71. Dirty business - is waste crime on the rise?

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, welcome to Talking Rubbish, your weekly podcast delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and one-sided stories. In this episode, we will discuss whether waste crime is increasing. Our postage stamps, rubbish or not, and I have a question about whether I'm really serious about picking plastic over paper. I'm James Piper, author of the rubbish book, and I'm joined by Robbie Stanafort, my far from rubbish friend. Hi Robbie. Morning, James. Hello and hello, B influencers. Robbie Ellie was listening back to our toilet roll episode, which was episode 68. And we were listening to it together, which is quite unusual for us. And I hit the moment where I talked about the plumber.com stats. Yeah, I know it well. Plumber.com does exist. At the mention of 5.9 sheets average per wipe, which is what we said, she slowly turned to me and looked at me accusingly. In a the only time I've seen a similar stare is when we were discussing how fast the shower gel was running out. She's like, How much do you use? And I think suddenly she started thinking, we do get through a lot of toilet roll. My husband is in the 5.9 or greater camp. So this is the number of sheets of lure roll that you use per wipe. The average apparently is 5.9. Tell you what, I've been tracking it all week. Have you? I had to. It's great. I have to prove like I did with the shower gel and a pen, you have to prove that you're not using too much of this stuff. And so I sort of tried to live my life normally rather than you know reducing because I was counting. And based on my last week, I'm at an average of 5.2. Oh, okay. So she was wrong to have an accusatory tone by the sign of things. If you'd asked me how many sheets I used per visit. Per visit. I would have said like two or three. So it was a bit of a shock to me that my average is running at 5.2. Just like it was a shock to her that the average for the UK was 5.9. Feel free to write in everyone with your average sheet count. The list of things we never wanted to know about continues. Can you imagine the reviews now? You know, bin my bin days on a Friday. My average sheet count is 3.4. Trash talk. Our trash talk today is all about waste crime. And we're asking the question: Is waste crime on the rise? And this jumped up because of the unbelievable pictures that the BBC have shared of a fly tip in Oxfordshire. Have you seen this, Robbie? No, I haven't seen this one. Okay, so now I've got to describe it. I will put the link in our link tree. So please head over there if you haven't seen it. We'll just search Flytip Oxfordshire because the pictures are unbelievable and they need to be seen. You know, you need to really understand what this is. This is a mountain of waste. It sort of looks like it follows the path of a river. So you've got trees on either side.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Oh, I've seen this. I have seen this.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

So it looks like a river. You know, it's 150 meters long. I don't know how wide it is, but imagine a river width with trees either side, and it is six meters deep. So that's like a two-story building. Or like three in a bit of me. And Cherwell Council, where this has been found, have estimated the cost of removing it is greater than its annual budget. Not its waste budget, its entire £25 million council budget.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

What, just to pick it up, dig it out, put it in various lorries, take it to the right place to get reprocessed or burnt or whatever they end up doing.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Yeah, I mean it's likely to end up, it's quite a lot of earth in there. It's likely to probably end up in landfill. So you've got landfill tax, incinerator gate fees, the transportation cost itself. When you look at the pictures, I mean it is shocking, and I just can't believe this has just been discovered. You know, and we're gonna come on to this. But it's basically loads of shredded up waste mixed with earth. It is unfortunately next to the river Cherwa, which has actually been rising recently because we've had some rain. And so some of the waste is already starting to enter the water. The risk of toxic runoff is super high. When I look at the pictures, it's really hard to make out what's actually there. There's definitely some plastic, and obviously all the news story is focused on plastic. There appears to be a lot of wood. Looks like there may be some construction waste. I'm not entirely sure. According to The Guardian, it includes waste from local authorities in the southeast and possibly primary schools. Now, the way it's been shredded, yeah, the way it's been shredded suggests to me that it's gone through like an initial waste process. So it's gone to somebody who's shredded it up. It's then somehow got mixed with earth, not entirely sure how that's happened. And then it's been dumped um in a long, long line, 150 meters long. Okay, and the the jury's still out on who it was. Yeah, I mean, it genuinely has the whole waste industry scratching its head. I have been to quite a few meetings this week and people have just gone, where has it come from? And how in 2025, when we have CCTV all over the place and number plate tracking, how when we have all these things, how can somebody, presumably for months, just dump waste in a field?

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Yeah, I mean, if it's 150 meters long, that's weeks and weeks and months and months of just dumping every day for a long period of time.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

I actually found an interview with the landowner from the site next door who said he saw truckloads of rubbish being dumped there every night for months. He did say he was reporting it to the council. Now, from what I can see, the environment agency, who are the police in all of this, appear to have been made aware of it in July, but the site was not closed until the 23rd of October. And so I think the majority was dumped before July, before the environment agency were made aware of it. But I do think some has been dumped between the environment agency being made aware and them actually getting the court order to close the site. So that just gives you an example of how these things can really drag, even when they're what I perceive to be an emergency. You know, you've got a water course next to this. But at the time of recording this, it may all change. The environment agency are insistent that they will not be front-footing the bill for cleaning it up, because obviously that's the taxpayer, and they will find those responsible for the dump and clean it up. Now, this is lovely as a taxpayer. It's rubbish as an environmentalist because obviously the longer this is here, the bigger the risk that it contaminates waterways, it contaminates soil. And it will take them a long time to identify these people, even if they even do. And we know their powers, as we're gonna come on to in this section, are not that great. So getting them to be able to clean it up and pay for the cleanup is next to impossible. So my feeling is actually in this instance, we've got to just get it cleaned up, and then we'll deal with the kind of prosecutions that come after, because we're gonna talk about this in a second. And this has happened before last year, actually, and I think it's pronounced Hoadswood in Kent. Um, the EA were forced by the government to pay for the cleanup of a similar sort of dump, and that costs around 15 million. So that does validate the forecast 25 million figure.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

That is crazy. And so now they're trying to find out who to get reimbursed from for that 15 million, presumably. I mean, that is worth trying to move heaven and earth to find out who it is.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

