June 11, 2025

46. Greenwashing exposed - the brands that mislead

46. Greenwashing exposed - the brands that mislead
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46. Greenwashing exposed - the brands that mislead

Greenwashing. It's a term we’re hearing far too often, especially about brands that should know better. In this episode, we unpack how slick marketing turns cost-cutting and empty promises into the illusion of sustainability. From misleading campaigns to carefully buried truths, we reveal how companies exploit eco-conscious consumers in the name of profit. With real-world examples and practical tips, we’ll help you spot the red flags and make more informed, authentic choices. Plus, are jigsaw puzzles rubbish or not, is recycled plastic worse for human health and why is James obsessed with an AI bin?

Timestamps:
Greenwashing - 1:32
Additions and corrections - 34:53
Rubbish or Not: jigsaw puzzles - 40:19
Rubbish News - 43:14
Is recycled plastic worse for human health? - 48:45
Residual Rubbish - 53:42


Show notes
In the latest episode of our podcast, we dive into the pressing issue of greenwashing, a term that has gained traction in recent years as consumers become more aware of the environmental impact of the products they purchase. With the world facing a climate crisis, the importance of genuine sustainability practices cannot be overstated. This week, we explore various aspects of greenwashing, including the controversial use of terms like "compostable" and "biodegradable" on products that may not live up to their claims, such as dog poo bags.

Our hosts, James Piper and Robbie Staniforth, discuss a petition they are launching to remove misleading terms from packaging, highlighting that dog poo bags, often marketed as compostable, are not suitable for composting and can contribute to littering when people mistakenly believe they will break down naturally. This brings to light the broader issue of transparency in product labeling and the responsibility of brands to provide accurate information to consumers.

Additionally, we examine a recent complaint against Coca Cola regarding their misleading claims about the recyclability of their bottles. The discussion highlights the need for companies to be held accountable for their environmental claims, particularly as consumer awareness grows. With statistics showing that a significant percentage of consumers consider a product's environmental impact when making purchases, it is crucial for brands to align their marketing with genuine sustainability efforts.

Throughout the episode, we also address the health implications of using recycled plastic versus virgin plastic, answering listener questions and demystifying the complexities surrounding this topic. By shedding light on these issues, we aim to empower our listeners to make informed choices and advocate for more responsible practices in the industry.

Join us as we navigate the intricate world of recycling, greenwashing, and the importance of holding brands accountable for their environmental promises. 

This transcript is generated automatically and so could be full of errors and spelling mistakes. We apologise for this but it is the best we can offer at this point. Your local podcast provider might also provide a transcript.

James Piper: 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 explore greenwashing. Are jigsaw puzzles rubbish or not? And I have a question about whether recycled plastic is worse for our health than virgin plastic. I'm Jays Piper, author of the Rubbish Book and I'm joined by Robbie Staniforth, my far from rubbish friend. Good morning, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Hey, James.

James Piper: Do you think anyone's noticed a subtle change?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah. Okay. What's that change?

James Piper: Well, the intro didn't have a rubbish process.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah.

James Piper: Very subtle. Yes. So welcome to the new and improved Talking Rubbish. We'll have some, you know, keen listeners who have noticed we've got new cover art.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah.

James Piper: Our faces are out there now, but I mean they were always out there in social, but they're out there now on the COVID up.

Robbie Staniforth: They're on everything.

James Piper: Yeah. How are we feeling about this?

Robbie Staniforth: I don't know. They sort of say it's personality led these things. So our faces have gotta be out there. But I don't know if my personality is any more complicated than just a man who laughs at a drop of a hat.

James Piper: You've got a good face on the COVID art. You're just staring at the rubbish like, what is going on? So the intro's gone, Everything's gone. We're changing, we're starting with Trash Talk. So should we heading over to it?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, let's do it.

James Piper: Trash Talk. It's gonna take some getting used to. Starting with the Trash Talk. Guys, I promise you you're gonna love this new format. Like, we're gonna work through it. We'll do it this first time together. We'll all work through it. So start with Trash Talk. And Robbie, we have a big topic today. As always, this is a good one. Yes. We thought we would celebrate the relaunch, the new cover art, the slightly revamped format with a massive topic greenwashing.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's huge.

James Piper: And particularly our favourites. Right. Did we say favourites or least favourites? What do we.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I think most interesting. I don't think they are a good or bad thing. Are they sort of good that they're being called out? Bad that brands are making these missteps? Yeah, I reckon it's. They're very interesting.

James Piper: I guess we said a few episodes ago, I can't remember what episode it was, but we said a while back that we might do like petitions if we saw things that we thought were really important.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: And I would really like to launch a petition today as part of our new format, new structure. Just feeling a bit refreshed. I think it's time to launch our first petition.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's a good one.

James Piper: Yeah. Well, the thing that has got most traction on social media, I think it's fair to say. And we didn't know we'd become a podcast all about this is dog poo.

Robbie Staniforth: I know.

James Piper: Did we know when we started that we would be literally crap?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. No.

James Piper: So dog poo bags have been such a big topic, to be honest. We think they are a prime example of greenwashing. And I'll explain why. Because we're launching a petition to remove the words compostable and biodegradable from dog poo bags. And we believe that this is a form of greenwashing. We think having the word compostable or biodegradable or eco on something that literally has no root to break down is greenwashing. And that's why we want to stop it. And so we're not banning compostable plastic or biodegradable plastic or anything like that. What we want is for the people who manufacture dog poo bags to stop using the words compostable and biodegradable.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's exactly right. And as we talked about at length in episode 37, we really reckon this is a great use for recycled content we can be making. There's plenty of things we could be making these bags out of, I think going down a confusing compostable routes the wrong way. So, yeah, great. To launch the petition.

James Piper: Yes. So if you want to find that petition, I'm going to put it in our show notes. We would really like to galvanise our listeners behind this. We think it's a super important cause and it's way too detailed. We'd have to do a whole separate trash talk about dog poo bags to explain it all. So everything is written on the petition. So if you head over to our show notes, you can see all the details there. But the too long didn't read version of it, which is probably what I've put at the top of the petition, is dog poo will never be composted. It should never be composted. And therefore suggesting that the bags are compostable in our view is greenwashing and should not happen. We believe it also encourages littering because if people think it's just going to break down in the open environment, then they're more likely to litter it. So head on over to that petition sign it for us, you know, back the cause and then we'll see what happens and if we really like it. I mean, I've got about 10 more petitions in my head.

