. And then many of the primary plastics players also thinking about how do they incorporate recycling um into their general processes. Yeah, and those investments that they've made are sort of predicated on flexible plastic collections coming in in 2027 as the government said would happen. Now they're going to be thinking about are we going to open this plant too early and there's not enough material out there to go at, not enough feedstock. They're probably going to be looking across to all of the retail collections to say, is there any chance you can collect more because we now need to feed the plant?

James Piper 11:15

One argument I've heard consistently from local authorities in the past few days is that recyclers should have built more capacity after the government announced it was going to put mandatory collections in. So they're saying, well, everyone's known since 2022 that 2027 was the date. So why haven't recyclers built and got ready in that time? Now I struggle with that because the exact same organizations, these local authorities, didn't want to spend any EPR money till it was in their bank account. So I was saying to them, Well, you're about to get loads of money with EPR. Why why aren't you investing? And they would say to me, Oh, well, we can't invest because we think the government might delay the EPR money card. Right? So I think local authorities, look, I'm not trying to change your mind, because I'm not going to change any local authorities' minds. I'm not expecting to. But what I am trying to do is get them to recognise the difficulty that actually exactly the same reason they didn't spend EPR money before it was in their bank account is exactly the same as why a recycler might not build until you're actually collecting the material.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Yeah, look, the risk can't just sit only on private enterprise to build these things because the running theme through this trash talk is going to be everyone's confidence in the government actually holding the line and doing what they say they're going to do. And that confidence has been hugely eroded over the last five to ten years or so, with things being perennially delayed and pushed back, including things like Scottish government that were going to implement a DRS on their own, and then that got a legal challenge and got pushed back. Um, there's so many things in the packaging and recycling industry that for all the best intentions and deadlines are set, and then ultimately they get moved. And what that does is totally erode the confidence that anyone would have to stand up any of this very, very expensive infrastructure that needs to be built.

James Piper 13:13

And so this is where the title of the episode comes into play. Whilst there are encouraging signs of plants opening in the coming years and tonnage coming through the system, delays like this might cause them to close, might cause them to say, actually, we're just not going to build it as big as we planned, because we just don't have faith in this system. New ones certainly won't come on online until the material it is actually collected because external investors just will not invest on the promise of feedstock. They need it to be there. And all this delay has done, and this is my biggest frustration with it, is it has shown the government is just willing to move goalposts. So it's it's not just this delay, it's all the future ones that now happen. Because who's going to believe 2030? And I th therefore I think my biggest concern is that in 2030, we could find ourselves having exactly the same conversation. You and me could be at these mics saying, We're here again, it's now 2035, and Larak will once again say, Hey, there's no infrastructure. We shouldn't be collecting stuff where there's no infrastructure. That's what they will be saying again, because there will not be enough infrastructure in the UK. Bear in mind the 150,000 tons is just year one. Then it ramps up massively because as more and more people collect flexible plastic. And that's why I'm worried that it will never be collected at scale. Because at some point, someone has to break that and say, no, actually, I am willing to collect it because I recognize that to build recycling takes 10 years. And I need those guys to know that the material is actually coming through before they actually build their recycling plant.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yeah, I and I often think that the only way to prove that is to have skin in the game. And this is the one thing that was very successful through the Flex Collect project, which was small, tiny, you know, only 10 local authorities, only hundreds of tons, not even thousands, never mind a hundred thousand tons. So it is small. But it was a great example of how the brands came together to put funding in, and so did government. And that created so much more confidence in the whole project as an idea, because government were right there on the project board saying these are the types of local authorities that need to be selected so that they can see it's not just one type of local authority that finds it easy to collect, it's many different types. And so there was all sorts of cross-sector discussion. There was also um stakeholder groups, including the local authorities themselves and the waste management companies, that oversaw the project. And I believe it's a scaled-up version of that kind of project governance where all the stakeholders have some skin in the game that's gonna make a difference over three years.

