47. Recycling in flats - how to make it work

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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 how to improve recycling from apartments. Are pens rubbish or not? And I have a question about what happens to the random rubbish in a skip. I'm James Piper, author of the Rubbish Book and I'm joined by Robbie Staniforth, my far from rubbish friend. Morning, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Hey, James.

James Piper: You okay today?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, very good. Excited for another one in this new format.

James Piper: Oh, yes. Yeah. So if listeners missed last week, I mean, would they have done that? The listeners that listened to the first 45 episodes and then for some reason skipped episode 46?

Robbie Staniforth: Unlikely.

James Piper: Okay. But if there are, we have a slightly new format. It's basically the same stuff. We've sort of dropped rubber's process and we've added in a couple of new features to make up for it. And I am proud this week. I think I've done two good investigations this week.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, what, you've been out at the supermarket checkouts, have you? Counting people's carrier bags again?

James Piper: I have gone to one checkout.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh.

James Piper: But not counting people. But this is a trail for the episode somewhere. Later in the episode, I will reveal my two investigations.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, exciting.

James Piper: But first, in this world of new format, let's head over to a trash talk. Trash talk? Yeah. We've wanted to talk about flat recycling, particularly since episode 38, I think, where we explained that Tower Hamlets had a recycling rate of 15.8%, which was significantly lower than the average of 44%.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And I'm sure there was plenty of people there saying, it's not my fault, it's really hard to recycle here.

James Piper: Yeah, I mean, London as a whole has a recycling rate of like what, 28.8%, I think we said, which was the lowest region in the country. And, and I had a quick look and actually 54% of households in London are flats, and that's compared to 17%, which is the national average. So.

Robbie Staniforth: And I imagine even those that aren't flats are probably like houses that are small dwellings where you can't easily put bins out the back. No side alley, etc. Etc.

James Piper: Exactly, yeah. And flat recycling rates actually can be like as low as 10%, so they really drag down the national average. And as with everything, when we're dealing with averages, the best thing to do is to focus on the big wins. And for me, flat recycling is like the biggest win. There's no point saying to South Oxfordshire oh, how do we get from, you know, 65% or whatever they were up to 66%. You're much better off going to the flats that are at 10% and saying, how do we get you up to, you know, 30, 40%?

Robbie Staniforth: Because that needs a big focus, doesn't it?

James Piper: Absolutely. Particularly if over 50% of households in London are flats. And we actually had a listener write in with quite a lot of detail about their situation. So I just wanted to read kind of a summary of this email to kick us off. So her council had moved from wheelie bins to large bins in her flat complex.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. So like they just changed the size of the wheelie bin from like one of those 180 litre ones to.

James Piper: Yeah. To those massive ones on wheels.

Robbie Staniforth: Massive 1100 one.

James Piper: Exactly. Yes. And the contractor for the council, because one of the things we have with flats is often it'll be the council doing collections. It could also be a private company. Sometimes you might have like a biff or veolia bin. So depends on how the, how your council set up. But in this particular case, our listener was saying that the contract for the council regularly refused the collection as it was too contaminated.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. It wasn't recycling inside that big bin.

James Piper: Yeah, they would. Obviously there were people just mixing stuff up. Now this compounded the issue because the waste was building up and the council was then demanding, or the contractor was then demanding additional fees over and above the council tax to take it to the tenants.

Robbie Staniforth: So the tenants had to pay. Yeah, all the tenants had to pay for the few mischievous ones who didn't know how to do their recycling.

James Piper: She did actually email me yesterday to say that they were budgeting something like £500amonth the apartment block for the extra collections. So this is like not an insignificant amount of money. This is a lot of money.

Robbie Staniforth: And is she sort of saying that changing from multiple of those like 240 litre bins to just one very big 1100 litre bin means that everything spoils and they can't even take out a couple of the wheelie bins where, like people haven't got it wrong? Is that what she's trying to say or not?

James Piper: I think what she's saying is most people in their apartment block are diligent recyclers doing the correct thing. And there are some people in the apartment block who don't care.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: And unfortunately what's happening is the diligent recyclers are having to pick up their share of the bill for the people who don't care. And I think this is a good

00:05:00

James Piper: summary to start us off of why flat recycling can be such a nightmare. Like, when I put my recycling out from my house, everyone can see it's mine. Everyone, it's on my curbside next to my house, everyone knows it's me. So I have this sense of, like, ownership that what I'm putting out is kind of a representation of me, I guess.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure.

James Piper: And when you're in a flat, and I used to live in a flat, so I experienced this, I spent many years in flats, you know, there is that you don't have that same sense of like, oh, this is my bin, this is my ownership. And there will be some people who don't care about recycling, don't care about getting it right, who maybe just realise that no one knows it's them.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I see what you mean.

James Piper: So they take that approach and then unfortunately, that leads to everyone else having to pick up a huge bill. So I guess this, this email is a good reminder for us that if this goes wrong, particularly in that communal setting, if flat recycling goes wrong, then it can be very expensive.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, it sounds it. And it's that old adage, isn't it? A shared responsibility is no one's responsibility.

James Piper: Very nice. It's early in the morning to get some adages in. So what do we want to do? We want to be positive today, not negative. So let's not just talk about kind of all the potential issues. What we want to talk about is how you maybe could make it better. And we are fortunate enough to know and have worked in the past with an organisation called Relondon and they are the experts in flat recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, Relondon, it's like a partnership from between the Mayor of London and the London Boroughs, specifically to improve waste and resource management in the nation's capital. And so they are absolutely experts in recycling. They're sort of dedicated to these kinds of issues. So we're going to summarise some of their work and there's also a link to Eco Surety podcast sponsor, because they funded some of this work. They launched a fund a few years ago and one of the projects that was picked deliberately because this is a difficult nuggety issue, was RE London, who wanted to explore and run a report, basically to say, what are we actually going to do about this? Everybody knows about all of the problems, but let's have a look at some of the solutions.

James Piper: Yeah. And it's just worth saying the reports are excellent. So we're just going to do a little summary here, but if you want to read them, I'll put them in our link tree and I would definitely. They're digestible, super easy to read and really, really interesting. And they've got lots of visuals, lots of pictures, symbols, signs, all that kind of stuff. So if you want to have a read the report, do that for me. The thing that stood out is basically in their latest toolkit to flats, they put out 10 recommendations and I thought it would be worth us just going through those 10 recommendations, just giving our thoughts on them at one point. I did turn to Ellie yesterday and say, is this really bad if I just take a company's report and just read it out? And then I thought, well, because we co funded it, I don't feel too bad and we'll put our own thoughts into it, won't we, Robbie? But, you know, I can't stress enough how much we're thanking we London for doing all work. It really made our lives easy this week.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, very happy to amplify their hard work.