Robbie Staniforth: James and Robbie's soapbox of petitions.

James Piper: Yeah, well, we just need to get to a point where everything is clear. Right. And I think there's so many examples of people kind of making eco claims that aren't true that really need to be sorted. And, you know, this isn't one brand, it's not one company, it's the whole industry. And so we've got to do that through petitions rather than kind of advertising complaints, which would be a very specific thing.

Robbie Staniforth: And speaking of advertising complaints.

James Piper: Oh, nice. What a nice transition. This is professional. It's taken 46 episodes, but we got. That is a transition and a half. Thank you. So, yes, we're talking, first of all in our greenwashing, or really what's kickstarted our need to do a greenwashing episode is this Coca Cola story. So Coca Cola have agreed to make some voluntary changes to their bottle from 6th May 2025. So I think the changes are going to be phased in over the next, like, 18 months. But 6 May 2025 is when they agreed to make the changes. There was basically a greenwashing complaint by the European Consumer Organisation and clienturf, who were. Client Earth are quite a prominent activist group now. They've got quite a lot of kind of big things that they're working on and particularly they made this complaint in November 2023 against Coca Cola, Nestle and Danone. And the complaint was around them saying that bottles were 100% recyclable, 100% recycled content within some of them and use of green imagery. So they focused on those three areas.

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, that's pretty, like, clear, isn't it, As a message to the average person, look, they're recyclable and they're recycled. You know, it's. It's kind of quite clear what they're saying, isn't it?

James Piper: It is clear, but they are always controversial statements. I mean, 100% recyclable is like a bit of a pet hate for us. Yeah, throwback to the dog poo bags. It's a bit of a pet hate. It's always controversial. We see it on things like aluminium cans, but we now all know that aluminium cans from episode 44 have a plastic liner on the inside. That plastic liner will never be recycled, so it's not technically 100% recyclable. Same with the bottle, you're going to have all sorts of losses, contamination, things that can't be recycled. And so mathematically you can say this bottle is 100% recyclable. But I can understand why an activist group might say, well, that's misleading because 100% of it is not going to get recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, you're always going to get losses somewhere in the process.

James Piper: Yeah. Now the 100% recycled content pieces where Coca Cola have volunteered to make changes.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: And that is because, and I think, I think they have been clear about this or certainly I knew this, maybe they have. I meant to buy a bottle, but to be honest.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, but you're a geek, James. Of course you know about it.

James Piper: Well, this is true.

Robbie Staniforth: You pay more attention than the average person.

James Piper: Yeah, this is very true. So the 100% recycled content never has included, included or has never included the label and the lid. And so the bottle is 100 recycled content, but the label and lid isn't. Now that'll be because the lids and labels are made from different plastic to the bottle. I think we may have talked about this all the way back in episode one. The bottle is pet. The lid is typically hdpe. It can be PP as well, so polypropylene and the label is also polypropylene. Now the materials are selected for their properties. A polypropylene label is really easy to print on. So they've picked that because it prints really easily and they can put all their details on it. The lid is HDPE or PP because it has to form a tight leak proof seal and that's to hold in over the carbonation. So they need consistent performance. The EU in our instance mandates that for safety they have to make sure that that bottle is not going to, the lid's not going to pop off in the shop. So because you've got consistent in terms of the safety of the bottle, you're not allowed to use recycled content on the lid, basically because it's inconsistent. It could be weaker than your kind of virgin plastic and therefore it could cause a safety risk. So it's not even that they're allowed to do it. They are allowed to create the bottle at 100 recycled content. They're not allowed to do it with the lid.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. And when you say they've volunteered to make the changes, what they've volunteered to change the product or change what they're saying about the product.

James Piper: Yeah, as I say, they can't change the product. So what they're doing is changing the wording. So on the Bottle, it will now no longer say, I am a bottle made from x percent recycled plastic. So it's 100% if it's a smaller bottle, like 500 mil, and 50% if it's a larger bottle. It will now say, this bottle, excluding the label and cap, is made from X percent recycled plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, fine. And they've put. They're not using an Asterix or whatever and then saying excluding label and cap. They're actually putting that up front

00:10:00

Robbie Staniforth: that they're excluding the label and cap. That sounds pretty good.

James Piper: Yeah, I think it is good. And I guess I just want to say at this point, I mean, whatever we think of the drink and whatever we think of the plastic use, you know, in all these news stories, that Coca Cola are the largest polluter in the world. I mean, what Coca Cola are, is the largest, you know, manufacturer of drink in the world. So stands to reason they're probably the largest polluter because, and I did quotation marks that no one can see because we're on a podcast. The largest polluter. But actually, people are the ones who litter.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: Not the brands. And I've got lots of opinions about Coke, quite a lot of them negative in terms of the product and the material and things like that. But what we can't deny is they have invested huge amounts of money in recycling, which I think they have to. You know, I think if you are the largest manufacturer in terms of PET bottles and you are, you know, a significant polluter in terms of your product appearing in the market, then you need to be investing in recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: But it is amazing that in the UK their bottles are made from 100% recycled content. And, you know, I just wanted to highlight that that investment is very significant and that drive to get recycled content is very impressive. But don't worry, everyone, Coca Cola will be in our bad books by the end of this section. That's right, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I've got them as an example. We'll find out in a sec.

James Piper: Okay, good. So let's just talk about greenwashing first. It was actually first coined in a 1986 essay by J. Westerveld. Interestingly, he was. I mean, 1986, it's old, right? It's really old. It's older than me by a year.

Robbie Staniforth: It's not older than me.

James Piper: It's the mean of us, right? It's the mean average of our birthdays. He was. Yeah, he was writing about the hotel industry falsely promoting the reuse of towels as part of an environmental strategy. So hotels were Saying, hey, we're reusing towels, we're super environmental. And his observation was actually that was just to save money, it was nothing to do with the environment. And so this, when they say reusing.