James Piper 16:04

So, having said all of this, the area I do agree with local authorities on is that it is a and for that, and I feel sorry for them because I think they have to deal with the brunt of this, it is a very hard message to say to people, collect this stuff and we're gonna burn it. And we were burning it before, so nothing's changed. We're just making you do some extra work. That is a really hard message. However, in my mind, it would have been worth conveying that message. I really feel that because, first of all, it'll reduce the tonnage coming through. If you start off saying, we're doing some tests, we want to know how much comes out, we want to know what the quality is, we're gonna give you these bags. You can use them or don't use them, depending on how you feel about collecting something that isn't worth recycling. It actually would be quite interesting. And you wouldn't get 150,000 tons free. You might get 20,000 tons. And so suddenly, actually, the data you can give back to the public is actually quite interesting. And maybe I live and I do live in this very dream world because I don't work for a local authority and I don't have to deal with the public on a daily basis. There is something about the message of, you know, we are collecting this stuff to do research, to test, and it's going to grow really fast year on year, as is the recycling capacity, and people taking part in it almost as citizen science and saying, yes, actually, I want to help get the research. That could be a really interesting way of positioning this, which has worked quite well for the 10 local authorities. So again, the government could have phased the rollout. There's so many things it could have done other than delaying it. It could have said we want 50 local authorities in year one, 100 local authorities in year two, 150 in year three. And you treat it more as like uh the ramp and the phasing, you treat it differently to just a blanket delay that really doesn't solve anything in my mind. And I don't think anyone should lie in their messages. You know, I think we've if I if I can say this, I do think with cartons, we've got this a little bit, where we know that less than 10% of cartons are being recycled, but none of them are being recycled in the UK, as we discussed in episode 99. And councils are like quite afraid that the public are gonna find that out. And it would be way better for us to explain that we're going to develop that over time, to improve it, to find more outlets for carton recycling, to build more recycling capacity. Because really cartons are possible possibly in a worse position than flexibles. You know, I think you could actually get flexibles over 10% in the UK quite rapidly. And no one seems to care about cartons. And as we said in my episode, maybe it's because it's plastic versus cardboard and there's all sorts of psychological issues going on there. But um but I do think we should reflect rather than going, we're collecting something, the financials don't make sense, so we're not recycling it. Oh god, I hope no one finds out. I would much prefer to be proactive in that messaging and say, actually, we're gonna treat the public like grown-ups, we're gonna explain what we're doing, we're gonna explain how over time recycling is going to build, we're gonna do tours around those recycling facilities with influencers or whatever, so that people can see it happening. There's so many opportunities to treat it differently than perhaps we have historically treated difficult materials.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

And just listening to your talk then made me think: was Flex Collect too successful? It showed that residents were really keen to separately collect this stuff, and it gave the impression, I think quite rightly, given the trials, that people know that that's the most of the volume left in their black bin. So as soon as you give them a bag to put it separately to their residual waste that's only being collected every second week, every third week, in some places every fourth week, they're thinking, brilliant, I'm definitely going to engage with this service. And that's what's made the government think, oh gosh, this could be just too successful. We didn't want you to all do it straight away. We've not got a solution for where to put it all. And so it's such a funny thing that when we were working through that project to prove that citizens were ready to collect this stuff separately and put it out every week. Nowhere on the risk analysis did we put this might be so successful that the government delays when they bring it in.

James Piper 20:21

In addition to recycling infrastructure, there's also been a focus on financials. So let's go through that. First thing to realize is why you need regulation by this stuff. Is flexible plastic recycling is unlikely ever to compete on cost with burning or landfill. You know, to burn a ton of material, we've said before, it's like £120, it's a similar cost to landfill it. Flex Collect calculator, but the cost of recycling a ton of flexible plastic is over £1,600. So you are comparing, you know, lower hundreds for landfill and burning to £1,600. It will never work voluntarily. Because even the brands that are like, okay, well, we're willing to fund Flex Collect, who are amazing. You know, it's been really great that brands have been willing to fund it, they would not fund it in 400 local authorities and they would not fund it across 150,000 tonnes. They need the government to force them to do that because ultimately you might have one brand who says, I really want all of my pets collected and recycled, but unless everyone did it, then you're not sharing those costs. Sure. And so there's always going to be a group that says, actually, I need it to come through legislation. My investors won't allow me, or my shareholders, or whatever it is, won't allow me just to fund this voluntarily.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yeah. And I think the problem is the context of all of these costs, isn't it? Brands have already seen huge EPR bills that they've not been used to. You could argue that they should have been paying it for years to pump out single use plastics and single use packaging. But that being said, it is a brand new cost to them.

James Piper 21:58

Brands choose flexible plastic. Often because it is a cheaper and lightweight packaging material. It is a very, very, very efficient piece of packaging. And so when you work out that £1,671 a ton on a per pack basis, as we said in episode 60, it is a tenth of a penny. And so when we say £1,671 per ton, which is the exact number, everyone kind of goes, Oh, that sounds like a lot of money compared to £100, which is what burning it is. And that's true. But there are so many packs in a ton that it comes down to a tenth of a penny per pack. And I just think if I was in charge of EPR, this is so simple. It's say if you put Flexpool on the market on a per product basis, I'm charging you a tenth of a penny. You put it all in a bank account, you redistribute it to local authorities based on their sh their size and population size, and you say, There you go, there's your money to collect and sort and recycle. And by the way, for the next five years, you're going to make loads of money out of this because there's nowhere for it to be recycled to. So instead of paying 1,671, you're actually only paying like 400 quid to collect and sort it and then send it off for burning. So Angie, you're in you're in a really good position, local authorities, for the next four or five years. And it's only when recycling infrastructure comes online that actually all this money is going to get used up. I mean, to me, I'm making it sound really simple, but to me, it is that simple.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Yeah, I think what you've hit upon there is the fact that the money doesn't necessarily need to go to the local authority. Like the collection costs, they get covered by the EPR system. And there are some winners and losers across local authorities, and some will say, I don't get quite paid enough to cover my costs, but others get paid more than their costs, clearly, because in the mass balance of things, all of the local authorities are getting paid to pick up and collect all of the packaging that's available.