James Piper: So they split it into two. They had operational and communication. So the first six recommendations are operational, where things that councils would physically have to change to improve the system, and the final four are communication based. So let's just talk about these operational ones. The first one, which we don't have to labour a point too much on, because we have talked about it so many times on this podcast, is about collecting the six main dry recyclable materials and food. Yeah. So six main materials. Paper, cardboard, glass, cans, plastic bottles and rigid plastics. So those are your dry recyclables and food waste. And we know how important collecting food is in order to increase recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: So they're just saying, make it universal, give them all of the options that are available, because otherwise people will say, why can't I recycle plastic bottles here? Or mix rigid plastics? When I moved from a flat in another borough, I was able to recycle it and people will lose faith in the system. As we know, simpler recycling has come in for businesses earlier this year and that standardises those material streams across businesses and the same will happen next year in 2026. So this will become mandated now. So their recommendation here, luckily, is going to be followed up by a law.

James Piper: Yeah, 2026, which is households, presumably that includes flats and houses and multiple occupation. It's not just. It's not just semi detached.

Robbie Staniforth: No, exactly, yes. All dwellings, basically all homes.

James Piper: So that's. That's their first recommendation. Just collect a wide range of materials the next one was the co location

00:10:00

James Piper: of rubbish, dry recycling and food bins. So what they're basically saying here is you need to give residents equal access to each stream. What you don't want is like your rubbish bin near the door and your recycling bin, you know, 10 metres away.

Robbie Staniforth: Or something, miles away, round the corner, tucked away behind a locked gate.

James Piper: Exactly. They want that to be equal. Now interestingly, in their report they said it would be best to have dry recycling and food waste as close to the main entrance and exit as possible. I didn't really agree with that and I did go back to them to say, are you sure? Because that's going to increase contamination. You know, people are, they're just going.

Robbie Staniforth: To pick the first bin, aren't they?

James Piper: Yeah, I wish people weren't lazy. But like some people are lazy and some people will just go, oh look, that's the bin next to the door, I'll put my rubbish in that. And they won't really think about it. Now the next point covers why they felt this was. Okay, okay, I'll save that for the next point. But, but they did come back to me and say, look, actually we think that's still the best advice that you would have the dry recycling and food waste as close to the main entrance as possible.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, okay, well, I mean, let's hope, I mean, I assume that this is very well researched. I'm not absolutely certain it makes logical sense. I would have thought they would just need to be laid out in an ideal world, right next to one another on equal footing, so to speak, so that you could choose the right bin.

James Piper: Yeah, and that is their general theme, you know, keep everything close to each other. Now the reason they felt that actually it wouldn't increase contamination is the next point is appropriate dry recycling and food bins. Now what they're saying there is that actually apertures are really important.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so what, the size of the slot that the thing goes into.

James Piper: Exactly. Now we've talked about this before, maybe not as much as we should have done, but apertures on bins really do help reduce contamination.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, love a can sized aperture. So satisfying, isn't it? Pop a can in one of those round slots.

James Piper: Yes, exactly. So aperture is really important in reducing contamination. So we're just talking about the opening in the bin. So if you have a lid that has a hole for a can or you have a lid for paper that is like shaped like paper, it helps people say for example, if you're putting a cardboard bin with a, you know, a letterbox aperture, it's going to cause people to flatten their cardboard. Right.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, making them do an extra step and get more volume in the bin. It's a win win, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah. Or unfortunately they might just go, I can't be bothered to flatten this, so I'll put my unflattened stuff in general. But you know, that's, that's the downside to the aperture, that it does probably.

Robbie Staniforth: On top of the bin and then the next person who comes along who is a very conscientious recycler then flattens it for them. I bet you a lot of that happens.

James Piper: I suspect our listener wrote in would be flattening that cardboard. Absolutely, yes. They also feel it's important to have reusable bags for people to store their dry recyclables. So particularly in flats, you need to have this kind of like your storage in the flat. And like in houses, we sort of take responsibility for that, don't we? We go, okay, I need some recycling bins, so I'll go to Ikea or whatever and buy some bins.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: With flats it's a bit different because you need something that's transporting it from your flat to the bin. So typically councils will take a bit more responsibility in terms of providing the right bags for you to have within your house as well as at the bin level.

Robbie Staniforth: So I'm thinking those like sort of plastic woven bags that you can wipe clean with a handle on and we think of that kind of thing.

James Piper: Exactly that. Exactly that kind of thing. And, and they actually found, and I can absolutely believe this, that if you're collecting food waste, for example, giving out free liners for your food waste caddy in your flat is the strongest factor in terms of how satisfied residents are with the service.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow.

James Piper: So if you want residents to be like, oh, they're doing a great job, you just give them free liners to put their food waste in.

Robbie Staniforth: Honestly, a caddy liner does really make your life so much easier, I find with food waste. I, I, you know, I'm a conscientious recycler and I'm not sure if I didn't have caddy liners if I would be doing it to the same extent. It just makes it so much easier, doesn't it?

James Piper: It absolutely does. And obviously, you know, for me, the move for companies like Co Op who now issue carrier bags as caddy liners, I think is these are the good moves that make life a lot simpler for people.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And interestingly, it is A primary function is as a caddy liner. It just so happens that it also transports your shopping home. It's amazing that, you know, it's. It's primarily a caddy liner, not a shopping bag. It's really turning things on its head.

James Piper: It's great. Now, the fourth thing is adequate collections to prevent overflows. Now, this is all about bin volume, basically, and having enough collections. So they recommended with dry recycling, cycling, a minimum of 60 litres per household per week. Now, if you remember when we talked about Bristol going to 4 weekly in episode 29, the

00:15:00

James Piper: the issue we had with that was that we have 180 litre bins, so it would mean 45 litres per week and we didn't feel that was enough. And so 60 litres per house per week is a fairly standard average. So like in. In cities in Wales where they've gone to four weekly bin collections, they have 240 litre bins because they've calculated that it needs to be 60 litres per household per week of recycling collections and it will be the same. So, sorry, that's what they recommended with dry recycling, but it's also the same as general, which is what I'm referring to when I talk about Bristol with food. They recommend 10 litres per household per week. So, again, it's quite. It's just quite interesting that they are putting a mathematical formula around this. So they're saying, you know, this is what the average household needs, this is what you should provide in the flat, and then you just check that your collections and your bins make up that requirement.