Robbie Staniforth: Towels, as in like don't put your towel on the floor if it's unused, it'll get used by the next guest type thing.

James Piper: Yeah, not by the next guest, by you, I think.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, okay, fine.

James Piper: So that's standard, you know, you get those little environmental plaques that say, you know, reuse your towel to save the planet.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure.

James Piper: His observation was, yeah, okay, that's good for the planet, but it's also good for those hotels that are saving money.

Robbie Staniforth: Ah, fine, yeah. They just don't have to spend so much on doing the Washington.

James Piper: Exactly. So a word was born that broadly meant any organisation adopting new environmental initiatives that are actually cost savings.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. So it's like environmentalism, but really behind it, it's just trying to make more money.

James Piper: Exactly. And in 1999, so 13 years later, it was added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, which was a lot earlier than I expected.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, 99.

James Piper: I thought it might have been like, you know, word of the year 2020 or something, but you know, they have this. And I just assumed like Covid, you know, word of the year. I would have expected greenwashing, but actually it was in the dictionary way earlier than I expected. And the official definition is to mislead in brackets, the public or counter public or media concerns by falsely representing a person, company, product, etc. As being environmentally responsible. So yeah, exactly the same. It's just pretending something is more environmental than it is or hiding a cost saving or something else with an environmental claim. I guess it's not a surprise that people do it or companies do it. According to Greenprint, 73% of consumers consider a product's environmental friendliness when making a purchase.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: So of course it is at the forefront of brands and retailers mind to make as many of their products seem environmentally friendly as possible.

Robbie Staniforth: Which don't you think is a great thing that, you know, three quarters of consumers actually care about the environment when they're buying stuff. So it's kind of, it's showing that it's quite hopeful in my mind that actually people are considering the planet, etc. When they're consuming stuff.

James Piper: Yeah, I mean, very hopeful. It just goes back to my point of like, you know, we, I think we had this before, didn't we, where we said if car, if plastic was wrapped in cardboard, people would pay 15% more for it. Even if the plastic was the same. The problem with this is, yes, it's great that people make those environmental decisions, but the companies are lying.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: About whether that thing is better or not. So they'll just slap an eco logo on it and they'll say, look, this is so much better for the planet and 73% of people will consider that and potentially buy it for that reason. And if it turns out that actually it isn't better for the planet, then actually we've achieved nothing. So I'm very hopeful. As long as we kind of stop. As long as we stop this, I feel like I have to make all my products environmental, whether they are or not.

Robbie Staniforth: Just find any old spin

00:15:00

Robbie Staniforth: to put on. So the advertising standards agency in the UK, having got a bit hotter on this in 2021. We'll talk about that in a sec. It's probably a great thing because it's going to help out consumers with these purchases.

James Piper: Definitely, yeah. So, I mean, have we done this, Robby? We've kind of picked three each that we thought were good case studies and kind of representative of things that we'd noticed. So I think let's just alternate. I'm going to go with my first one, if that's okay. So this is Keurig, a massive company in the us, and they make coffee pods. So just reflecting on episode two, we talked about coffee pods. I claimed and stand by, that they are one of the best ways to get coffee from an environmental perspective after freeze, dried, instant. And this is because it's all about amount of coffee. So typical coffee, if you were to go to a shop, like a cafe, or you were to brew it at home with, like a cafeteria, you would typically be using something like 15 to 20 grammes of coffee. And an aluminium Nespresso pod was doing it at about five grammes. And the carbon cost of getting coffee to us from halfway around the world and processing it is such that actually a pod is a quite efficient method to deliver us coffee and has a relatively low carbon impact. Now, that is quite controversial, but it's true. What was happening here is Keurig, they make K Cup pods.

Robbie Staniforth: New one on me.

James Piper: Yeah. And what they were doing, which is very different to the uk, we'll talk about that in a second, is they were saying to people, hey, these are, you know, recyclable. All you need to do is scoop out all the coffee. After you've finished, rip the lid off, scoop out the coffee and put it in your recycling bin.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: And I mean, there's a lot wrong with that.

Robbie Staniforth: That sounds like a pain.

James Piper: But, yeah, first of all, you were asking the consumer to do something that I think most consumers won't do. So the idea that that is recyclable, when consumers won't put that effort in, is significant. But also, unfortunately, they went to recyclers and said, you know, are you going to be able to recycle this? And throw back to a previous episode where we talked about things needed to be larger than a tennis ball. No, they're not going to take it. You know, it's too small. It's too small to get through the sorting process. So two recyclers actually raised concerns about being able to take these coffee pods to major recyclers. And unfortunately, Keurig made the decision to hide that from investors and to say to investors that we've spoken to recyclers and they are recyclable. So in September 2024, the Security and Exchange Commission fined Keurig $1.5 million for claiming that recycling facilities had validated the recyclability of pods. And as I said, two have actually said, no, we wouldn't take them. And they felt they should have been transparent on that.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that is pretty naughty by the sounds of it.

James Piper: Yeah. And this actually followed a fine in Canada, where they got fined about US$2 million in January 2022. Similar thing. Competition Bureau found that outside of British Columbia and Quebec, K pods were not widely accepted. So, yeah, a couple of issues there. Making the consumer do way too much in terms of scraping out the coffee and the fact that recyclers actually wouldn't be able to take them because of the size. Remember, everything needs to be bigger than a tennis ball, really, for it to get through a sorting. It's very different to what we do in the uk, because in the uk, and disclaimer I help design pod back, which is the scheme we have in the uk. Podback is a, you know, collection system. It's a curbside local tips through Royal Mail. So there's lots of different ways of getting pods taken from your house back to a recycler. All of those pods get recycled in the uk. Now, the two things it's doing differently is you don't have to scrape out the coffee. The recyclers do that for you and they use that for soil improver. And because it's a separate collection method, because it's its own set of bags, it doesn't have this. It's too small. You know, you take your I literally took a bag of pods back to Costa the other day, put them in a bin and I know that's going to a UK recycler.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, I was actually in the Lake District a couple of weeks ago and saw that a Morrisons had a drop off point, you know, so you can take your bag and just drop it off at a Morrisons supermarket.