James Piper 23:56

But there will be additional costs. Like I think we calculated, didn't we say in episode 60 it was like six pounds per household per year, of which three pounds of that cost was the bag itself that you had to give households to collect separately. So a lot of the cost, uh the additional cost, is actually the bag, because you give them a roll of plastic bags and say fill these with flexibles. And that is where a lot of the cost sits. So local authorities would, if you ask them to collect it separately, they would need additional funding. I just think create a separate rather than saying plastic in EPR, say flexible plastic and have a RAM cost and EPR cost that is way higher than a plastic bottle cost to cover that addition.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, I think the thing that we're hitting upon though is that the EPR cost will, if there's additional costs of a bag, etc., will cover what the local authorities need. What it doesn't do is set the conditions to actually build a place to recycle it all. And this is the fundamental uh misunderstanding when implementing EPR by the government itself, is that you can't just set some laws, keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best that investors will just come in and say, here's a commercial opportunity. And we're talking about critical infrastructure public infrastructure here. This isn't just optional, maybe it's a good idea to build some plants, oh, we can't, right, let's just keep burning it and delay the deadline. This is vital to making advancements and protecting our environment, that we do need to recycle this stuff because, as I said at the top, it's gonna keep being used because it is so efficient at the job that it's made to do.

James Piper 25:38

Robbie, let's say the government didn't want to make brands pay. Let's say it said, look, we've got too much inflationary pressure going on, all the usual stuff. We're going to not make the brands pay a tenth of a penny. And the government picked up the cost. So the government just said, look, we'll fund it for the first few years. And in year one, 150,000 tonnes of flexible gets collected, which is like our best forecast. That is in that would be a very impressive scheme. And it's going to cost £1,671 pounds a ton, which it isn't because you're not actually recycling this stuff. But let's say those things were true. What distance of HS2 would that cost the government?

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Oh, you're going to tell me less than 50 miles or something.

James Piper 26:24

Way less than 50 miles. It is half a mile of HS2, would be the government picking up the costs of flexible plastic recycling. That's crazy. We often get so stuck in the world of recycling that we forget that in the grand scheme of things, these amounts of money are not huge. And the government is spending billions trying to solve environmental problems. We could help to recycle a waste stream that makes up a quarter of the packaging placed on the market. A quarter of our packaging is flexible plastic, and we have no home for it right now. And it would cost £250 million a year, you know, to do to do year one.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Wow, that's not far off how much the government makes every year from the plastic packaging tax. Why can't they just use that much?

James Piper 27:11

Just divert the plastic. Oh my goodness. Stop sending that to Treasury, send it to local authorities. That's exactly it. You know, and I know that's just the start, and I know more material will flow through, and I know it'll cost a lot more money, but I do believe the government could have covered the first three years, let's say, and said, well, actually, this is a priority. We've got to get this material collected and recycled. We'll cover the first three years. And from that, we will learn how much material is coming through, what the quality of it's like. And we will therefore be very educated when we come to put it through EPR.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

And what you're hitting upon there, James, is the exact kind of approach that the devolved nations take, that Wales and Scotland take. And we know how successful Wales is, particularly in recycling collections. They've taken that exact approach of saying, we'll meet you halfway, local authorities, we'll create a blueprint, we'll work with you to make improvements to how recycling works for our citizens in our country. Whereas the British government that works on English collections is much more standoffish, should we say, and just there's a mandated target, you will do it.

James Piper 28:16

Wales is such a good case study for this because historically they have got ahead in recycling. They focused on separating waste at source, and they are now the second best recycler in the world. And they're doing the same with flexibles. Um, they've supported financially the development of J plus, as we talked about earlier, but they're also collecting it. So four days ago, I think it was on the same day as the announcement of the delay, Cardiff said they were going to introduce collections of flexibles this summer. The Vale of Glamorgan has announced that they're going countywide with their collections. So Wales are doing what they always do, which is we're going to go faster and further. And England is doing what it always does and procrastinate. And there are there are some positives to that procrastination. The delay does bring us better into alignment with things like ETS, because ETS is going to make the burning of waste more expensive in 2028. So that might change some of the economics. Um, and we'll have better alignment with the EU and PPWR. I don't think we need better alignment with those things. I think the earlier we get in, the better, because it gives us all this learning and it allows us to be more accurate. And we do have this incredible history as a country of delaying things until the last minute and then complaining that there was not enough time to be ready. And DRS, I'm looking at you because you are gonna it's coming. It's gonna come so fast. And I know what's gonna happen. All the retailers are gonna say, Well, we didn't know this was coming, you know, and we're not ready yet. If DRS doesn't get delayed, I will eat a hat live on Talking Rubbish because they haven't even agreed the DMO in Wales. I mean, it is just crazy that we are in this position where things just get pushed to the last minute and then delayed. And wouldn't it be better if we just slowly went on the journey of releasing this stuff, phased it in, said we're gonna do 50 local authorities first, then 100, then 200? As we said, rather than delaying things.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