Robbie Staniforth: So I'm just doing the quick maths behind our listener who wrote in and said that they had moved to those 1100 litre bins. So that divided by 60 for the dry recycling, 60 litres per household per week means that just over 18 flats, 18.3 flats would be covered by just one of those bins. So it shows you just how big the recycling point or recycling area, the demarcated space for flats would need to be if one of those. And I think people will recognise those big commercial bins that you often see outside pubs and nightclubs and restaurants in city centres. You would need one of those every week, would only cover 18 flats.

James Piper: So the fifth thing they recommended is clean and well maintained bins and bin areas. People need to feel pride in that bin area. You need to keep it clean. So they talk about it needing to be well lit, doing a weekly clean of the bins and bulky waste cleared regularly.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that fly tipping is a problem, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, they talked A lot about bulky waste, about putting up posters that have kind of phone. Phone numbers on to say, look, can you organise your bulky waste through this rather than leaving it here? That is a big problem in flats.

Robbie Staniforth: It's huge. Because also car ownership too, you know, it's not only I don't have somewhere to put it, it's. I don't have a way to transport it to somewhere that I would put it. So it really is a huge. It's a much bigger problem than. Than where people have got households and got cars that they might be able to put bulky items on their roof or in their boot and take it to their local civic amenity site.

James Piper: Absolutely. And the final operational one was regular monitoring of the sites and one of their key recommendations here was someone monitoring it who is not the collection crew. Because the collection crew ultimately, you know, it's. They'd be marking their own homework, they'd be saying, oh, yeah, it's all fine, I did a great job.

Robbie Staniforth: But they're also done on, you know, they're. Their KPIs are on time and number of lifts and stuff. There isn't many KPIs on cleanliness, is there? Like they really just are being sweat as an asset, so to speak, because of council budgets being cut, etc, etc. You know, the time to look over a site is very limited.

James Piper: Absolutely. So the. So just to summarise those operational ones, because there were six there. So you've got the collection of the main materials, including food waste. You've got co location of the bins and making sure they're near each other, the appropriate bins, adequate collections, clean areas and regular monitoring. I mean, this is all. I'm sure there'll be people sat going, this is such common sense. But I tell you what, if it was common sense, we would have recycling rates above 10% in flats.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, it's totally true.

James Piper: Someone actually has to write this down and say, can you all just do this, please? And then that dramatically increases recycling rates.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, building developers also need to get hold of this report, don't they, because they're the ones who are going to need to create the environment where this can thrive.

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely. So let's come on to communication. So there were four communication recommendations. So there was clear and visible signage on the rubbish, the dry recycling, food bins and bin storage areas. The thing I found most interesting here is they were saying, actually the stickers should be replaced yearly from my time in flats. I mean, they were never replaced. You ended up with stickers peeling off, half off.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And you had to remember what that bin was from when the sticker was once on it. I remember that from living in a flat.

James Piper: Exactly. And someone moves in and they're like, oh, I haven't quite got used to this system yet, you know, so it's just. It's just one of those things, isn't it, where it's definitely worth keeping those, you know, your communications up to date and making sure that everyone understands so that as people move in and out, out, it's clear what they need to do. They felt it was quite important if you're. If you're working through this toolkit, you're doing these 10 recommendations, one of the most important things to do is actually relaunch the service. And

00:20:00

James Piper: so they had a lot of posters of like, it's time for a fresh start. You know, it's a moment of change. It's something we're doing that's different because actually that just galvanises people to go, okay, this is new, I'm going to put some extra effort in. And they mentioned specifically with food waste that the best thing to do is to focus on the kind of personal aspect. So no more stinky kitchen bins and you won't have pests anymore if you do this correctly and all that kind of stuff. So to make it a bit more personal for the residents.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah. We've talked about this before, haven't we, how once you move to food waste with a sealed bin where all the food is separate from everything else, it then feels weird to throw food waste in with all your general dust from the vacuum cleaner and other unrecyclable rubbish. I'm sure that kind of social norming, as they call it, would definitely help with getting people into it.

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely. And they felt that. So the third thing around, communications, keeping them ongoing. So yearly recycling leaflets, posters in communal areas. We know this works. I once did a project with Every Can Counts where we wrote to the Bristol residents to say, oh, by the way, you can recycle these kinds of metal. You know, and we focused on things like aerosol cans that people tend to forget about.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure.

James Piper: And we increased recycling rates. I think the month after that letter went out, I think recycling rates of metal increased by 40%, something like that.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. Okay. So at a tangible impact immediately after that fly, because people are suddenly like, oh, I didn't realise that.

James Piper: Yeah, you just remind people. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I had this idea with batteries that actually you could Kind of do this kind of annual battery amnesty if you were doing collections. So rather than doing a weekly battery collection, actually if you just did one day a year, it was like empty your drawers, put your batteries out. That might be more powerful because that's how we all store batteries in our house. We just chuck them in a drawer and actually sending out a bag and a communication to say, you know, next.

Robbie Staniforth: Week'S the day, now's the time.

James Piper: Yeah, might be more effective. So regular communication and thinking outside the box is super important with this stuff. And as I said earlier, the final one was informing residents what to do with bulky waste items. So having no dumping signs, phone numbers, all that kind of stuff.

Robbie Staniforth: So there's. There's a couple of things I suppose I'm surprised not to see. So one is like some sort of CCTV based thing, we're watching you or whatever, which I don't personally like, but I wondered if that would be part of that, you know, comms strategy is to kind of say, look, do the right thing because somebody's watching. Although I don't particularly like that tactic. And the other thing was language, language barriers and stuff. You know, people moving in English, not as their first language. How do they understand a recycling system if they only have a small amount of English? I presume maybe within the recommendations they talk about the clear and visible signage. James?