James Piper: Yeah, they're throughout Morrisons now. Yeah. Since we did that coffee pot episode they launched in Morrisons. So. And Costa as well. So, yeah, very impressive.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so I've got a good example too. My first one is from Quorn Foods. I'm saying Quorn there, who I think is owned by Marlow Foods and this is one that was an over claim on their Thai Wonder Grains, which I had a look at the picture and it's sort of like one of those stir and eat pots where you like just add water to kind of grains and it makes a meal in a pot type thing.

James Piper: Okay, am I gonna, am I gonna show myself up by saying like a pot noodle?

Robbie Staniforth: Absolutely not. Yeah, I mean that's, that's widely known, the pot noodle, it's that kind of thing. But it's Wonder Grains, apparently. And

00:20:00

Robbie Staniforth: this was reported in the Independent in the uk. And to be honest, I sort of feel a little bit sorry for them because this was about the exactitude of the wording that was used in the ad. So these were TV adverts that were aired in 2020 and 32 complaints were received by the Advertising Standards Agency. It basically is because they included in the advert helps us reduce our carbon footprint. And so the confusing thing was this word us and our carbon footprint. And so really it's about what can reasonably be understood by the average person that means us and that they're talking about the collective. It would help you, the shopper, us, as people consuming the Thai Wonder Grains pot to reduce our carbon footprint. But Quorn themselves claimed that. No, we meant us as in a company, that we were reducing our carbon footprint by not having meat based products, etc. That consume less carbon or use less carbon to make. So it's really not clear. And the ruling, you know, was that it's misleading. It was impossible, and this is a quote, it was impossible to determine whether it could reduce Quorn's carbon footprint. So really it's about using the correct wording, basically and making sure you're very careful with the terminology. And so to be fair to Marlowe Foods who made this product, they had it certified by the Carbon Trust which is quite a well respected organisation in the uk, saying that it was in some way certified as a low carbon product. And by the way, yes, it is worth trying to eat less meat if you're looking to reduce your carbon. But actually this, it was misleading to kind of say, helps us reduce our carbon footprint because the average person would think, oh, this is going to be great for the planet, I'm going to reduce my carbon footprint by eating this product. In a way, it's done by a technicality, but just goes to show how important it is that it's, it's extremely clear what the claim is when brands are putting advertising out there.

James Piper: It's a bit of an odd one that, isn't it? Because what are you going to put help Korn, like writing about yourself in the third person. I think you. Yeah, they just needed that fact sheet or that asterisk to explain what they meant, didn't they?

Robbie Staniforth: I just think it's a bit like we. The average person buying a product doesn't care about what you're doing to how the product is helping you as a company to reduce your carbon footprint. It's like an irrelevance to buying a product, buying a, you know, quick meal or whatever.

James Piper: Okay, my, my second one is H and M. It's time to go into the world of fashion, which is always a big issue in the greenwashing space, you know, particularly. I mean, here's the problem with fashion, right? We all know this, that fast fashion is what's promoted by the clothing brands because they want you to buy clothes fast fashion can never be sustainable. You know, you, you need to be wearing clothes over and over again and not buying loads of new clothes. So it's, there's always this kind of difference between what the clothing brands want us to do and what is sustainable. And just creating sustainable clothes, again using quotations, is not really good enough when we shouldn't be encouraging people to buy loads of new clothes. So H and M launched the Contras Collection, which was in 2019, with a vision of a sustainable future. Yeah. So there was a report from the Changing Markets foundation that looked at clothing from 46 companies to check how truthful they were being against their sustainability claims. And they actually found 59% of claims were misleading. This is across 46 clothing companies. And this is. When they say misleading, it was going against the green claims guidelines that were issued by the Competition Markets Authority. I think the thing that shocked everyone was the average was 59%, but H&M was at 96%. So 96% of their claims were misleading. This was followed by 89% for ASOs and 88% for M& S. Wow, that's.

Robbie Staniforth: A lot of misleading claims.

James Piper: Yeah. There's some of this I disagreed with, as in. In terms of the report, because what they did was they kind of put a black mark against anything that was made of a synthetic material.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh.

James Piper: So, for example, with H and M, they said, well, some of our collection is recycled polyester. Now, we would argue, I think, on this recycling podcast that that is a positive thing. You're going and getting polyester, you're recycling it. That's good. To them, to this report, that was bad because they didn't want to see any recycled content. They felt that was just driving the use of plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, yeah, plastic's bad. Like bad mark no matter what.

James Piper: Yeah. And I think H and M were quite clear

00:25:00

James Piper: about this. They said in the press release, our collection includes recycled polyester. As I said, this report would have marked that against them.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: So, I don't know. There was a lot. You know, there was obviously a lot wrong with this collection. And, you know, one of the really damning things was that it was found to be worse than their normal collection. Oh, no, really, where this report kind of landed was because it had focused so much on synthetics and the synthetic quality. Their conscious collection had a higher quantity of synthetics than their main collection. And that's always going to be a little bit tricky.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: Now, interestingly, in this report, they called out a few greenwashing alerts that I thought were worth mentioning in our greenwashing section. So these were the three alerts they found on cloves. So clothes claiming to be mono material or recyclable, but that are actually made of blended synthetics. Garments tagged as responsible with no explanation. So they found garments that were tagged as responsible but contained blends of fibre. So there was no logic as to why that would be responsible. And as I said, products made from 100% polyester included in a sustainable collection, which is probably where I disagree with them. So I don't think it was quite as bad as this report said. But that did gain a lot of traction because people wanted to say, hey, this collection's worse than the main collection.