15 million pounds. I'd be very surprised if you can get 15 million pounds from criminals, as we are going to come on to, particularly with waste crime. Waste crime is a huge issue in the UK. An estimated 20% of all waste is illegally managed. This is about 38 million tonnes. And according to VEA, it is enough to fill Wembley Stadium 35 times.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

20% of all waste managed illegally in a country like ours, where we're supposed to have a good rule of law, very mature waste management systems. That's absolutely incredible and just goes to show why it's so important that people and businesses deal with reputable companies when it comes to managing their waste and don't just go to the well modern equivalent of the yellow pages and find a man and a van and hope for the best.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Exactly. And as taxpayers, it's costing us a billion pounds a year to deal with illegal waste crime. So I've got to say, after two decades in the industry, and I'm sure you feel the same in the waste industry, I have experienced my fair share of waste criminals. I have seen all sorts of things happen. I should just say at least two of those waste criminals listen to the podcast because they've texted me to tell me how much they love it. So isn't that so weird? This is people whose last conversation I had with them was effectively a polite way of saying you should be in prison. And now they text me saying, Love the podcast. I say that in jest, I mean it is true, but it's probably quite a good way of describing people who commit criminal acts in the waste industry that or with waste, I should say, actually. They're quite brazen. They're there's it's sort of a shamelessness to it. It's like, oh, it's victimless, it doesn't matter, and it's so frustrating.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Yeah, the crime is perpetrated against general society and in a way, the government who has to pick up the cost and the environment, which is quite hard to make very tangible for the average person. You know, it's not against another human, say, directly. So uh presumably that's leads to this brazenness, victimless crime. So I'm just gonna go and do it, who cares anyway?

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Yeah, exactly. And the people I know who've done uh the wrong things, should we say, in the industry, have never been punished. And in my examples, it's because the cases got dropped. Uh, the environment agency, who were kind of trying to bring about prosecutions, just did not have the resources to continue the cases. Um, but there is another reason that cases don't make it this far, and that's because of under-reporting. Just 27% of waste crime is reported.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Well, if they're not being brought to account, you can see why that figure's so low, isn't it? Because it's kind of like even if I report it, look at the example you gave earlier, you know, back in June, July, they said they were uh the environment agency were made aware of it, but then it didn't close until months and months later. Regardless of the guy next door phoning them every time he saw a lorry, it's sort of if it doesn't lead to action, you do lose the goodwill of people to bother reporting these things. So I can totally believe that figure that only just over a quarter of all waste crime gets reported.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah, and I I do feel a little bit sorry for the environment agency here. I mean, I get frustrated by their underfunding but and and under-resourcing, and we'll come on to that. But it must be frustrating when you are the regulator who has to do everything by the book, and you're fighting with someone who really, quite by definition, doesn't do anything by the book. And so here you have a situation where the EA is saying, Well, I need a court order to close this. I can't just close someone's land. You know, that's someone's land. I've got to apply to the courts, and I've got to get these orders, and I've got to put these orders up on these fence posts, and I've got to make sure that everyone can read them, and I've got to put area maps in, and I've got to get a stamp of approval. And before you know it, it's taken four or five months. And meanwhile, the criminals have gone, well, we don't care, we're just gonna dump it at night when you're not there. If I was in the environment agency, I would find that very difficult. Sure. So let's talk about what types of waste crime exist. So uh in the Environment Agency survey that we're gonna talk about in this section, and I'll come on to it in a second, they define waste crime in six ways. So there's large-scale fly tipping, which is more than one lorry load, which this definitely is. Uh, this one we're talking about, small-scale fly tipping, which predictably is less than one lorry load. Then you have an illegal waste site, so someone operating an unregulated waste site, misdescription of waste, illegal burning of waste, and the illegal export of waste. Now, in our industry, we've talked about uh producer responsibility a few times, and we've talked about PRNs. And so this is a piece of paper that says recycling has occurred that brands and retailers pay for to cover off things they put on the market. So if they put 100 tons of bottles on the market, glass bottles, they go to a glass recycler and get a piece of paper to say that 100 tons has been recycled. Pretty straightforward. PRN fraud is is quite big in our industry. Just the week before we're recording this, two people actually have been arrested for nearly a million pounds worth of PRN fraud. So because you have an online system, because recyclers go on and almost self-declare how much they've recycled, although there are then audits and checks, but they essentially self-declare, it means that you end up with this situation where it's quite tempting to suggest that you've recycled something that you actually haven't recycled or to round your numbers up or something like that. I think it was 2016. We had a supplier and they'd been committing some fraud around PRNs. And the environment agency came to see me and they said, Look, obviously you're not in trouble, you know, you want to know, but this supplier's been committing fraud and we need to get all the evidence we can. And this guy was like an ex-police officer, and he said, Can I get copies of the PRNs? And I was thinking, Yeah, okay. I mean, I have they're online, and he said, I'll just print them off. So I print off all these documents, you know, these recycling documents, just printing them on the printer, carry them over to him. He proceeds to get out of his bag like those evidence bags, you know, the plastic see-through evidence bags, and starts putting them in one by one, you know, and labelling them up. Exhibit B, exhibit C. There's only one person's fingerprints on those, buddy. Then fine. What are you gonna do with this? Why does it need to go in an evidence bag? I remember thinking, oh my goodness, what does this say? So it is very hard to know whether waste crime is increasing or not, as so much is underreported. So the way the Environment Agency have got around this is for the past five years, they have conducted a waste crime survey. Um, and they've done that every other year. There was a pilot in 2020, and then they've done full surveys in 2021, 23, and 25, and this year's was released in July 2025. So the first note on this survey is the stat that we mentioned at the start that you were so shocked by, Robbie, which is that 20% of waste is thought to be illegally managed. This number has actually been statistically similar over the all four surveys. They've all been pretty similar. So there is not an overall increase in waste crime according to this survey. Now, the range given by the respondents was unbelievably varied, which made me feel actually that 20% is probably a bit too gut-feel, is kind of what you experience. So there were some people in the survey who felt that over 90% of waste was managed illegally. So anyone who works in the waste industry will be aware that that's absolutely nonsense. But because the respondents are a mix of the waste industry, landowners, farmers, service providers, I bet if you're a farmer going out to your field continually finding fly tipping, it does feel a bit like 90% of waste is mismanaged.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Yeah, no, that does sound anecdotal. And certainly in terms of the average uh influencer listening, that's the kind of stuff that is tangible. You know, as soon as you start seeing uh that less than a lorry load being fly tipped and you start counting it, certainly even just walking around local areas in Bristol, suddenly you could be thinking or having this perception that more of it is dumped there than actually goes to the local recycling centre. But that's definitely not the case.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