James Piper: Yeah, there's a lot in the reports about using pictures as well as words, which will cover that latter point, the CCTV point, I think. I think they tended to focus on the positive rather than the, you know, punitive. We're watching you or Big Bro, you know, penalty based measures. It was much more on the kind of, how do we get people encouraged to recycle?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, and definitely that phone number for the bulky waste is much better than just saying, don't dump your stuff here, you might get fined.

James Piper: Yeah. So, Robbie, my question for you is, when you lived in a flat, did you get any cool bulky waste? Did you find anything that you thought, that's hilarious, I can't believe someone's tried.

Robbie Staniforth: To dump that bulky weight. No, I can't think. I mean, just the classics, like so many mattresses, so many sofas, like almost weekly, and you sort of look around and think, there's not enough flats in this block to generate this many sofas and mattresses.

James Piper: Yeah, I remember once I went down to our. When I lived in a flat, I went down to our bin area and someone had thrown away a suitcase and it was a really nice suitcase, like And I just thought, well, I'm gonna have that. Like I can clean that out. And it was just the zip was broken. So I fixed the zip. But I must admit, the fear, the first time I took that on holiday, thinking, I really hope this person wasn't a coke addict.

Robbie Staniforth: How nervous were you opening the.

James Piper: I was so nervous that there was like some drug residue in this suitcase. Did you pack this yourself? Yeah. Is it your suitcase? Sort of.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, well done for being brave. You obviously got away with it.

James Piper: I did well, yeah. Except for those few years in prison. So what does this actually achieve, this, this work? Well, re London actually wrote a report in 2022 where they worked across four estates. Now these were big estates. I think between them, the four estates had 477 households. So these were some big, you know, flat blocks in London. They rolled out these 10 interventions and they had an average increase in recycling of 152%.

00:25:00

Robbie Staniforth: That's crazy. Okay, so those 477 households needed 26 of those big bins.

James Piper: Yes.

Robbie Staniforth: That's a big old area.

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely. So it does sound amazing. 152%. I mean, I guess the reality check on this is the baseline. They started at 11% recycling rate and they increased to 27%.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, that's good.

James Piper: It's a big increase. But of course it's still way below the national average.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: Now a lot of this they put down to food waste. They said, look, by adding food waste, because they picked flats that didn't have food waste. So by adding food waste, they drove the recycling rate and they actually had a drop in the residual bin of 45% on food waste.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. Wow, that is so helpful, surely for the costs to councils too, you know, it will be cheaper, won't it, not having to burn or landfill all of that waste.

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So I forwarded this report onto our emailer to say, you know, what do you think? What's, you know, do you agree with this report? What's your council not doing? Why is it costing you 500 pound a month extra? And she said actually she felt the report was spot on and the key thing that her council could do out of the back of this kind of work is she felt the council should take waste even if there's contamination. So, ah, okay. She felt, well actually first of all, improve the education, improve the signage and if there is contamination, still take the waste because ultimately that's what you do with a household. You know, I think councils typically will take a wheelie bin that's got Contamination from our house and the fact that they're not taking it from the flats is kind of. Her view is that's quite discriminatory. You know, that's not working for them. So a lot of what she felt was relevant in the report was the education piece and helping the rest of the flat really understand where they're going wrong. So I'm conscious we've gone through those 10 things. We've sort of. Hopefully that's been useful. I guess just to summarise, there is no point, in my opinion, spending loads of money getting councils that have like a 62.9% recycling rate, so like South Oxford, up to 65%, for example, without first tackling the areas that have super low recycling rates, like London, which is at 28.8%. So we should go for this kind of low hanging fruit of how do we get a flat that's got 10% recycling up to 30, 40%, because that will make a way bigger difference. And I did a quick calculation. If 54% of London is flats and we improved it to the standard of those four estates that Relondon had worked on.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah.

James Piper: It would increase the London recycling rate from 28.8% up to 37 and a half.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. Okay, so a big jump across the whole city.

James Piper: Yeah. Still lower than the average 44 for the country. So it shows how much work there is to do. But they would no longer be the lowest recycling rate in the country, they would be the second lowest.

Robbie Staniforth: So, okay, they'd move a ranking.

James Piper: What aspirations. But yes, I mean, going up from 28.8% to 37.5% would have a significant, significant impact on the country's recycling average. So I definitely think this stuff's worth investing in. And I guess the biggest summary is, in theory, this stuff pays for itself. You know, yes, there's the cost of new bins, yes, there's the cost of cleaning and education, but the reduction in contamination and increase in recycling should increase the value of the material, which should cover the costs. And in my opinion, investing in flat recycling is a true win win. Additions and corrections. Robbie. It has kicked off.

Robbie Staniforth: It really has.

James Piper: It has kicked off. And I knew it as well. I knew when we started this podcast we would inevitably spend all our time talking about dog poo and toilet rolls. I just knew. So we got our petition about dog poo. I'll talk about that in a sec. But toilet rolls, that has become the thing.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, it's clearly. It's like this dormant issue in people's households.

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely. So following episode 42 where we discuss couples fighting about recycling and specifically mentioned me leaving toilet rolls on the loose heat.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: We had a friend of the podcast Luciana posting on LinkedIn. She posted a very kind review of our podcast. So thank you so much for that. And a picture of her toilet cistern which had nine empty toilet rolls on it.

Robbie Staniforth: She was going for a record, wasn't she, Ellie?

James Piper: It could be so much worse. Imagine 9. I did actually respond to say I felt she could get another 10 on there and she has messaged me to say she's taken on the challenge. So I'm expecting a picture any day now. With 20 toilet rolls on the cistern.

Robbie Staniforth: That's a much bigger cistern than mine. I don't think it would cope with that many.

James Piper: No. Oh, Robbie, come on. I think you should take on this challenge too. Don't be defeatist. Now, this then led Conor,

00:30:00

James Piper: another friend of the podcast, Connor, who I think we talked about, I don't know, maybe like episode seven, who collected up his friends carrier bags and gave them out in a supermarket.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes, I remember that.

James Piper: This led Conor to share how he puts toilet rolls into one toilet roll. So he sort of scrunches up the toilet roll and pushes it into one.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah, A couple of folds. Push it into the middle. Yep, I know the thing.

James Piper: And there were some that had like four in one roll. And initially I was thinking, oh, okay, this, maybe this is the solution.

Robbie Staniforth: But space saving seems.