Robbie Staniforth: And so my next one is the hsbc. And this was a number of ads that were aired through the course of 2022 as part of an overall campaign. And I was looking at a picture of one of the billboard ads and it says, climate change doesn't do Borders, you know, that's the big headline. And effectively HSBC had been doing campaigns such as funding net zero transition, planting trees, which is kind of fair enough in a way. Good to hear that they're doing some environmentally minded things. But they admitted something like the fact that they've poured an estimated US$8.7 billion into new oil and gas 20, 21. So it's like sort of talking about the positive story without showing the fact that they're also funding activities that will increase and speed up climate change. So in an ironic twist, and I promise you, I read this and haven't just made it up, it was so funny the day before these ads got banned, you know, as being a false claim and misleading and not showing that, yes, they do some positive, but they also do a whole load of other funding of oil and gas. HSBC were running workshops on how to spot and deal with greenwashing. Oh, my goodness, you couldn't write it. So the poor team at hsbc, I'm sure must have been on the back foot there trying to explain what they were doing. But yeah, unfortunately it's a great, it's a great example of like, small things, small steps that they're doing that companies are shouting about while hiding the absolutely massive things that go totally counter to any environmental objectives.

James Piper: And my final one is luton Airport. So March 2024, the airport's owner, Luton Rising, put out an ad which said, if we miss our environmental limits, our expansion will be stopped in its tracks. If London Luton Airport breaks the environmental limits set out in its expansion proposal, it won't mean an apology, it will mean further expansion is stopped. Our unique green Controlled growth framework will introduce limits for the airport's noise, carbon, air quality and road traffic impacts. These would be legally binding and independently monitored. Sounds great.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it does sound great.

James Piper: But they decided not to include any of the planes in their calculation. Basically, they only counted the airport operations. So, like literally people walking around the airport, the lighting, the driving, all that sort of stuff, and they did not include the actual plane car, the fact.

Robbie Staniforth: There'D be more planes because of an expansion.

James Piper: Exactly. And in 2019, it was found that 83.7% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the airport were from the planes, with only 1.3% from the airport operations. So basically, Luton had set itself some limits, but it had only applied those limits to its airport operations, which made up about 1.3% of its greenhouse emissions. Not a massive surprise that the advertising standards authorities banned this ad.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, absolutely. I would definitely think that it included the planes. It's an airport. Okay, so the final one that I've got is on Coca Cola. We're back with these guys again. They set a 25% reuse target. So this isn't an example of like any sort of prosecution, but it's a. It's a common thing that we see in lots of brands, is

00:30:00

Robbie Staniforth: quietly abandoning an environmental pledge that they made a lot of noise about one year, but a few years later, when they realise it's not necessarily so possible, they just quietly sunset it and delete it. So in 2022, the company promised to have 25% of its drinks in refillable or returnable glass or plastic bottles or in refill containers that could be filled up at, you know, like those fountains kind of dispensaries. But in December last year, 2024, they just deleted this from their webpage. And it was sometime in November. They did it conveniently just ahead of the Global Plastics Summit, where countries were trying to agree a global plastics treaty. There were negotiations going on. And so when the target was announced in 2022, the chief executive was sort of saying it's accelerating use of reusable packaging, providing extra value and a world without waste by 20. But, you know, not too much longer later, a few years down the line, well before 2030, they've sort of quietly stopped talking about refill and return for these bottles and refill, and they're back on, as you mentioned earlier, talking about recycling and recyclability. So, real big shame. But one of those things, and there's countless examples, aren't there, in many other brands, not just to pick on Coca Cola, where they set these targets, like zero targets and things like that, and they just quietly abandon them a few years later when they realise how difficult they are. And so overall, you know, what we don't want is for brands to be really scared to say anything. And in recent years, the term green hushing has increased in its use, which is.

James Piper: Green hushing. I've never heard it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Really? Okay. Well, it's sort of the opposite, you know, and the fact that people are being. Brands particularly, are being quiet on environmental claims because they're worried about these prosecutions. So the Advertising Standards agency in the UK got quite hot and heavy in 2021 and released new guidance that was in response to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which is like a body within the un. And so, you know, it really does what they're trying to do, that advertiser standards is getting behind this truth behind Snappy headlines and one sided story. So it totally fits with what we're here to do as a podcast. And they keep updating their guidance in 2023. It's not static at all and they're really being proactive with enforcement, education, complaints procedures and things. But actually what this can do is keep brands honest and on their toes. But what it might do is, is make some particularly smaller brands who really do have great environmental claims, environmental credentials for their products. It might make them sort of silence themselves and not be as bold in their claims for worry that they're going to be slapped with a big fine or the fallout of having a ban or something. So it's a very tricky balance, but great to see that, that it's getting easier for us at home to navigate these tricky environmental claims when we're purchasing products and services.

James Piper: Yeah, and you're absolutely right. I mean green commitments are extremely complicated and there's loads, you know, it's very easy to trip up on making a claim. I guess we've covered a number of themes today. I would summarise them as kind of unclear communications, kind of between like Keurig coffee pods and corn. That's just unclear communications. Hidden truths. So H M, HSBC and Luton Airport. I think we're just trying to not give the full story and unfulfilled promises with Coca Cola, you know, and we talked a little bit about that with Iceland as well, didn't we, where it's like you come out with this massive. We're gonna ban plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh yes, that Iceland thing.

James Piper: Yeah, a few episodes ago. We're gonna ban plastic. And then slowly that rolls back to, oh, we've got rid of 50% of plastic. And you know, I, I get so frustrated by all three of those because I think they're quite easily unpicked and so there's no advantage to your brand of coming out saying things that you know aren't true. And so I would counter each of those three things very simply by saying if I was a brand, well, we know lots of brands and retailers, listen. So what I would be doing is not communicating anything that I know can't be achieved, to be honest, with weaknesses and areas for improvement. When you launch any initiatives and definitely don't over promise and under deliver additions and corrections.

00:35:00

James Piper: We're walking through this new format, done the trash talk additions and corrections now. So I've got a couple of additions from this week. A few people sent me this amazing bin. Robbie. It's an auto sorting bin. Okay. I Need to describe this to you. It's called the Amaru AI Bin. It's from Bulgaria.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: Looks like a normal bin. You know, just like a normal cylindrical bin.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: And it's got, like, a black lid on it. And you put an item on and there's a little camera pointing down. That camera detects the item. And then there's like four quadrants in the cylinder and the lid will tip one of four ways depending on what the item is. So you just put a can on and the lid will tip to put the can into the metal.

Robbie Staniforth: Bit crazy. So. And it knows it reads and knows what the waste is?