But we've had a lot of prime ministers over the last decade, haven't we? And we've had a lot of changes of government. And who really should be surprised by the fact there's not been the same person there planning the implementation of something over a three to five year time horizons? The musical chairs of government drips through into the civil service, and it just means that everything is quite hand-to-mouth and short-termist, and it's very difficult. And, you know, I say this with a huge degree of sympathy for people working in government, that it's firefighting, it's what's up for the next month to six months on the horizon, not how are we going to build something over five years and make sure it's actually brought in on time. It really just isn't the way that government and politics works in the UK at the moment.

James Piper 31:06

Ultimately, we're back to where we started. Do you build collection first to create confidence for infrastructure, or do you wait for the infrastructure before collecting? We genuinely understand why many local authorities have chosen the latter. I do get it. None of us want to collect material for it just to be burnt. That is not what I'm saying. But I recognise that it might have to do that in the stopgap. After six years working on it, I do believe that just kickstarting it, getting it going is the only thing that's going to break this cycle. Every delay is going to make investment harder. Every delay makes it less likely that new recycling plants are built. And every delay increases the chance that in 2030 we are going to be delaying again with just another delay to come after that, etc. etc. Thus fulfilling the prophecy of the title that we never recycle flexible plastic. If government wanted to change that, they could. The cost is relatively tiny in the context of public spending, and extended producer responsibility was designed to solve exactly this kind of problems. Those policy tools exist, they're just not being used. And we, in the meantime, will continue to support councils that have already taken the leap. The 10 councils currently working under Flex Collect, we will keep supporting you. We will keep measuring what works and keep publishing the evidence. Because if we stop proving what can be done, then I just do not think we will ever recycle flexible plastic at scale. For the second half of this podcast, we're going unintentionally coffee heavy. Oh, okay. It was it was definitely unintentional, but as I started gathering things together, I was like, we've got a lot of coffee stuff to cover. Let's just put it all in one episode.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

Are you feeling tired or something in the middle of a coffee?

James Piper 32:49

I was on the radio very early this morning. I'm very, very tired. But I'm gonna get off this and have a really strong coffee. Um anyway, but this'll this will warm me up, you know, all of this conversation about caffeine. So all the way back in episode two, we talked about coffee pods. Yep. Um, and that coffee pods are the second best way to get coffee to us after instant coffee, which is really a discussion on how packaging tends to overwhelm any other environmental aspect of a product. So we will because we see the packaging, we think, well, coffee pods must be bad. Yeah, sure. But because coffee, particularly those the little Nespresso pods, I think they only had five and a half grams of coffee in. And when you compare that to any other type of coffee, you use way more coffee and it requires growing, transport, etc. etc. So very quickly the packaging is nullified by the impact of the coffee. So you can go back to episode two if you want to hear all about that. What I have noticed is a trend towards coffee pods without the pod.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Right. So I've heard whispers about this, I've not actually seen it and I cannot visualize it.

James Piper 34:00

Well, there's different things coming to market. So I noticed one that's like a ball that's covered in seaweed, like knot plow essentially. Okay. Um, and then the Lavatta one is one I've been looking at. So I think it's called Tabli, I think. Um, and I actually think this is quite interesting. A tabli uh doesn't use, from what I can tell, like an outer casing, it just compacts coffee really, really tight into a what looks like a puck. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Okay, it's a coffee little puck. And it's that dense that it just stays together and you can pick it up with your fingers and you're just tuck you are touching the outer of the coffee.