James Piper: Exactly. But then that led to Will Connolly, who we've had on the podcast, and Roger from Biffa commenting, saying, hey, that's going to make it not get recycled because Murphs are expecting paper to look like paper. And if you brick paper, as in you put loads of paper together to make it much heavier, it is likely to get sorted as a plastic, not paper.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, it'll seem like a sort of 3D object or something. Like a piece of plastic and not flattened cardboard.

James Piper: Exactly. Don't break up your cardboard, guys. Don't squash it all together with loads of other cardboard.

Robbie Staniforth: They were also saying you should take some scissors to it and actually flatten out a toilet roll if you really wanted to go the extra mile, were they?

James Piper: I didn't see that.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I think so. Flatten it out. It was either squash it, maybe I'm making up the scissors bit. It was either squash it so it's flat or scissors and open it out so it's also flat.

James Piper: So then there was this whole discussion about toilet rolls, you know, and we were all having a good laugh about it.

Robbie Staniforth: What's your favourite brand?

James Piper: Exactly. Then I was in Tesco two days ago and Kushell. That's how you say it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

James Piper: And Kushell have started selling a tubeless roll.

Robbie Staniforth: Lovely. The Holy Grail, isn't it?

James Piper: Literally what I wrote. Which then has led to a really interesting discussion about whether unbleach recyc called paper, which is what Connor was using, is better than bleached tubeless paper.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, my God.

James Piper: I am gonna save that for the toilet roll trash talk.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. Geez, we're going down that wormhole.

James Piper: Yeah. But it just goes to show how this podcast can cause people to descend into madness. Like, I think I spent two hours talking about toilet roll this week.

Robbie Staniforth: So I had a correction this week. Oh, I had a very disgruntled friend on the phone. Yeah. Oh, yes.

James Piper: They never ring me. They just.

Robbie Staniforth: This was a telephone call. This was a telephone call talking about us mixing our metals. I think. Episode 44, you talked about putting staples in a steel can. Very sensible thing to do if you wanted to be a really conscientious recycler. You also said you can just leave it in the paper, but if you wanted to be conscientious, put it in a steel can. But then you said to seal it off with some aluminium foil.

James Piper: I did have a look at the transcript. I'm not sure I actually ever said aluminium.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, did you? What did you say?

James Piper: I just said foil. You could seal it off of a bit of foil. Now, obviously I know all foil is aluminium, but just to clarify for the critics, I never ever suggested mixing metals.

Robbie Staniforth: That well known steel foil that you can is readily available is what you should be sealing with. But actually it's not as bad because if that gets sorted as steel, the aluminium foil will just burn off in the process of making new steel. So that's not too bad. However, similarly disgruntled about what I said in one of the very early episodes of the podcast, so early that I couldn't even find it, to be honest, is that I said you should stick steel caps, you know, on the top of, like, beer bottles or whatever, inside aluminium foil to help make it a tennis ball S. And this is a problem because those steel caps, you know, like on top of your beer or whatever, they will spoil the aluminium recycling. So I think what happened there was. I misspoke. I was meaning to say the aluminium caps that you get on top of wine bottles, quite commonly, if it's Not a cork. Those can obviously go together with aluminium, but if it's an obviously steel cap, you shouldn't be putting it inside your tennis ball size aluminium foil that people are trying to make. Or alternatively, if it's bottle cap, you can pop it back on and they'll get sorted out in the process. So there we go. Don't mix your metals, folks.

James Piper: 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 unnecessary 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 as a reminder, we have a petition live. Our first Talking Rubbish petition.

Robbie Staniforth: Very exciting.

James Piper: I continue to have so many ideas for

00:35:00

James Piper: petitions we're going to do.

Robbie Staniforth: If this one goes well, that's going to become us. Is it petition heavy?

James Piper: Oh, yeah. I'm delighted to say that we're supported by Keep Britain Tidy as well, which is a very recognisable name, helping us with our petition and Pet Impact, who are one of the companies who make dog poo bags at Recycle Bags, who want to communicate that compostable and biodegradable is not all it's shaped up to be. So, yeah, as we said last week when we introduced it, we are very keen for people who make dog poo bags to not use the word compostable and biodegradable because it will never be sent for composting. So it's just a misleading claim. It's a bit of greenwashing which we quite like to see disappear. We're very happy for those companies to continue to use compostable plastic if they want to. We just don't think they should suggest to the public that it can be composted, because it just can't. And we think it encourages people to litter. So if you agree with that and you want compostable to be reserved for things that can be composted, then go ahead and sign our petition. I'll include a link in the show notes. Remember, you can follow us on social media Obbish podcast, you can email talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. And please join our discord. It's the easiest way to engage with us and listeners of the show. And the link to all of that is in our show notes. One of the things you can do to help us grow the most is leave us a review. And Robbie, do you have a review of the week?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes, I've got one here from Vegan Becks. Loving this podcast. Discovered it a few weeks ago, then went back and started from the beginning. I'm now up to date and have to wait patiently for the next episode. I've learned so much. Thank you. So there we go, look. That's a ringing endorsement that those old episodes are standing the test of time. Go back and listen to them.

James Piper: Lovely, thank you so much. Vegan Becks, Rubbish or not. So, Robbie, I promised at the start that I did some investigative journalism this week. This.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, here it comes.

James Piper: This one is my first. Yeah. So I think this is our most popular request for Rubbish or Not. So thank you to Emily, Sara and Sam on Discord and Elaine on WhatsApp app. We're answering four of you, four of your requests in one go. That's our most popular. So the request was pens. Are pens rubbish or not? What do you reckon, Robbie?

Robbie Staniforth: I say rubbish.

James Piper: Rubbish, yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: Mix of so many different materials, isn't it? The plastic casing, the metal nib, sometimes a spring ink.

James Piper: Pretty mixed, pretty mixed, yeah. I agree with you, I agree with you. And even if you break down all those components, by the time you've broken them down, it's too small. So it's not. Remember what we talked about in the ram? 4 centimetres in two dimensions. You're never going to get that with any part of a pen. So.

Robbie Staniforth: And that's the sum total of your research, is it, James?

James Piper: No. Here we go. Now I have to apologise to BIC here because we're gonna go. They're the people I spent most of my time looking at. Now that's. I think they're doing better than most, to be honest. So I'm not, not picking on bic.

Robbie Staniforth: We would still take BIC as a sponsor if you want to come in.