James Piper: Yeah, well, I mean, it's called AI Bin, so it must be using AI to detect what the bin is. It's absolutely incredible. Now, I had a similar thing. I went to London and I found a bin. I was, like, at a cafe where they had a bin, and you hold your rubbish up to a camera and it tells you what bin to put it in.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, cool.

James Piper: It was amazing. I'll put both these videos in our link tree and. And on social media. So follow us at Rubbish Podcast if you want to see those. I mean, they're both amazing bits of engineering, but the truth is probably quite niche.

Robbie Staniforth: How scalable are those?

James Piper: Well, as we heard from alex in episode 15, do not put electronics in bins. Very quickly.

Robbie Staniforth: Very complicated.

James Piper: Very quickly it gets broken or people steal bits of it, or it just doesn't work. And I love it as a kind of prototype model. I think it's amazing in a closed environment, like a stadium or something, it would work really, really well because you can have control over it and if you can fix it if it goes wrong. But, yeah, I'm not sure this is wide enough to roll out, but I will include a video on our social media because it is just one of the best things I've seen in a while. And in episode 42, we talked about couples fighting over recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes. I had a discussion with my partner about what I said in that segment.

James Piper: Did she tell you off?

Robbie Staniforth: I think I said, I am the law when it comes to my house. Which was probably a little strong.

James Piper: Well, I got home and Ellie turned to me and went, if, you know you're leaving toilet rolls on the side, why aren't you doing anything about it? Honestly, I wish. I wish I didn't have this podcast at times.

Robbie Staniforth: So actually, it's the podcast that's causing domestic arguments for us, not the recycling itself.

James Piper: It's a very, very niche survey that two people responded to confirm their podcast causes arguments. Anyway, I posted that social clip to TikTok and we had a comment from someone called Cara and it was too good not to share cause it was a brilliant comment. It was. My ex used to put the general waste into the recycling bin so it never got taken. He wasn't colourblind, just not very bright.

Robbie Staniforth: I noticed she calls him her ex. That's probably a wise move.

James Piper: Come on, Kara's ex. You can do it. You can listen to his podcast. As always, we'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor Eco Surety, who are on a mission to rid the world of us necessary packaging. They help brands navigate the tricky world 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 organisation looking to make smarter packaging choices, check them out@ecosurity.com and we love getting reviews. And it's time for our new endearing feature that people. I don't know how much people like it. I've had no one write in to compliment it.

Robbie Staniforth: Robbie's review of the week.

James Piper: Review of the week.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, this one came in from Maldaug, which is an American review, we're pretty certain, aren't we James?

James Piper: It's definitely an American review. Yes. Not just from the name. Apple does tell me these things. So it's lovely to get review from.

Robbie Staniforth: Over in America, which I think translates in UK English to Moldog. But anyway, very kind comments, outstanding, funny, important. I'm only scratching the surface on this podcast episodes and I've already learned so much. James and Robbie are engaging and endearing and talking about issues that I'm so glad to know someone else cares about as much as me. But I wouldn't know how to start getting to the bottom of so many of my recycling questions. And these guys are here digging into the data and the nuances for me me. It's fantastic stuff and comes with a community that helps connect us all the more in this journey to make the world a little better. It does not get better than that review, does it?

James Piper: Thank you so much for that review

00:40:00

James Piper: and if you want to join our community, you can follow us obbbishpodcast on any social media. You can email talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com or you can WhatsApp us using the link in our show notes. Also, we would love it if you could join our discord and the link is in the show notes for that as well. It's the easiest way to engage with us and we'll engage with listeners to the show. Rubbish or not. So we had a rubbish or not from Instagram, from someone called ScraSpace asking whether Jigsaw puzzles could be recycled. What do you reckon, Robbie, rubbish or not?

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, I just think rubbish because they're so small, those little pieces.

James Piper: Yeah. I think. Well, the Internet agrees with you, I can tell you that. I mean, they're mostly made of cardboard. You know, sometimes you get wooden puzzles, don't you? But we talk about the cardboard ones.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: In theory, they could be recycled, I think. I don't think there's anything in there that would cause huge problems. But I agree. Everywhere I looked, people were saying the pieces are too small. Now, I think if I had a jigsaw puzzle that had lost so many pieces, I thought it has no additional value, I'd probably still give it a go to recycle it. I'm a bit worried that I'm in hot water bottle territory again. O But, you know, I'd put it back in the box, little bit of tape on, you know, around the box to hold it in, and suddenly it's not small. Right. You've just contained it in the box. But I couldn't find any website that agreed with me on that. And I'm sorry to the paper recyclers. If they're listening to us saying, please don't do that, feel free. I can feel the inbox from here, Robbie. I can feel. Oh, my goodness. So feel free to write in and tell me that's stupid and we'll add it in additions and corrections. But I think, to be honest, we should never be throwing out jigsaw puzzles, should we? I mean, people always want them, even if they're missing pieces. As long as you're honest about the fact that it's missing pieces and don't greenwash them, people are happy. Right?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, absolutely right. Yeah. So there's lots of options to donate them to charity shops, residential homes, libraries, social clubs. Loads of places you could send them to.

James Piper: I found some really good uses for old jigsaw puzzles. So I'll put some of the. I'll put these links in our link tree. But someone had made a reef out of. Of jigsaw puzzle pieces. You know, like a Christmas wreath. It's beautiful. It's really amazing.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, so upcycling. Cool.

James Piper: Yeah. I'll put it in our show notes. They'd made coasters, so literally, like, made the puzzle and then cut out a circle to. To make the. To make a coaster. So presumably glue it together. And some people had made earrings, so they just taken a piece and put like a hook in it to make earrings. So.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, very cool.

James Piper: There's three ideas of how you could use an old jigsaw puzzle and it's.

Robbie Staniforth: Definitely making me think about those dog poo bags. You know, those don't get recycled but are great for recycled content, putting plastic in. I wonder how much recycled content you could put into those jigsaws because isn't it just those little cardboard, paper, fibery type stuff? I reckon we should have recycled content jigsaws.

James Piper: I did find some eco jigsaw puzzle websites, so that does exist. Yeah. I honestly thought you were about to say we could make reefs with our dog poo bags.

Robbie Staniforth: So include the recyc content.