There were some questions about whether people thought waste crime was increasing or decreasing across those different types that I talked about at the start. So fly tipping, exporting, misdescription. I guess what's interesting here is the less visible crimes gained a lot of don't know answers. So 68%, for example, didn't know whether the export of waste was getting worse or better. Only 8% of respondents said that was getting worse. And I think you and I would probably, with our experience, argue that the export of waste is definitely getting worse. Because it's not seen by maybe farmers or landowners, they just put don't know as a response to that question. But if you compare that to something like small-scale fly tipping, 57% of people felt it was getting worse, with only 14% saying don't know. So when it's something visible was happening in your backyard, you will naturally feel this is getting a lot worse. When it's something that's you might read about on the news or isn't covered that often, I guess you but you're more likely to say I don't know. I think it's fair to say fly tipping is the category that is really increased over the years of the survey. But all other types of waste crime are perceived to have been decreasing. So it's the fly tipping that's that's shown real rises. It is moved way more to organized crime rather than just kind of one person just fly tipping in the street. We've respondents to estimating that 35% of all waste crime is carried out by organized crime groups. Some of this will be linked to cost of living increases as well, because of course when a cost of living crisis happens and you're looking to dispose of your waste in your house, you are way more likely to go for the person who's offering you the cheapest deal. And the person offering you the cheapest deal might be offering you the cheapest deal because they're not complying with their various rules and regulations. So this is where, as householders, it's so important that when we organize someone to collect our waste, we see their waste carrier's license, we understand that they're registered. Because then if anything is fly-tipped from your house, you can prove that you did what you needed to do.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

You got me worried now if we're taking on organized crime. This isn't like the mafia. We're sort of heading into Soprano's territory here, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Perhaps optimistically in the survey, the Environment Agency had included a question about whether its new powers and measures would cause a decrease in waste crime. They were hoping that we as an agency have strengthened, and surely that has caused a decrease in crime. Only 8% felt that was the case. So I think the reality is there's not a lot at the moment that's causing a decrease in waste crime, and it is just increasing. Um, and when they asked a question of why is it increasing, these were the responses. So 84% felt the size of financial gains was attractive, 77% felt there was a low likelihood of detection, 68% said a low likelihood of enforcement, and 59% said the penalties do not match the potential gains. So let's focus on some of those. They sort of grouped together, don't they? So low likelihood of detection enforcement. Let's talk about that one first. So in October this year, the House of Lords reported that efforts to tackle serious waste crime had been critically underprioritised. And so James Bevan, the former environment agency chief, declared waste crime as the new narcotics.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

The new narcotics is so this is more like the wire than the sopranos now. We're ticking off all the great crime dramas.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

I guess this is just an opportunity for us to say the problem is that with increasing landfill taxes and increasing cut gate fees for incineration, which I personally think are a really good thing because we need to stimulate recycling, the risk to that is that you increase waste crime. So I'm not sure I agree with the EA's view that waste crime is staying stable. I think inevitably, over the next few years, as we start increasing these taxes and these gate fees to stimulate recycling, we also run the risk of increased waste crime. And we really need the EA to resource up to take into account the fact that that is going to start happening.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

Yeah, in a way, it just makes the size of the prize bigger with these increased fees, and the reward for illegal activity gets greater too. It's a sad truth.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

So the truth is the environment agency are under-resourced and underfunded. And you wouldn't actually know that from their response to the Oxfordshire fly tipping incident, because they put a statement out saying, let's be absolutely clear. We have the resources, expertise, and determination to deal with this situation effectively. And any suggestion otherwise is completely inaccurate and misleading.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

How can they stand behind that? Because uh they're just saying that they have the powers, yet it's the new narcotics, and you're gonna need a lot more powers than what they've previously done. The evidence shows that they're struggling to bring people to task.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah, I mean, uh look, I've personally have seen cases dropped for a lack of resource, things I know should have been carried through. And I feel like these high-profile cases, like this fly tipping in Oxfordshire, they're good, they get a response, they get a bit of focus, but I wish it didn't have to become such a big incident. You know, if this site had been closed after a couple of lorry loads, none of us would ever have heard about it. And it's unlikely anything would happen, you know. But this is now headline news because it's such a big site and it's such a large amount of money from the taxpayer. But bear in mind, there was no statement in July when the EA found the site or when they first started talking about it. As far as I know, there was no police involvement. It's only that the media have got involved and started questioning, you know, people's ability to cope with these things that suddenly loads of stuff's happening and the police are involved, and statements are coming from the EA. So yeah, it's it's very frustrating.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

And I suppose it comes back to that asymmetry in the way that the waste criminals have to operate and the way the environment agency have to operate. It's really easy to scapegoat the environment agency officers, all of which who are absolutely trying their utmost to protect our environment. In England with the Environment Agency, but also the same around all the other UK nations and in fact around the world. You know, you speak to these kinds of people who work for enforcement agencies and they are salt of the earth, really do care, do the best possible job, but actually in lots of ways, they're just set up for failure rather than success in so many instances. There are times when they bring people to task, and we have seen some great prosecutions, but as you say, James, our experience of the times when we've had them engage with us is that they've not quite either been able to prove it to the far enough degree or not quite had the resources to go far enough in the case. And coming back to um an earlier point, the size of the financial gain is just so big, and the resources to therefore go and root them out are required to also be quite big.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Well, let's come on to that. Let's come on to the finances and the penalties, not matching the gains. So the case I found I think Operation Cesium, I think we would call it that, was August 2024. So three men were convicted for their role in depositing waste at 17 sites across the north of England. This was August 2024. They were actually arrested in 2017. And the investigation started in 2016. It took nearly 10 years to convict them. So do you have some time to get rid of some of your ill-gotten gains in that 10 years? Possibly. So more than 26,000 tons of waste, which is the equivalent of over 2,000 double decker buses, was found across these 17 sites. They avoided landfill costs of approximately 2.7 million pounds and cost the state 3.2 million pounds in cleanup. So in theory, they profited what, maybe two, two and a half million pounds. So you'd imagine these to be some pretty juicy prison sentences and fines, right, Robbie?