James Piper 34:37

I think so. I couldn't find anything that suggested it had an outer casing. Okay. Now the challenge with all of these is they require you to buy their own machine. Uh none of them fit in, you know, they're all proprietary machines, which is, you know, I feel for like Lovato here, because hey, Nespresso do the same thing. Like they required you to use their pods, and if you use a compatible pod, you avoid a warranty and all that stuff. And I've got this just general annoyance with coffee that is like, oh, we've made a different type of pod, we've made a different type of park, whatever it is, you now need to buy a new machine. Now the embodied carbon from a machine is going to be huge. Yeah. So I would only recommend moving into these newer types of pods that aren't really pods. If you were just getting into them and you'd never bought a machine before and you were like, I'm looking for a coffee machine, I've just decided I like coffee, I'm looking for a machine. Then I think I would probably recommend this packaging free tab. And I had a look and they weigh seven grams, these pugs. So they are actually very, very close to the Nespresso pod. And I think they're close enough that they would actually be better in a lifecycle analysis because the study that we referenced in episode two, I think they said the weight of coffee in a pod was 14 grams. Yeah, it was they were they were using a way heavier number. So I am pretty confident that pods in all form, whether they have packaging or not, will still be worse than instant. But I think in the scale of pods, uh and assuming I didn't have a machine, so I was like buying my first machine, I would probably pick one that didn't.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yeah, those machines really do feel like the uh USB C charge cable versus the Lightning cable, and the EU eventually having to have a law saying we don't need this many cables. And I think that was really useful for the average citizen to say there is now universally a way to charge these mobile devices. Maybe the EU should think about having a universal coffee machine um for these bricks or pods or whatever pucks, whatever you call them.

James Piper 36:44

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 word of extended producer 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 podcast to 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_00 37:15

Thank you very much, James. Um so this one comes in from Inverbud. It's a five-star on Apple. And I did rarely read this in advance. So I know what exactly what's about to come. It was probably the one that I least needed to read in advance, because it's very short and easy. But it says, What a joy. Sorry. Did you read it? I have read it, honestly. Okay. What joy. Not what a joy. Listening to this every week keeps me motivated. I feel as if I'm doing something to help save our planet. It's a lovely review. Thank you.

James Piper 37:51

And uh, as I said before, we are running out of reviews. So I do need some more. Oh gosh, okay. Yeah, if you're on Apple, please leave us a review. Um, I could do with a few more. If you're on Castbox, you can leave a comment. If you're on Spotify or any others, it doesn't let you write anything. So feel free to send me an email because I just need some words. What about in the comments of like the YouTube video? We could write it in there. Yeah, comments from YouTube, comments of Spotify. I look at all those, so that works really well as well.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Yeah.

James Piper 38:18

And you can follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. 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 of those things is in the show notes. Rubbish or not? So if ever there was a product that I think demonstrated the need for harmonized packaging labelling, I think it's the Starbucks cup. Oh, okay. So today we're going to talk about paper coffee cups. Now we have talked about paper coffee cups a lot on this podcast. We did uh like a little series, episode 34 to 36, and talked about coffee cups. Yeah, and reusable cups too. Yes. So Nathan emailed us asking us if we would cover cups again. And he actually was he left us a review a couple of weeks ago, which was very kind. So thank you, Nathan. And he mentioned that him and his five-year-old daughter love listening. So yeah, Nathan had listened to our cup episodes, but he was basically struck by the number of symbols that are on the Starbucks cup.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Okay.

James Piper 39:26

Now I'm frustrated because I went to go and get a Starbucks cup for Ron, and they've given me one that doesn't have the symbols on it. Oh no! But I did get one the other day that did have the symbols. So luckily I took a photo of it so I can tell you all about it. Oh, great. So basically, they had at the top they had a label in Spanish that said put the paper cardboard cup in the blue recycling bin. They then had Italian, which said recycle the cup in the cardboard bin, although the Italian one did go on to say check your local municipality uh recycling rules. They then had the French symbol, which says separate the lid and cup before recycling. And then there was the EU plastic in product logo, which has a dying turtle on it, so people will know that one. And then plastic in product, which was written in 19 languages. Wow. So imagine that all on one side of the cup. Robbie, is it rubbish or not?

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Oh gosh, this is a real tough one. I'm now trying to think back to what we said. We know that there are places in the UK that can recycle these things. Yes. So recyclable when you take it back to a fixed um destination. And we're talking specifically about the Starbucks cup.

James Piper 40:39

I think all paper coffee cups. They're all similar. Well, yeah, but it depends how much plastic's on them, you see. Yeah, but they've all I think they've all now looked similar. Well though, Starbucks have been developing that new plastic liner, haven't they? Which sh this one is not by the looks fit, because I can see who made it and the people who made this do not use the new liner.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

I'm gonna say or not, that it's an a small enough amount of plastic that it can go with your cardboard recycling.