James Piper: Nice. Okay, no dog poo bag earrings for you. Rubbish news. Okay. It's a new feature. Rubbish News is where Robbie and I have decided to go and find a news story that we found most interesting and we'll do one each. So it'll be a news story from the last couple of weeks that we think is worth sharing. So the one I found is global recycling rates have fallen for the eighth year running.

Robbie Staniforth: Yes, I did see this.

James Piper: This isn't UK recycling rates, which I believe we said were 44% they'd increase to. This is global recycling rates. Now this is from a report from an organisation called Circle Economy and what they are saying is 6.9% of the 106 billion tonnes of material used annually came from recycled sources and that's 2.2% down since 2050. Now, when you get into the detail of this, they include literally everything. So crops, everything to do with construction, demolition. It's every material we use as a planet. And 6.9% of it comes from recycled sources is basically what they're saying. But what they say quite deep in the report is even if everything that could be recycled was recycled, we would still only be at 25%.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so it's sort of highlighting the fact that recycling is not the solution.

James Piper: Well, you just. Yeah. How are you going to do it for things you eat or think, you know those are not going to get recycled? They did specifically call out construction and demolition waste as a quick win in terms of improving recycling rates for that. And I 100% believe that is where we will have the most impact. So not necessarily our packaging, more things like construction and demolition waste. So completely

00:45:00

James Piper: agree with them on what they were saying in this report.

Robbie Staniforth: And so the Article. The big news that's been going around in my world in this last week is the new Starbucks cup that they're rolling out across Europe. So I've seen this all over in mainstream news, but also in lots of trade and industry news in the world of recycling. And so what's changed? Instead of using the polyethylene lining that we talk about a lot in episodes 34, 35, 36, we actually talk about it quite a bit. This polyethylene lining, they've replaced it with a different type of lining developed by a company called Quartzo, which is a silicon dioxide. So it basically means their claim is that it makes this cup so much better than anything they previously developed. And there's also a wood based fibre lid, so they've got rid of this plastic lid so that the fibre and the paper lid effectively can be recycled too. And the reason why it was in the news is because just across the bridge from Bristol into Wales Transcend Packaging are the ones who are manufacturing these new cups. And it could be a game changing cup by the looks of the information on the Starbucks website, because they claim that it is recyclable, it's made of paper, and this lining, this new silicon dioxide lining, doesn't prevent it from being recyclable. And they've spoken with Veolia, Smurfit, Kappa and Tomra, who are three very well established, well recognised companies in the paper and recycling industry, to verify their claim that it's recyclable. They've also done tests and are claiming that it's both home compostable, which we talk about compostability in episode 19. So head on back to there if you want to find out more about compostability. And also importantly, industrially compostable. So it can go off to be industrially composted as well as you can put it in your composting bin at home. So it sounds like the perfect cup. I'm now just keeping my fingers crossed that we don't call this out as another greenwashing in some future episode. But from all of the research that I did, it's actually great news that these companies who had previously been creating difficult to recycle items, are now pushing forward and making it much easier for the average person to do the right thing with their packaging.

James Piper: Yeah, we previously talked about PE liners with Rob in episode 35, where we talked about the fact that that kept the value of the cup and that's because they could extract the PE and extract the cardboard and the difficulty We've had like aqueous coatings is they tend to be made of plastic. So alternatives to PE liners have a plastic substrate. And so that washes off into the waste water. It creates microplastics. This is completely different because they're using silicon or they're using silica. Sorry. As the thing that creates the liner. And that is a natural material. It's not a plastic. So everyone I've spoken to and the recyclers I've spoken to, apart from Rob, who, you know, their process is set up for PE liners, seems pretty excited by this. So this could be the future of plastic liners. Not plastic liners, silica liners instead. Because then you can keep these things compostable, you can recycle them, and in theory they won't leach microplastics into the environment. So I think this is great rubbish question. So we had Marcus on YouTube asking, Is it true? I think this is our first question from YouTube. Thank you, Marcus.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: Is it true that recycled plastic is worse for humans than virgin plastic? I mean, like in a drinking bottle, does recycled plastic release more microplastics? Okay, I'm gonna save the last bit for a trash talk. You know, does recycling plastic release more microplastics? I think that's a biggie. That's a biggie. I mean, this is a big topic, but let's, let's try and summarise it. So what Marcus is asking is about health, I'm assuming about health. Is it worse for us to use recycled plastic than virgin plastic? And some of this fear comes from a Greenpeace US report from May 2023. Basically, that Greenpeace report was a summary of peer reviewed reports that demonstrated toxicity increases in recycled plastic. Now, there is definitely truth in this. We talked about this in episode 26 with black plastic utensils, with brominated dioxins. Or more recently, we talked about a heart disease episode which was PVC that contains a

00:50:00

James Piper: DHP to make it flexible. That was episode 43. In theory, if you mix those two things together when you recycle them, not that you could necessarily, because you can't really mix PVC in another plastic, but let's say you could. In theory, you're mixing those two toxins together and making them stronger sugar. When plastics are used to contain things like pesticides, cleaning solvents, in theory, that can all leach into the plastic too. If we think back to about Ocado episode where we talked about reusing Ocado bottles and they were introducing rice and Pasta in one reuse and they were doing cleaning detergent in the other. And we said it's really important they don't mix the two because if they refill.

Robbie Staniforth: For sure.