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Yeah, for sure. So these guys are obviously sort of bankrupt now and having to pay back millions of pounds to the state.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

You would hope. Well, in January 2025, they were sentenced. So this year, Marcus Hughes, who was already in prison when sentenced, so there we go, um has received 30 months in prison. Robert McDonough received a £40,000 fine and 21 months in prison, suspended for two years, so has not actually seen the inside of a prison. Richard Hopkinson received a £25k fine, which he has to pay back £1,000 a month, and 20 months in prison, again suspended for two years. So they possibly avoided £2.7 million in cost, some of which presumably is in their pocket somewhere or has been in the last 10 years. The fines totaled £65,000.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Oh my word. And just remind me again, it was £3 million that it cost the state to clean it up. £3.2 million in cleanup.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Now I there may be more details behind this. I'm sure there's some ill-gotten gains thing that means any money they earn in the future, maybe they have to give back to the state, but I can't see that in any of the write-up. And Emma Viner, the Environment Agency Enforcement and Investigations Manager, said, These sentences show that the court understood the seriousness and impact of the crimes in the case. We will continue to find and shut down waste criminals, bringing the worst offenders before the courts to face justice for the damage they've caused. I mean, I just completely disagree. This is if you've made a few million, paying 40 grand and not actually ending up in prison is not that bad.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Yeah, no, that it definitely doesn't show that they've understood the seriousness and impact of the crimes. Uh it's the exact opposite, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

So one thing I will say, just to wrap up this section, is it is interesting that the reporting always blames the waste industry. And I actually think we've probably done it in this section. We've probably said it's the waste industry. And that doesn't really exist. You do get it occasionally, but in other industries, often you can disconnect the criminals from the legitimate organizations, right? So if we think about like IT systems and hackers, we don't blame the IT systems when hackers utilize the IT systems or banks and fraud. You know, we don't blame the banks when fraud is carried out, we blame the fraudsters. We do tend to separate the crime from the industry. But that does not happen in the waste industry. Whenever there's some a criminal operating and doing something wrong with waste, people say this is a failing of the waste industry. When actually, you know, there are really good people in the waste industry who are absolutely dismayed by these stories. They've invested millions to sort and recycle our waste correctly. Why would they want to be tarnished with this brush? Why would they want to be involved? And on the 13th of November, Mary Cray, who we both um think is excellent, don't we, Robbie? She's an MP that we both really admire, spoke to MPs and said, we inherited a whole system failure in the waste industry from end to end with failures at every level. And that has led the waste industry to get very frustrated because they are sat thinking, well, it's it's not us. You know, we are recycling waste, we're not dumping it. It's criminals that are dumping it. And they are different people. Now I can see the government's point here actually on some of this, because okay, how's that stuff ended up in Oxfordshire? How where who shredded it? Who did they give it to? It's got to have ended up in somebody's truck. Somebody knew what was happening. And it's not going to be criminals that started that process that collected it from a local authority. So there will definitely be failings in the chain that need to be investigated, and we need to find out who's responsible. But I do not believe it is uh, as Mary Cray says, a whole system failure in the waste industry and with failures at every level. I'm not sure I agree with that. And it led the Environmental Services Association, which represents waste management companies, to respond. And I think it's probably just worth us ending this section, if you're happy, Robbie, just to go through some of this letter. So I've cherry-picked a few paragraphs from it, because it summarizes how we feel, I think, quite nicely, just to wrap us up.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Okay, so they start. The ability for criminals to simply dump huge quantities of waste in a field, bypassing the costs associated with safe professional treatment or disposal solutions, allows them to significantly undercut illegitimate waste operators. In turn, allowing them to access more and more waste material with its associated revenues. We've been calling for significant regulatory reform, tougher enforcement and harsher penalties for waste criminals for well over a decade now. But the Environment Agency remains chronically underresourced and unfocused in its approach to tackling serious and organized criminality in the sector. Meanwhile, in instances where perpetrators are successfully convicted, poultry penalties are simply seen as a cost of business by persistent criminals. We must make a clear distinction between the vital, hardworking and diligent, legitimate recycling and waste sector in the UK and the criminal elements currently infiltrating and undermining it.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

DJ Blagg shared a really interesting article over on Discord, which was from the BBC. Now, this was an article focused on Tower Hamlets, which longtime listeners will know is the worst area of the country for recycling. I think they have a recycling rate for memory of 28%, I think. And the BBC had found a block of flats that had had their bin room closed by the council and locked up. And residents had been told that the weekly collections were not working because there was too much waste, and they were instead to leave bags of rubbish on the pavement outside the building where they would be collected, and I couldn't believe this, twice a day. Whoa, someone's going past twice a day. But unfortunately, sometimes collections are missed, which means the bags are left overnight, and then the foxes and badgers get to them and you end up with waste everywhere. Of course, it means for most of the day there's bags everywhere, because if you're getting collections twice a day, there's nothing regular about that. So everyone's going to be like, oh, I'll put mine out this day. Whereas at least if you've got a weekly collection, it's like, okay, this is the day the bags go out, and yes, for one night it's a pain. If you're doing it twice a day, people will randomly put them out all the time, surely.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