James Piper: Absolutely. We don't pick on bic. That's our episode title sorted. I went looking at Bic because they're the biggest pen manufacturer in the world and they have the best selling pen in the world, the Bic Ballpoint. Created in 1950. They've sold a huge quantity, I think by September 2006, so 20 years ago they'd sold 100 billion. So I don't have any more up to date data than that, but always.

Robbie Staniforth: On the finger, on the pulse.

James Piper: Maybe they were 200 billion. Now, I don't know. So I am sorry for picking on them, but I found quite interesting that they had a sustainability page on their website. And I love looking through a company's sustainability page, as you know, Robby. And they use the classic quotes like sustainability is a cornerstone of our business, but you just think you're making a thing that's pretty difficult to recycle. It's like a disposable vape company. You know, you've got to manually dismantle this stuff, it can't really be recycled. Is sustainability really a cornerstone of your business? You know, you're making a product that's pretty tough. Now what made me feel this the most is they have a timeline on their website on sustainability page which said in 2011 they started a partnership in Europe with TerraCycle to collect BAT pens.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. Yep.

James Piper: So I did what every good investigative journalist did and I went through the Every European TerraCycle website to find out which ones had a BIC programme active. And the only country that mentioned a BIC programme was France.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. So they started it in Europe, not across Europe.

James Piper: Well, they had it. I'll come on to the UK in a second. But yes, France does currently have a BIC collection programme. They're not actually taking on any more kind of bin collection points, but they do have 539 drop off points around France. So if you're listening to us from France and we do have lots of listeners in France, you can

00:40:00

James Piper: recycle a pen. Everyone else, it's a bit more difficult. Just as a side note, from looking at those TerraCycle websites, I think Germany did have a scheme with Pilot, which is another pen manufacturer, so.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh yes.

James Piper: So there may be other alternatives. And I know we need to talk more about TerraCycle. We get lots of people writing in about them. It's on my list as a trash talk. But what I wanted to do was understand why Bit continued to have on their UK website we have a partnership with TerraCycle when they clearly don't. So I went into Ryman's yesterday, which is a stationer in the UK that I knew used to have these points.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: And I went up and said, I've got loads of pens to recycle. Do you have a collection point? What can I do with them? And the guy in the shop, I mean he started by saying we used to have a partnership with a company called Terraform. Was not a great start, if I'm honest.

Robbie Staniforth: Didn't quite get the name right.

James Piper: It was nearly there though, nearly there, halfway. And he said, look, we stopped that programme in December 2024. He did mention that it was funded by BIC before the finances stopped. And he'd been told by the organisation that it was coming back in January, February, but he hadn't heard anything and obviously it's now June. So I must admit, from him, I got this vibe that it wasn't coming back. And I guess this is my frustration. But it's like you have a website that says sustainability is a cornerstone of our business and then you scrap the one thing that allowed you to collect back your pens. And, you know, it annoys me when people have timelines on their website that say things like, in 2011, we launched a recycling programme across Europe. They slowly switch that off and they don't put in their timeline. Oh, and we stopped it. Now, I understand why companies don't do that, but it's always been a frustration of mine that you create this kind of, like, narrative that you care a lot, but then you don't follow through with that when it starts costing lots of money. That doesn't mean I'm a massive fan of TerraCycle. We'll talk about them separately. It's just an observation. Interestingly, BIC did have an impact report on their website. I really do feel like I picked them. I'm sorry, but their impact report was actually really, really good. And they had in there that. That the plastic packaging around their pens had reached 85%. Now, this bit was meaningless. Had reached 85. Reusable, recyclable or compostable. The packaging, I mean.

Robbie Staniforth: So just recyclable?

James Piper: Yeah. It's cardboard and a bit of plastic. Right. The good stuff that I found in their impact report was they are now mostly PVC free, then 99 free of PVC. So just 1% of the product contains PVC. Their plastic packaging has 65 recycled content, which I thought was really good.

Robbie Staniforth: That is good. Yeah.

James Piper: In the impact report, they said 16 of their raw materials were metal in 2024. Now, I was quite surprised. 16 of what they were buying was metal. I would have thought most of it was plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: It's a very small nib. Yeah.

James Piper: And of that metal, 31 had recycled content. And again, I was like, quick win, get that up to 100. That should be really easy. He.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: So anyway, we could spend ages talking about pens. We could go into inks.

Robbie Staniforth: This is the longest rubbish or not we've ever had, isn't it?

James Piper: I know. I told you, I did all this research and I didn't want to miss it. It has made me feel we should do a deep dive into pens. So maybe we'll just pause there. We'll do a trash talk because there's loads of interesting stuff once you get into it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, let's. Let's not write that off. It's a great idea.

James Piper: Very good. That's what people are coming for. That's the content. Pause there for the listeners, just to give you a little round of applause. Unless you're driving, don't do that. But little round of applause. Lovely. One of the things that I found really interesting is in their impact report, they kept putting up pictures of the pen and it all had that little clip, you know, that little, like, clip that you. When you put it in your pocket, you have that, like, bit that sticks out.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Piper: I kept thinking, why do we still make that?

Robbie Staniforth: You don't need that.

James Piper: Does anyone actually use that? That's a bit of plastic. That's pointless, isn't it?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's true, actually. Yeah. Maybe they could reduce.

James Piper: Get rid of the clip. Should that be petition two after dog poop bags.

Robbie Staniforth: Clip the clip.

James Piper: Robbie, you are on fire. Absolutely on fire today. Okay, so just to wrap, we have to wrap pens up. This has been like 10 minutes on pens. It's reflective of the fact that four people have written in about it. But. But just to wrap this up, TerraCycle do sell zero waste bags. A small one cost £25 and it would hold 90 pens. So if you wanted to do this at home, you could go onto their website and buy a small waist or medium or large, whatever you wanted. A zero waste bag. And that is a route to recycling. If you really, really want to recycle your pens, the reason they are hard to recycle is because you've got to manually dismantle them. Whenever you've got to manually dismantle something, you've got to pay a load of money to get it collected and recycled. Rubbish news. So this is our new section for listen, obviously people will have heard this last week, but if you haven't or you've just forgotten we're doing this, we want to talk about a news story

00:45:00

James Piper: each week that we found interesting. And for me, there is one news story that has dominated over the last few weeks, which is the disposable vape ban that came in on the 1st of June.

Robbie Staniforth: Yes, finally the date has come.