James Piper 41:06

I think if that was the case, they would put on the cup UK recycle. Do you coffee cup should not go in your cardboard recycling then? Now it's a frustrating one, this one, because the truth is you can recycle a paper cup. It is exactly the same as any other piece of cardboard that's got a bit of plastic in it. So, like a sandwich box would be a good example. The sandwich guys say, Hey, leave the window on. It's fine. So we've talked about it a few times, but just as a reminder, it's the scale of the coffee cup problem that causes. Yes, I do remember. There are so many coffee cups. What is it, 3.2 billion a year or something? This is all from memory. There are so many coffee cups out there that the Confederation of Paper Industry said, with this many coffee cups, we need them not to go into the recycling bin. They will cause a problem. And the problem they're causing is not a recycling one, they are just lowering the value of cardboard recycling. Because of that plastic liner, you've either got to spend more removing the plastic or you've got a lower quality output. But because of the scale of the amount of coffee cups we use, they specifically call out coffee cups and say no, they must be collected separately. And so that's why that happens. I I have spoken to many recyclers who say actually coffee cups in the recycling bin, it is manageable. They could manage it, but they would prefer not to receive them. And so the National Cup Recycling Scheme was set up, and this is a place you can send your cups if you want to get them recycled. And the way you do that, it's super simple. If you're out and about, you can take your coffee cup back to any Costa, McDonald's, Pret, or Cafe Nero. They're all members of a National Cup recycling scheme. You can just take a used cup back to them. They will accept any brand. We have a route right now to recycling. So I agree with you that they're all not, but I don't agree that they can go in your household recycling bin. I think they would be seen as a contaminant.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Just because if everyone suddenly did it and thought, oh, I just now my instead of trying to find somewhere to recycle it while I'm out and about, just keep hold of it. When I get home, I'll put it in my bin. If everyone did that, then there would suddenly be a huge problem.

James Piper 43:11

I think the thing that is worth highlighting is that we've just done an episode on PPWR, which is saying everything that's on the market has to be collected, sorted, and recycled. So I think in the future, cups will be put in the recycling bin. Yeah. And I don't think we're that far away from it. 2030, cups will go in the recycling waste stream. The question is, will brands move to more recyclable plastic liners? Will they avoid plastic liners altogether? You know, not Plara developing a coffee cup as will other companies. So you may end up with in the in the next couple of years seeing coffee cups that are truly plastic free and not using aqueous coatings and not using PE liners. And then you start talking about something that is readily available for the cardboard recycling industry. Rubbish news. Let's take a moment calling off from the hot coffee chat and talk about fans, quite the opposite. So research for material focus has come out. Uh basically because we're all buying too many mini fans.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Oh no.

James Piper 44:15

Did you buy a minifan?

SPEAKER_00 44:17

My daughter bought one on the weekend when she was at the festival. Then she came home with one and it was like, oh no. It's not the most drastic of rebellion. No, but for me.

James Piper 44:28

It does definitely press my buttons. It's the equivalent of drug dealing for you. This is like buying a mini fan. So research from Material Focus has found an estimated 4.3 million minifans could be thrown into household waste this year. So they're estimating that 7.9 million will be sold this summer. And they are a classic example of fast tech that we discussed back in episode 94. So low-cost electrical products that are bought for an immediate need and quickly discarded or forgotten. And so what we're going to say is as always, if it breaks or doesn't work because it was a cheap and rubbish minifan, which inevitably a lot of them are, please recycle it. So if your curbside collects household electricals or small electricals, use that. Take it back to a store that is accepts electricals or take it to your local recycling centre. And to be honest, just look for higher quality products that are going to last multiple summers. A lot of what's being sold is fast tech, which is going to break very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

So my news today comes from a DEFRA report that was released. And it was, it comes from actually the University of Portsmouth for DEFRA. So great that they're utilizing universities to do some primary research on this. And it argued basically that we're putting way too much effort into recycling and nowhere near enough effort into reuse and design, design for reuse. And given the trash talk today, isn't that true? We're talking all the time about recycling, recycling infrastructure, but so little about the design of packaging. And a few things In our defense, we are a recycling podcast. We are a recycling podcast.

James Piper 46:09

So I do like to think we say quite a lot, minimize your packaging and reuse and all that stuff. And we'd like to work up the waste hierarchy. But but when we set up our goal was to improve people's recycling behaviour. Yes. So unfortunately we do focus more on it than perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

It was. But what the report was basically saying is that so few things get beyond the trial stage. That's true of recycling as well, given Flex Collect. But uh for reuse, particularly, you know, they're lit they're small scale and they just never actually become normalized. Whereas we have had plenty of recycling that's just become standard practice, hasn't it? Recycling your glass bottles, your aluminium cans, that's just very normal to people. Whereas reusable packaging and smarter packaging is still got a long way to go. They also sort of said we really need some common standards for things. And heaven forbid this is something that people have talked about for years, not having such a diverse range of packaging when quite often they're fundamentally doing exactly the same job. It's just that you're trying to make it look different so it stands out from your competitor. And that comes at the detriment of much better packaging that's easier to manage at the end of its life. And also finally, reforming how public procurement works. What can the government do to actually mandate the way that, you know, it's got a huge bill in terms of the things, the goods that it procures? What can they do themselves? You know, this report was for DEFRA to say, actually, we just want to set higher standards of the packaging that we accept on government sites, on government buildings. It's really great to see that there's been some work done on this and great to see it in the news. My fear is that it will just sit on the shelf and it won't actually change any government policy in terms of switching from so much focus on recycling to much better design standards.