James Piper: Yeah, if they refill the pasta into the cleaning detergent bottle, in theory, that clean detergent bottle could have taken on some of those contaminants. So ocado have a system to keep those bottles separate. So some of this is true, right? You know, the more you mix things together that contain chemicals and toxins, the stronger those chemicals and toxins get. I guess the, the counter to it is. But this is so heavily regulated in terms of how our recycled plastic is used that actually the chances of you getting exposed to those chemicals or toxins is like next to impossible. So if we take the black plastic utensil, you had to have your black plastic utensil in boiling oil for 15 minutes to get anywhere close to 10% of the daily allowance of that chemical. You know, it's just not going to be significant. And there are so many restrictions on how recycled plastic is used, particularly in food grade environments. So for things like PET bottles, like we talked about Coca Cola having 100 recycled bottles. So for PET bottles or HDPE bot milk, where they have high recycled content, it is carefully regulated and they will make sure that the pet bottles that are coming off the market are being made into new pet bottles. They won't just allow any PET to be in there. It will have to be food grade. And the EU sets maximum limits for migration from food contact plastics into food. So the area Greenpeace did focus on that I think is interesting, is children's toys. Okay, now that is interesting because. And they specifically focused on brominated dioxins, which is the black plastic stuff where children's toys could contain toxins and chemicals. But again, the eu, and obviously if children have put them in their mouths, I guess in theory that could cause a risk. So the EU are currently proposing a regulation to ban the use of harmful chemicals. So pfas, which you've talked about, Robbie, this forever chemical endocrine disruptors, they're going to be banned in children's toys. There are already a lot of bans in place with chemicals that we've mentioned on the podcast, but largely when we're talking about children's toys, we're talking about new toys, new plastics. So actually again, the risk to recycle plastic is quite small when it comes to children's toys. So these restrictions are more about manufacturing and what is placed on the market. So a summary Because I know that's super complicated. Yes. When you recycle stuff, in theory, you could mix toxins and chemicals together. Any area where it is likely to be exposed to us. So food grade plastic or food contact is heavily regulated and we are very unlikely to get that buildup of toxins and chemicals. So in theory, recycled plastic, like, I don't know, surrounding your TV or something could have some extra toxins and chemicals to a virgin plastic, but it's not going to have any impact on you.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And I think coming back to Marcus's question, he was sort of saying light drinking bottles. So the conclusion is, if it says recycle content in your drinking bottle, you needn't be more worried.

James Piper: I don't think so. Residual Rubbish. Another new section. So we've added rubbish news and we got to end with residual rubbish. Right. It was just too good an opportunity.

Robbie Staniforth: Too good a title to refuse.

James Piper: Yeah. Robbie and I sat down, we thought, if we're restructuring, we've got to have an end called residual Rubbish. So here we are. Now, this section is basically, we would call it our old intro. It's something that has happened to us this week that's just made us laugh or we've really enjoyed. And we just thought, you know, if you've made it this far into the episode, you deserve something that's just made us really smile, really laugh. So for me, this was. I was looking for a restaurant to go to. Oh, yeah, In Bristol. Ellie and I were out for lunch and I was trying to find a restaurant and I was looking at reviews as I do, you know, you know.

Robbie Staniforth: Looking up, oh, what, like Google reviews type?

James Piper: Yeah, exactly. And the first one that came up was, it was a tapas restaurant and I was like, oh, maybe we'll go there. The first review that popped up said this. Are you ready? It was a five star review, okay.

Robbie Staniforth: Glowing.

James Piper: Food was great, service was sound and they used plastic straws, which is a lovely blast from the past. So I thought, I have to go. So I went. And

00:55:00

James Piper: they did indeed use plastic straws. Not for me. I mean, I said no, obviously, hashtag, refuse the straw. But I did see them on the bar and I just, I couldn't. I don't know why. I just. I lost the courage to go and ask them why they're still serving plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: How the heck are they getting away with that?

James Piper: I don't know. Maybe I'll go back and ask. That can be a residual rubbish in the future. I'll go back and find out. But yeah, I Just thought, I don't want to get into this. I don't want to get into an argument about whether they should use plastic straws, but there you go. I just love the fact that someone gave it a five star review in part because they continued to use plastic straws.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, plus, from the past. It truly is. You said. The one thing that made me laugh this week was on our street WhatsApp group, like the sort of community WhatsApp group with all the neighbours on and stuff. Someone had reshared something. I think it was from Facebook or Instagram, we're not actually sure, but reshared it on WhatsApp. And it was like a mini bin, you know, like one of those desktop wheelie bins that turns a different colour to tell you which bin to put out based on what day. Now, it is not a real product. Not like those AI bins you mentioned earlier in the episode. But I genuinely laughed out loud when I saw it.

James Piper: Now, I have seen this a few years ago.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, okay.

James Piper: And the instructions to make it are actually open source. I debated doing it. Yeah, you need like a Raspberry PI.

Robbie Staniforth: Computer and a 3D printer or something.

James Piper: Exactly. And you. Raspberry PI down from your council. You know, you download your council.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: Dates.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: And then the computer tells it which light to switch on. And I genuinely thought about building this and. Oh my God, now we're doing this. I think I'm gonna have to build it. Should we, like, should we try and do one each, see if we can make it really cool?

Robbie Staniforth: That would be so good. I've actually got a nephew who has one of those Raspberry PI's and a 3D printer. So this could be a reality.

James Piper: Okay, let's think about it. We should try and. Maybe we'd try and do one that isn't plastic. We could use like an old aluminium can or something. And like, I don't know how we're gonna get the light through, but maybe a glass bottle. A glass bottle? Yeah. We could do something different.

Robbie Staniforth: We'll have a think about it.

James Piper: I like this. Do we like the new format? Absolutely love it. Okay, so just to remind people. So for next week, everyone knows what we've moved into. I mean, it's taken 46 episodes. We think we're finally into the final product. We do a trash talk up front. Additions and corrections, rubbish or not. New feature rubbish, News rubbish question and new feature residual rubbish. And that's our. That's our podcast.

Robbie Staniforth: That's a lot of great stuff for you. Guys.

James Piper: I hope so. Oh, well, if it was, please leave us a review. There we go. Lovely segue as always. Thank you all so much for listening. Thank you for interacting honestly. We're having so much fun over on Discord where everyone is messaging and sending us all sorts of stuff. It really helps us put together the episode episode with people sending us ideas. We really, really hope you like this slightly changed format. And if you know, whatever you feel about it, if you like it or don't like it, just let us know. Send us an email@talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com Message us on Discord, whatever you fancy. Just let us know what you think of it because it really helps us just to know if we're heading in the right direction. You can use all the links in our show notes to join our Discord. Follow us on social media, email us or WhatsApp us. All the links for that will be in our show notes and everything we have discussed today can also be found on our link tree which can also be found in the show notes. We will see you next week.

Robbie Staniforth: Bye Bye.

00:58:35