Yeah, there's just bags of waste on the street at any given moment.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

This is actually an area of London I know really well because it's next to a Spitalfield's market, which I visit quite a lot. And um and I have seen lots of bags around there, and I've never really understood why. I really appreciate the BBC actually finding out why. Um and apparently Wandsworth and Havering also don't collect wheelie bins and also ask for just bags to be put out. And I'm now really beginning to understand why these places have such low recycling rates. And if you have no space for bins and you're asking for mixed recycling in bags, it's gonna get really complicated. And moving on to our toilet paper episode, which was 68, which I think I don't know if it's still true, but certainly at the time that we're recording this, it is by far our most listened to episode. Oh, really? Yes, by quite some margin. People love toilet paper discussion. So let's bring it back to that. Uh, we had Ian on Discord. Thank you, Ian, friend of the podcast, who uh commented that surprisingly, some people think that recycled toilet paper is actually made from used toilet paper, which deters people deters people from buying it. I think I'd be deterred too. Oh god. Remind me where the brown in naked paper comes from? No, that's not like they don't really think that, do they? Surely has worked long enough in retail for us to know that he is wise on these matters. And I suddenly realised we hadn't actually explained where recycled paper came from, so we should probably just addition that. So recycled toilet paper is usually a mix of office printer paper and then things like leaflets, junk mail, cardboard packaging. That will be the thing that ends up as toilet paper.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Yeah, it's kind of mixed papers, the stuff you put out every week in your recycling collection, no doubt. And the thing that I missed when I went and spoke with my partner about this, she works for a company that actually sells toilet paper, and she said, Did you talk about the bum feel test? There actually is such a thing as a bum field test. I was like, no, that's not quite. We did have a glancing mention about there must be a parallel podcast where you can find out which is the most comfortable on the tush. But it was really interesting. She said, they are all tested like for like to see which has the best bum feel. So sorry we didn't get to that last time. I don't think we're going to get to it in this one either.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

No, but I've been doing my investigations with my 5.2 sheets. And I am testing all the different toilet rolls that I bought. Don't worry. And just finally, I had a correction on the toilet roll episode as well, because I did actually make a mistake. So um we were talking about why Who Gives a Crap might not use uh paper. Oh, sorry, why they might individually wrap rolls, and we said it was to do with hygiene. Uh that's what they say on their website. And I said they could use a thicker cardboard box rather than individually wrapping. That's not true. I I don't know where I got that from. It's actually that they can they say they can wrap up to six rolls of paper. So it's not actually a change in the box. They say they're allowed to wrap up to six rolls of paper at once and they choose instead to individually wrap them. I'm not sure about this. So I don't want to be mean to who gives a crap again, but let me just explain where I am. So they say on their website, the limit is we can wrap up to six rolls of paper. There is no explanation on where this limit comes from. And I have been doing research in both the UK and Australia. So thank you to Ian and Anthony for your respective answers to find out if there is a regulation that I don't know about linked to load, and there isn't. So I do not think you need to wrap toilet rolls at all to bring them in from China. I think they can just be in the cardboard box. I think what's happened is their supplier has said, oh, if you want to put paper around your toilet rolls, we our machines can do up to six. So when they say that's the limit, they mean that's our supplier's limit. Because there's no regulation, there's no it's so cryptic that word limit. And so I personally think there is nothing stopping them just putting 48 Lou rolls in a cardboard box. That would be as hygienic as wrapping them at all. And it is very clever wording on their website that makes you think there's a regulation. Because there isn't, as far as I know. So I decided to have a chat slash fight with their AI bot on their website, because they have like a little chat bot. Oh, this sounds right up your petty alley. Yes, the AI bot also had no idea and just kept responding saying, you know, we're just allowed to wrap up to six. And then I kept saying, No, no, I really need you to answer the question. And eventually it gave up and just went, that is a very specific question. Now, the AI bot did go on to say that the individual wrapping was cute and helped their customers share snaps of their deliveries on social media, which in turn helps us to grow and donate more to our not-for-profit partners working in clean water and sanitation. So it is good to know that even the AI agrees with me that this is a marketing tool, and there is no mention of sustainability in its answer. So I did ask the robot to forward my message to the team, which it has done, and I am eagerly awaiting a human response.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Oh, well, I hope we get one.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

I love a correction on a correction. We'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, EcoSurety, who are on a mission to rid the world of unnecessary packaging. They help brands navigate the tricky world of extended producer responsibility, but that is not all. They also collaborate on some incredible recycling projects and consumer awareness campaigns for those tough to recycle materials. If you're an organization looking to make smarter packaging choices, check them out at ecosurety.com. And the best thing you can do to help us grow is to share our podcast with your friends and family and to leave us a review. And if you leave us a review, you can be Robbie's review of the week. So this one came in from Sally. What platform was this on? Uh yes, now this was on Spotify. I do need to say that this review, because with Spotify, you're leaving a comment on an episode. So this review is linked to episode 67, which was our fish in the ocean bit. And that's just relevant because there's a couple of moments that are talked about in this review that are specific to that episode.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Okay, well, here we go. Thanks, Sally, for this great review. If you agree that the global packaging recycling rate of 14% is criminal, we've just been talking about criminality. That's very topical too. Then this podcast is the perfect true crime, Who Done It For You? Robbie and James unpack the data like detectives, connecting the clues, looking at each of the suspects, and ultimately pinning down the unbiased evidence. For regular listeners, beware the ethyl plot twist in this episode, which will have you gasping out loud.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

It's a great review. You follow us at rubbishpodcast, you can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. Also join our Discord. It's the easiest way to engage with us and listeners of the show. The link to all of those things can be found in our show notes. Asked by my mum. So often. So often great. She's writing in with ideas for content. Oh, brilliant. And uh I thought postage stamps was a good one. Yeah. Oh no, it is a good one. Now she actually asked about stamp books, not the stamp. She asked about the bit that's left after you take the stamp out. So we're going to do this in two parts, Robbie, but let's get your thoughts on both. So stamps, rubbish or not?