James Piper: Yes, we talked about this like back in episode 17, I think, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, long time ago.

James Piper: Long, long time ago. And I guess the best thing about the vape band was it created Stories that really show what we're up against. When we talk about recycling, it brought out the absolute worst in humanity, in my opinion.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: It was crazy. Absolutely crazy.

Robbie Staniforth: Really? I missed that?

James Piper: Okay, here's a headline of a BBC article on 24 May. I don't know what we'll do. Vapours panic. Buy ahead of disposable ban.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, my God.

James Piper: I'll tell you what you do. You buy a rechargeable one that looks.

Robbie Staniforth: Almost exactly the same.

James Piper: Makes no difference, you just recharge it. Here's a quote from Cara, who I'm sure is not listening to his podcast, but if she is, I apologise. With everything else going on in my life, what if I forget to recharge my vape and then I wake up one morning without a vape or I run out of charge at work, I'm used to the ease of being able to buy a disposable one when I need. Gosh, it's amazing we survive with phones, isn't it? Do you think every day she's buying a brand new disposable phone. I forgot to charge it.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm used to buying one of these 1000 pound phones whenever I like.

James Piper: Oh, my God, we are being unfair to Cara. I'm sorry, but my goodness, I was like, this is awful. And then we had Baroness Claire Fox saying the rechargeables have a metallic battery taste, which I don't like. I don't.

Robbie Staniforth: And that's true. Is it? That's scientifically proven. That confirmed.

James Piper: How would the. How what are you. What? How would the vape liquid, which is in a self contained container. I mean, I don't know how vapes work, but there's no way that that liquid is going through the rechargeable battery to get to your mouth. You're a baroness. Come on, you can think about how life works.

Robbie Staniforth: Do some research. This is great. I'm enjoying this now.

James Piper: Interestingly, 16% of people in this article said that they would stop vaping after the ban.

Robbie Staniforth: Hey, lovely.

James Piper: That's great.

Robbie Staniforth: That is what, Take up smoking.

James Piper: Yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: They didn't clarify that.

James Piper: No. I think this is all a bit of a red herring. I'm a massive fan of this ban. I am not a fan of what is happening next, which is. Look, the rechargeable vapes we all know are basically exactly the same as the single use ones. They just chucked a charging point at the bottom of them and they actually had an interview with a retailer who said they were Selling rechargeable vapes at the same price point as the disposable ones, just making less margin. So it just goes to show, when you create this legislation, you've got to cover loopholes, you know, for example, put a minimum price in so that people can't just go, oh, let's change it to the price of a disposable vape. Vape.

Robbie Staniforth: God, how dodgy are these new vapes coming onto the market, do we think.

James Piper: Fire wise, we're gonna talk. Yeah, fires. I mean, particularly with people stockpiling them. I shudder to think how many vapes Cara has in her house now. And, oh, no, you're creating a fire risk. It is not worth it. It is not worth it. So we will report again on vapes, I'm sure, in the future as things come out, and we'll have a look at these stats when we understand what impact the rechargeable vapes are having and whether people are just throwing them away. But please, if you vape and you're throwing them away, make sure you dispose of them correctly. Look for a dedicated bin. They are electricals, they should not go in your normal household bin. Robbie, do you have any news that's annoyed you?

Robbie Staniforth: I'm not sure whether I'm annoyed about this or not actually yet to form an opinion, but I saw in the news this last week that people, companies, I should say, are leaving the US plastics pack.

James Piper: Oh, yes.

Robbie Staniforth: So plastics packs for people who are unaware, there's loads of them around the world where brands and retailers sign up to make commitments to improve their use of plastic, basically. But some major companies have left the US version of this pact. L' Oreal, Mars, Mondele, Nestle, Walmart. But they're all sort of quietly quitting. You know, they're just saying, we're quitting, but they're not coming out with a big public statement around the exact reasons why they're not continuing with the pact. The original ones, all the commitments that were made which were things like eliminate unnecessary packaging, put more recycled content into their products and their packaging, make it recyclable so that it can actually be recycled and then finally make sure it is actually recycled or composted in some versions. It all came to an end in 2025. They're trying to extend those commitments to 2030, but lots of these brands are basically saying we're shooting for pretty much the same target across most

00:50:00

Robbie Staniforth: of those commitments that they haven't made by 2025. They clearly can't really see a pathway to doing it by 2030 in my view. So therefore they're not continuing. So hard to know the exact reasons, but it seems like these voluntary frameworks are only getting us so far. And if there's a. There's probably a trend that we've seen towards more action orientated programmes such as collection schemes, etc. Rather than these accusations that the packs can sometimes be a bit of a talking shop and a framework, but not very much action.

James Piper: Rubbish question. So I was thinking, what's my question gonna be? I had a completely different question and then yesterday Sarah on Discord asked what happens to a skip once it's collected? And I currently have some housework going on. I have two skips on my driveway. So I was very excited to answer this. I thought actually that's a great question.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so this is more investigative journalism.

James Piper: Yeah, this is where I got really investigative.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. At its finest.

James Piper: First thing I did was I called the skip company because their mobile number was on the side of the skip. Now that is pretty easy investigative journalism then.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow, you've really pushed the boat out here. You've stretched yourself.

James Piper: Yep. So I found the mobile number printed on the side of a skip. I gave the guy a call, he said the skip I have is for a company called Wilson's. And he said, oh, I send all of it to Abacus. So then I found, oh yes, I've.

Robbie Staniforth: Seen the name Abacus have those. Okay, yeah, yeah.

James Piper: So I phoned Abacus. So thank you to Simon from Abacus. I mean, but I spent like an hour on this yesterday just speaking to all these skip companies and I really appreciate the time you gave me answering my questions. Abacus said they have roughly 150 loads arriving a day, which could be as much as 1500 tonnes coming in from various skips across the city. What they do is they tip the skips and they have three grabbers. So three, you know, big articulated arms. Yeah, exactly. Those kind of things. Just picking out waste they're looking for. So people are operating that, going, oh, there's some plasterboard, we'll grab that. And they're basically sorting it into piles. And the piles then go onto a conveyor belt which are then manually checked so pulling out anything that the grabber accidentally got. Now it's worth noting they were like actually for large construction sites, obviously we don't have to do this because they'll have a plasterboard skip, a timber skip, a greenway skip. So they will have specific skips for materials, but for like my house, where they're mixing everything together. They need to sort it.