James Piper 48:16

Rubbish question. Our rubbish question today comes from Discord. It was asked by Ali S. Which was Are nitrous oxide canisters covered by EPR?

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Oh, it's a very good question.

James Piper 48:29

And it was a very good question because I got it completely wrong. I'm gonna hold my hand up. I had a view the nitrous oxide canisters, because what we've always said about packaging is something is packaging if it's not integral to the product.

unknown 48:47

Yeah.

James Piper 48:47

So if you don't need it basically for the product to be delivered. To work to find out. That's how we've always kind of thought about packaging. But that's not quite true. So and the reason we think of because we don't do very much in nitrous oxide canisters, to be fair. So I'm not, you know, it wouldn't really come up in our day-to-day. But I always think about coffee pods, because coffee pods are not packaging, because you need the coffee pod to make them function, to make them work. And I would have thought, well, without a nitrous nitrous oxide canister, your nitrous oxide's just going to work. It's not going to work. So when I looked into the latest technical guidance, which is where we find out whether things are packaging or not, they were specifically called out as packaging. So it said nitrous oxide canisters are packaging. So Robbie, do you have a view as to why a coffee pod wouldn't be packaging, but a nitrous oxide canister would be packaging?

SPEAKER_00 49:40

Yeah, I was very surprised to see this as well. Um, I think maybe it's because all of the product gets discharged out of it and you're just left with the unit that the canister itself, which is an empty unit of packaging. That's the only logic I can put to it.

James Piper 49:57

And that is exactly it. I mean, it's the same, I guess, as if you buy a soft drink. Yeah. If the bottle wasn't there, the drink's going everywhere, right? So why is it any different? Why am I thinking differently? And the reason coffee pods I think the reason coffee pods are not packaging legally is because the coffee grounds stay in there at the end of life. They don't come out. If the coffee grounds were to come out of the coffee pod, then coffee pods would be packaging.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

And that's the same reason why a tea bag isn't packaging, because the tea stays inside the bag. The bag isn't disposed of separately as a piece of packaging. And this is why milk, you know, those coffee pod milks? Oh, yeah. They are packaging.

James Piper 50:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Because the milk comes out of it. Yes. Libitasimo where you have like a milk one and a coffee. Yeah, that's right. So because the milk is actually liquid that comes, it gets pierced and it comes totally out, it's not like the coffee where the water just gets passed through the coffee and the coffee sort of stays in. Um, so those milk ones, for the same reason as the nitrous oxide canisters, they are all packaging.

James Piper 51:02

There you go. Every day's a school day. This is good. And it was good for me to have revision on this because I haven't looked at this stuff for years.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Greengrocer. So, as you did give me the warning that we were going to be talking about coffee, I thought we had to talk about how we're gonna package up our coffee in the greengrocer. But we have to make some stipulations here, don't we? On the size, how much coffee, but also the format. Because I just don't think we can say coffee universally, because there's granules, there's pods, there's um obviously just beans that you can grind up yourself at home. So I'm going to say the actual the granules, given coffee. Instant coffee granules, given that we've talked about the fact that they are the most carbon-efficient way to be drinking coffee. Not, in my view, the tastiest way to be drinking coffee. So not my personal preference, but I think we should do the granules. Great.

James Piper 52:05

And I think coffee is a fascinating one because what we are seeing is a market that is moving quite fast. So historically, instant coffee has been glass jars. Yeah. Like famously, and that's how we've all bought our instant coffee. It is very rapidly moving to the pouch, and that'll be linked to EPR costs. It's way cheaper for them to put coffee in a pouch than it is in a glass jar. And we are seeing that all over the place. And a few years ago, Nescafe were moving to plastic pouches, and they've now developed the metallized paper pouch, um, which I really, really like. I prefer the paper pouch to the plastic pouch. It's it's more recyclable. I think it's I think it's good. Um, I think this is a great evolution for pouches to move into paper where you can. Now, Nescafe, I went and had a look, and their pouch that they uh had in uh Tesco that I was looking at had on it 98% less packaging weight per gram compared to a glass jar.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

Wow, that's a compelling stat, isn't it? And if it's astonishing. If it's got past the advertising standards authority, then it is a pretty good claim.

James Piper 53:11

I almost bought, I thought I just don't need this much coffee in my life. So I didn't buy them to weigh them to test this, but you know, that's what it says on the front, 98%. And so, in that move from plastic to paper, I think we're now at like, in my opinion, an optimum form of pouch. Now the trouble is they don't, and certainly Nescafe don't, I don't think the others do either, have a way of sealing the pouch. They sort of expect you to open it and they call it a refill pouch. Oh, okay. And so the idea is, well, look, you've got a glass jar from a previous purchase, use the glass jar, refill it with the pouch. And so for our dream shop, we sort of need to sell you a glass jar first or ask if you've got one. Yeah. Maybe what we do is we on your first visit to the shop, you're given a refill pouch and a free glass jar with it. Okay. And then you're only ever given a refill pouch. The dream shop.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

Very nice glass jar, you know, talking rubbish branded. Exactly.