SPEAKER_02 36:46

I think that's That's or not. So you mean once it's stuck onto an envelope, you just you don't need to peel that off. You can just recycle it with the envelope.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Okay. And stamp books, rubbish or not.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

Ooh, those are quite waxy.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Um I'm gonna say or not. You're gonna say recyclable. Okay. So with stamps, you're correct, you leave them on the envelope. Uh, you could actually collect the stamps to donate to charities. So charities sell them on to collectors and artists. Uh, they want you to cut the stamp out, leaving about a one centimetre of the envelope round the edge if you're gonna do it. The RIB were saying they get £20 per kilogram of stamps, which I've worked out at about £50,000 stamps. So £20 for £50,000 stamps, which makes each stamp worth 0.004 pence.

SPEAKER_02 37:41

So it is legal tender then.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

It's just very small. I'm not sure. It's uh yeah. I mean, I think they were very grateful. I'm surprised they think it's worth the effort, but here we are. Um so the charities are not really looking for standard stamps, more the collectible ones, so the ones with you know designs and pictures, because they will sell them onto collectors. So as I say, carefully trim around them, leave one centimetre of paper around the edge if you want to do that and keep them safe in an envelope until you have enough to send back, which it sounds like might be around 50,000. I couldn't find like a minimum they want, but everything's done by weight. And as I say, it's 20 pounds per kilo. If you want to keep them on, just keep them on the envelope, put them in the recycling. They're small, they won't cause much uh contamination, if any, just with that bit of adhesive on it. Now, stamp books, I think you say they're shiny, Robbie. You've got to be able to peel the stamp off them. Shiny is normally bad.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Yeah, I'm now thinking about backing paper for stickers that I would say is rubbish. Can I change my guess?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

No. And it's rubbish because it's got silicon coating on it. And it was very hard to confirm this because no one really talks about it. No one talks about stamp books like I talk about stamp books. And uh the Royal Mail don't really say what it's made of. After a lot of searching, I found an article that was from this year, so quite recent, on convertingquarterly.com, which was written by Richard Eckberg, who said a familiar example of release liner is the silicon-coated paper from which self-adhesive postage stamps are detached. So this is a man in the note who said that silicon coated paper was used for postage stamp books. Assuming this is true and it is a silicon coating, then unfortunately that makes these like greaseproof paper rubbish. So if you have a stamp book, as in empty, you've taken the stamps out, I think it just goes in the general bin. Rubbish news. A new law has been signed, which means in 2027, wet wipes containing plastics will be banned. Woohoo! This is great news. Yeah. So the question, I guess, is if we're only left with non-plastic wet wipes, should we be flushing them?

SPEAKER_02 39:52

Yeah. And you use 5.2 of these, don't you? Every time. Just to be clear, you're not using wet wipes. Are you? You're using toilet paper.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

I'm really not. Yeah, we use cheeky wipes in my house. Um it's very, very good. So with my son, we are we are fully reusable. We use cheeky wipes. And occasionally when we're out and about, we do use disposable wipes, as I think I've said before on the podcast. And I must admit, just using them occasionally makes me appreciate how many I would use, because I reckon my son is more than 5.2.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Whoa, yeah, messy stuff.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

So, Robbie, you haven't answered my question. Should we be flushing the non-plastic ones?

SPEAKER_02 40:30

Uh, don't ever flush a wipe. I think that's my standard line on this. If you have to use a wipe, I'm not quite sure why exactly you have to. But maybe as you say when you're out and about for the occasional convenience, uh, find a bin, put it in a bin.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

I agree. Never flush a wipe. No matter what it says on it, if it says flushable on it, it's not true. It does not break down like toilet paper. And you know, sometimes you get these marketed things saying, I'm just a damp toilet paper. You know, there's sometimes people are marketing these. Yeah, have you not seen them? They're like little packets, and they say, I'm just wet toilet paper. It's like, no, you're not. You can't be. Damp toilet paper would not survive in a packet on supermarket shelves. If you've managed to make it all the way home with me and are extractable from a packet, you are not damp toilet roll. And so, whatever it says, do not flush it. Find to flush was scrapped, and the slogan that replaced it is bin the wipe. What of 180? Can you imagine? Nice. Can you imagine the marketing company like we've come up with find to flush? A few months later, it needs to be bin the wipe. It's the exact opposite.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

I've had a second thought. We're going with bin the wipe.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

There is actually a very interesting exemption buried into this story that is just worth us just thinking about. Not to be pro-plastic at all, but there is an interesting exemption because the medical industry is still allowed to use plastic wipes. Now, wipes in hospitals are obviously used a little bit differently to our personal care ones. They help avoid infection spreading. They obviously have antibacterial properties that are really important. So they contain detergent or disinfectants, you know, similar to our ones at home. If you have a non-plastic wipe, more of the chemicals get absorbed into the wipe, meaning it is not effective at cleaning. The plastic in a wipe, part of its purpose is to keep the disinfectants and detergents out of the wipe. So when you, you know, when you use it, it's effective at cleaning. And unfortunately, this means that for the medical industry, they have to continue using plastic ones. And I guess this is just a great example of unintended consequences of saying no to plastic. Actually, that is part of its function. And what we have ended up with now at home, or what we will end up with, is a white that is less functional. You know, it is killing fewer germs. And, you know, as we're going to come on to in the rubbish question next, our relationship with plastic is extremely complicated. And on one hand, an environmental scourge, and so many have come to hate it, but it can be quite useful in certain applications, and sometimes we do need it.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