Robbie Staniforth: I do always wonder about this. You know, you see those mixed, you know, DIY skips all the time on the road. So this is what they're saying. They're sorting it with these grabbers.

James Piper: Exactly. And he was saying, actually it's pretty predictable when people are doing renovation work. We know roughly what to expect that's coming in. But he did say it's a bit hit and miss as to whether they make money on it. It's a bit like Russian roulette. What is someone sending you? Will you make money on it? And some skips they make money on. And some skips they lose money on and.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. And you know what they're after to make the money. Decent wood.

James Piper: Yeah, wood. Plasterboard, I think is valuable. Metals be good. Yeah. So the things that. So basically he went through all the different materials. So plasterboards is sent for recycling. Green stuff is sent for composting. Timber, he said, was turned into pellets for incineration. Now I think they were classing that as recycling, which I think legally it probably is. But I mean, it's just incineration with an extra step.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's fuel.

James Piper: They send the stones to be made into aggregate soil is sent off to fill excavation sites or used as topsoil. The metals recycled. Most plastic is incinerated, interestingly, because most of its film and heavily contaminated from the construction industry.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's quite low quality. And it.

James Piper: Yeah. Fabrics have persistent organic pollutants in, otherwise known as pops. We're going to do a separate episode on that. So basically, fabrics are sent off for incineration and what's left over is called fines, and that is sent to landfill and used to kind of separate layers of landfill. And again, we're going to do an episode on landfill to explain that a bit more. But basically they went through all the materials and said, this is what we get from construction and we can do something. Something with most of it. And they said to me that they had something like 5 to 10% going off to incineration with the rest having a purpose, you know, recycling or compost.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. That's pretty good.

James Piper: I thought it was amazing.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So you can definitely have faith in that. That mixed skip isn't just going to all get tipped into a landfill site.

James Piper: Yeah. If it's true, it's incredible. So construction, you know, is a very high resource use process. But I was encouraged that maybe 90% of of the stuff coming out of my house is getting recycled. And I was Pleasantly surprised. Now I responded to Sarah to say thanks, Sarah. I've just spent an hour on the phone with the tip companies getting information on how skips work and she did say her husband wishes her Happy Bin day every Tuesday. Happy Bin day everyone. But Skip

00:55:00

James Piper: lifting day is more exciting than Christmas.

Robbie Staniforth: The skip people are here. The skip people are here.

James Piper: Isn't that just such a great summary of our lovely listeners? So thank you so much, Sarah for writing in and responding to my. My comment. I really appreciate it. Residual rubbish. So this is our final feature, our new feature, but a final part of the episode where we talk about things that have made us laugh or cry. Now last week I just said laugh, but this week I have one that made me cry.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh no.

James Piper: Yeah, so we've got to update this feature. Someone shared something on LinkedIn that I just could not believe existed. And I just have to mention on this podcast, yeah, it was a tongue cover for children so that they don't taste bitter medicine.

Robbie Staniforth: I saw this too.

James Piper: Oh my.

Robbie Staniforth: How ridiculous.

James Piper: It was like a plastic. I don't. How did like a plastic tongue shaped.

Robbie Staniforth: Thing the sheet, Like a bag type thing, Mini bag.

James Piper: Just put your tongue on it and then you don't taste bitter medicine. Oh my God.

Robbie Staniforth: Are we sure this is a real thing?

James Piper: Well, I was, I thought it was a joke. So I then went to the website and I translated it and it is sold in Southeast Asia. It's a bestseller.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh my God. It's.

James Piper: At this point I only had 12, five star reviews. But it did have five star reviews. No one star reviews. It was 67 Thai Bar for five of them, which I think is about £1 52. So at the time of recording, this is not cheap, you know. Wow, that's like. What's that?

Robbie Staniforth: 20, 30, 40p.

James Piper: Yeah, yeah, 30p a unit. So pretty expensive stuff I think, for a little plastic bag that goes over your tongue. But can we not just all cope with bitter medicine? I was, I was dismayed to see this existed.

Robbie Staniforth: What do we need to do? We need to write to the medicine companies, do we? To say put a bit more sugar in.

James Piper: Well, they don't sell this in the uk but. What. Okay, what would this be on the ram, Robbie?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh my gosh. Yeah, it would be a very, very bright red.

James Piper: There you go.

Robbie Staniforth: Can we start a petition on that, James?

James Piper: I've got too many petitions.

Robbie Staniforth: Global petition. Okay.

James Piper: So.

Robbie Staniforth: But I had one that made me smile.

James Piper: Great, let's bring us up for the end.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, this one's been floating around on the Internet for a couple of months, but it's sort of come to the UK as a story. It's a guy in Australia who bought a house, well, at least a down payment on a house through just collecting cans in New South Wales, Australia. So this guy, Damien Gordon, he collected over 450,000 cans over seven years and managed to get enough money to put. Put a down payment down and secure himself a house off the back of it. He's actually a musician who helped to set up a festival. And by the sounds of it, he ended up spending more time on the cleanup at the festival than actually performing. So I'm not sure whether he's still a musician. And he came up with this idea after one of the first festivals. He wasn't just combing the streets for cans, he actually set up cleanups at events and festivals and people started contacting him directly to say, will you take all my cans away? And therefore claim the very small few cents deposit? But it all adds up. It obviously adds up if you manage to buy a house with it. And he said, and this is a quote, people began contacting me with their upcoming events. I'm getting married in the park. Would you like to tackle the recycling for us? There was another one that was, it's my daughter's birthday down the beach. Will you come and collect the bottles? It was amazing. So this guy's really, really made a name for himself on the Internet. And I'm just wondering who's going to be the UK version of Damien when we get drs coming in in the UK in 2027. There's already an organisation set up to run it. But if you are that person thinking you're gonna hope to buy a house off the back of these bottle deposits and can deposits, remember, it did take him seven years, so it's going to be 2034 at the can. Make that down payment.

James Piper: Such a great story. I love it. Well done, Damien. And as always, thank you all so much for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We love, love getting the opportunity to do this podcast and speak to all of you. You can use the links in our show notes to join our Discord. Follow us on social media Obbish podcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. All the details are in our show notes and everything we have discussed today can be found on our link tree. All that's left for me to say is, see you next week. Bye.

Robbie Staniforth: Bye.

00:59:50