James Piper 54:08

The dream shop, if we can get it past Nes Cafe, the Dream Shop has a has the power to know if it's your first visit or after.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

That's that's that's the dream. Very clever. So the what about those um the posh instant ones? Don't some of those come in tins, like aluminium cans? Well, they're sort of like cardboard tins. Yeah. But again I've not actually had one, I don't think.

James Piper 54:34

Again, it's heavier than a pouch. What's its purpose? So, yeah, the metalisation on the paper pouch shouldn't be a problem. That'll just go through the paper stream. It's absolutely tiny. It's easier to recycle because we can recycle it at home compared to the plastic pouch. So I'm unlikely in this format to talk about a plastic pouch. Okay, brilliant. A shelf of paper pouch as it is. Lock it in. Residual rubbish. This is something that has happened to us this week. It has made us feel like an emoji. Now, I know people may have strong views about whether we should buy coffee from Starbucks. But I do have a soft spot for a small caramel macchiato. I do, I like it. It's very sweet. That gets you going. Don't have it very often. I maybe have like one, I don't know, a fortnight, something like that. That's a mid-morning coffee, though, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 55:25

It can't be a first thing.

James Piper 55:26

Yeah, I really like it. And and I collect the loyalty, the stars, you know, the loyalty stars. Meaning occasionally I get a free coffee. Oh, okay. I love freebies. But I have never claimed a free coffee. Why not? Yeah, but this is my question. Why not? Do you know why? Can you guess? This is my residual rubbish.

SPEAKER_00 55:47

Um do you donate them or something? No. Okay, I'm gonna make that. I'm gonna make you seem bad for Oh, if I can donate them, I'll do that. Because it's too difficult to redeem in the shop or something?

James Piper 55:59

You have to buy something to it's because I have a small reusable cup, right? I have my Yeti is very small. Yeah. It's perfect for a tall coffee, but no bigger. Yeah. The second you get a free coffee, they think you are a weirdo if you don't upgrade it. Have you ever uh seen this where you go in and say, I'll have a small caramel macchiato because that's my order, and you go, and I'll use my free one. Oh, I'll just give you a large then. So no, no, I want the small one. And they they find it very odd. All coffee companies do this. Whenever you have a freebie, obviously you'll want the biggest one. Yeah because it's free. Why wouldn't you? Take the extra. And I bet, and I have no idea on the data, but I bet a very high percentage of people go, oh, you're right, it is free, I'll get a bigger one. And use more milk than they would, potentially can't use their reusable cup, you know, etc. etc. And I for never claimed my free coffee because I just I'm like, I don't want to have this awkward interaction where I'm like, no, no, I'm quite happy with my normal order. And I know that's really weird, but it is it their face when you say it is so funny. So it happened yesterday because I needed to go and get this cup for rubbish or not, and it was my birthday. We give you a free birthday class. So I was like, okay, I'll go in and get a free one. You know, I've got a free one anyway. So I went in, and this is exactly what happened, you know. Obviously, we'll upgrade you to a large. No, no, I want it in this reusable cup. And and it's like it's a very awkward interaction. Anyway, I left the coffee shop, I left Starbucks yesterday thinking, I wonder how many free coffees I've got. Turns out I've got six free coffees.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

Oh my god, so you've got to have the same interaction six times over. You are gonna have to find someone to donate it to.

James Piper 57:40

Right, okay, this is my pledge. If I can find a way of donating them, I will donate them because I don't want this. And someone else might want a large coffee. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 57:50

My residual rubbish this week comes from the fact, topically, that Flex Collect won a third award. Just to rub salt in the wounds. Just to rub salt in my own wounds, maybe. This award-winning initiative that hasn't convinced the government that we should be collecting it all by 2027. This was uh packaging news uh they gave it recycler initiative of the year. And honestly, what I said earlier, maybe it was just simply too successful that it scared government into thinking there was suddenly going to be a flood of this material because citizens and residents around, particularly England, but across the whole of the UK, would suddenly engage with collecting their flexible plastics. But that said, and disappointment set to one side for a second, it was absolutely amazing. It's a clean sweep of all of the major recycling and packaging awards for this flexible plastic fund flex collect project. So just a huge well done to all of those involved, including waste management companies, Suez, including the 10 local authorities, obviously, um, and also third sector organizations like RAP and Recoup besides. And of course, it was put together, and the fundamental glue was eco-surety. We're gonna need more over the next three years of these award-winning initiatives.

James Piper 59:17

Thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We love getting the opportunity to do this podcast. Join our Discord, follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. 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 Bindey. Bye. Bye.