And moving off the topic of the toilet, as I'm sure everyone will be grateful for me to do, the news that I saw this week is that over 12% of materials in the EU is coming from recycling. Importantly, we're not just talking about packaging here. We're talking about r primary raw materials versus secondary raw materials. So metals that go into cars, plastic that goes into plumbing pipes, textiles that go into those rugs and things that are coming from secondary recycled sources. So this is recycled content in all sorts of things that are flowing around the EU economy. And I thought this was actually surprisingly high. That they talked about all of the various different areas electronics, textiles, but also construction. You know, do you source aggregate by mining or does it come from construction waste, et cetera? And there's big differences across. These EU countries from the news report. The 12% isn't universally shared across all of the member states. It's made up of this kind of circularity rate that each of the countries has to provide data into. And it was actually the highest in the Netherlands: 32.7% of materials that they were using in their economy comes from recycling. And then it goes right the way down to countries like Portugal that were down at 3%. Romania, I think, was the very lowest at 1.3%. And so there's a vast difference. But the most interesting thing is that the circular economy action plan that the EU or European Commission, I should say, put together in 2020 aims to double this rate to 23.2. And so we're a little over, we're just coming up for halfway now. This these stats are for 2024. So we're coming up to halfway. And they are about halfway. If you started at zero, which by the way they didn't, we are about halfway there. I couldn't find the statistic on what it was in 2020, unfortunately. I had a hunt around. So if anyone finds that, drop that in for a future uh addition uh to a future episode. But really, the the new the take-home is all of these EU nations have really got their work cut out to get up to 23.2% in just five years.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

I think it's the same report that we used in our is only 9% of plastic recycled. And so when I was using the data for that, it must have been 9%. So that means it's gone from 9 to 12 between those two reports. Because I remember saying the irony for that year is that the 9% was both the recycling rate for plastic, but also how much of our materials come from recycling. And it was like the same number, so people were getting confused, I think. But maybe I can't remember if my 9% was focused on plastic only or everything. But I do remember us talking about this report.

SPEAKER_02 46:08

Yeah, well, this 12% is definitely from everything, and I think that's the important rate we just talked about and we're about to talk about plastic and its use or not. Not everything is about plastic. There are other materials out there too, and even though they're less environmentally pervasive, etc., we do still need to be recycling more of them and using more recycled content.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

And this is following our toilet roll episode again. Sorry, ruffi. It's all toilet roll today. Um but it comes from a really thoughtful email from Kenton. So thank you so much for taking the time to write to us, Kenton. We really enjoyed reading your email and thinking it through. Um, just to set us up, I will read part of this email so I was really interested in your comments about using plastic shrink wrap instead of paper wrappers. I totally agree regarding the unnecessary individual wrapping of rolls by who gives a crap. But I struggle with the idea of promoting the use of plastic shrink wrap. It seems to me that we face a number of serious environmental issues, carbon being a huge one, as is polluted water and deforestation. However, in terms of paper versus plastic, the volume of plastic that is accumulating in our oceans and on land seems to be one of the greatest threats. I say this on the basis that some of the issues associated with paper and card could be addressed and at least minimized, where the persistence of plastic and the fact that recycling, if it even does get recycled, always leads to an inferior product, and this cannot be changed. We recently spent a lovely day walking along Newgale Beach in West Wales. It's a lovely clean beach, but I was horrified to see the amount of plastic fragments in the sand, bits of fishing waste and other plastic in the pebbles. A dead cormorant with a plastic fishing line wrapped around its beak, and I counted five dead young seals. Pretty horrific. There seems to be no way to guarantee that plastic will not end up where it shouldn't be, and so it seems that we must reduce as far as possible plastic packaging or move to truly biodegradable alternatives and also clean up the paper and cardboard industries and just use less packaging. Great email. Really thoughtful question, really powerful, and I wanted to read it because I thought it was so powerful.

SPEAKER_02 48:19

Yeah, no, and I surf at Newgale Beach, so the fact that there's plastic washing up and in the ocean there when surfing uh definitely tugs on my heartstrings too.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

It's a really hard question to answer because my motto for years has been the right packaging for the right product. So if we think about that Burger King Wagyu burger from episode 69, just the wrong packaging. You know, you've you don't see the packaging when you're buying the product, it's completely pointless. And in my opinion, who gives a crap? Have the right product, recycled Lou Roll, but in the wrong packaging. And so it does mean sometimes I do promote plastic because my job is to look at the whole system and the nuances and try and work out what the best thing to do is, and that's what we're trying to do on this podcast. The kind of plastic that you're finding on the beaches there'll be lots of it, I'm sure, but uh you've identified fishing gear, huge amount of ocean plastic is fishing gear. We're gonna talk about that soon. Uh there was recently near my hometown, you know, my original hometown, um, I think Southern Water have released a load of plastic beads that they basically use for filtering, and they've ended up on the beach. So there are industrial issues, industrial contamination, very, very sad to see, very difficult to see. And really that gives us this view that plastic is uncontrolled and a disaster. But one of the best things we can do is buy recycle content plastic, because that means we're stimulating the recycling industry and reducing the chance of Sunday something ending up in the environment. And I've been trying to work out how we do this. I've been listening to a fair amount of the Ramsay show, Robbie, which I assume you've never heard of. Um about money, like a but it's a radio show in America that they spin into a podcast. I find it strangely addictive. It's hosted by a guy called Dave Ramsay. And to get people wealthy, we're very different, Dave and I, in terms of our political and religious beliefs, but um, oh my god, it's addictive to watch him watch people call up and talk about money. On this show, Dave has these baby steps and rules, you know, rules that are quite fixed. So, for example, if you're buying a car, you have to put down 20%, pay it in shorter than four years, and your car payment should be less than 10% of your monthly income. Okay, so someone rings up and says, I want to buy a car, he says, Right, give me your income. How quickly are you gonna pay it off and what deposit are you putting down? He checks it against his rules and says, Yes, you can buy a car or no, you can't, you know. And so because he's come up with these rules, it's quite easy for him to hold that conversation. And I I just feel like we could benefit from some talking rubbish plastic rules so that we can all sort of agree on whether we should be moving to a substitution away from plastic or whether in this case we're it we're okay with plastic. I'm open to working on this with everyone. So, Bib influencers, if you want to contribute to this, let's do it. But I've started with three criteria as as a starting point. I think recyclability is really important. So the thing we're buying, does it have value in the recycling system? Is it worth recycling? So for flexibles, for example, that would be clear LDPE, because we've said that's the most valuable. PT bottles would meet this criteria. Does it contain recycle content? So does it contain high recycle content? And I think we set the number at a minimum of 50%. Again, I'm open to adjusting this. If influencers want to change it, let's do it. But it has to have a minimum of 50% recycle content for me to promote plastic. And it has to be lightweight. So is it lighter than the alternative per serving? And I'm gonna position like half here. You know, so it has to weigh half of what the paper, metal, or glass one would weigh if it was being replaced. And then if it if it meets those three criteria that I've come up with, and we may add more, we may change the numbers. I think we can say without everyone feeling like I'm promoting plastic, we could say actually in this example it's probably best to buy it in plastic.

SPEAKER_02 52:11

Does that make sense? Okay, so go on then. What would the example be if we applied this to that toilet paper wrapping?

SPEAKER_00 52:18

Yeah, so uh recyclable, so it's LDPE. Now it is printed, that is interesting, but then the paper is too. So then we're gonna have to come up with some exemption for printing when it's the only packaging, you know, because like those hex osters, you know, they've got a massive cardboard sleeve over the top. Doesn't it's much better just to print on the film itself. So recyclable, yes, it's LDPE, it can go back to the supermarket stores. It's unlikely to get incinerated, it's valuable LDPE. Recycle content, yes. Everything I looked at had a greater than 50% recycled content in their plastic. And we know that it's lightweight because the difference between the supermarket flexible plastic wrapping, it was 26 times less than who gives a crap. So there will be some examples, I'm sure, and I think people were sharing with us actually, like Sainsbury's, I think, do a paper wrap, people were writing in after.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:08

So we'd have to go and weigh that, and I will do this. We'll go and weigh the Sainsbury's paper wrap as an addition, maybe for next week. And if that paper weighs twice as much as the plastic or more, then we might start saying, actually, we prefer the plastic. But if they're similar weights, then you know we'd go with the paper option. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 53:24

Yeah, no, that's I mean, a great starter for 10. We'll have to work it out and improve it. And with all these things, if you start heading towards life cycle analysis, it just gets totally snagged up and academic and very difficult to prove one thing over another. So I like it, if only for its simplicity.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

Yeah, just so we can talk about it on the podcast. And recycle content is such a key one. Supermarkets use plastic wrap around pallets all day, every day. We buy flexible plastic all the time, and I bet most of our influencers take it back to the supermarket. If you refuse to buy the stuff that it's recycled into, so bin liners, toilet roll wrapping, it's all gonna get incinerated or dumped. If you want to stop buying plastic, you need to move higher up the chain. So you need to say, I'm not gonna buy that virgin, whatever it is, I'm not gonna give an example, but I'm not gonna buy that virgin high-quality plastic. I'm gonna stop buying that, but I'm gonna continue buying bin liners because the stuff that is out there, I want to be recycled. And so I'm happy to support the recycling industry in that way. I know that is the most complicated answer we will ever give to a question. So I really hope it's made sense. I feel like I've lost track as I've been getting. I've just I want to come up with a methodology for us to easily assess whether material substitution is a good thing or a bad thing. This is something that has happened to us this week that has made us feel like an emoji. A couple of weeks ago you had a good story from Starbucks Robbie with your concertined cup, which by the way, I found in my car. Have you been wondering where that is?

SPEAKER_02 54:57

Yes, I have been wondering where that is. Oh, great. I thought I'd lost it, and I definitely didn't want to admit I've lost another cup on my own.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

I've got it, I've washed it out for you. So um, yes, Robbie has a nice concertinud reusable cup. Well, I did some people watching the other day in Starbucks and I watched someone order a tea and it was really interesting. So they they bought it, they brought it then over to their table and took the lid off and realized there wasn't milk in it. So they left their lid on the table and went up to the counter and said, Could I have some milk? And the Starbucks employee said, Can you put it down by the checkout? So they put it down by the checkout, and then the Starbucks team said, And you need to collect it from the collection point. So along the chain it went, you know, got its milk added, and then they put another lid on. So this person came back to their table. It was like a magic trick. It was like, you know, you know, when balls and cups and all the balls suddenly appeared, it was like, I've somehow duplicated lids here, but I can't quite work out what happened. It was like one of those very, very odd moments. And I was just reflecting on this, and then at the same time I received a WhatsApp from Ruby, so thank you very much for this WhatsApp. She took her reusable cup to Costa, and for them to decide what size the cup was, they poured water into a single use cup, poured that water into a reusable cup, and then chuck the single use cup in the bin.

SPEAKER_02 56:17

Oh no, what a nightmare. Well, at least it was in a Costa bin, though, so that will probably go off and be recycled, but that's not very much consolation, is it?

SPEAKER_00 56:26

I'm sure our influencers are listening to this thinking, I've also got a coffee cup story because we all have one, don't we? You know, we all have that nightmare moment where you've bought a reusable and a shop does not play ball.

SPEAKER_02 56:37

So my residual rubbers this week comes from me being very confused. I wouldn't just say the confused emoji, I'd probably put three or four confused emojis on this. And here's an insight into what it's like to be Robbie. I'm thinking about buying a new car. Well, new to me anyway. Uh, it might be a secondhand car and probably most likely will be. And for the last decade, I've honestly struggled to buy pretty much anything that I won't immediately consume. So food, I'm not thinking too long about uh what I'm gonna have on the menu. Quite often I'm asking you for a recommendation, James, and you just choose for me, to be frank. Things like phones, watches, clothes. It takes me an awful long time to choose because I know I shouldn't be consuming these things. It's probably why you see me in the same black outfit all the time, because I don't have anything else to wear. So lots of factors to consider in buying this car, of course. Size, price bracket, mileage, transmission, blah, blah, blah. And that's before you get to the eco-credentials. And so obviously, there's like electric, hybrid, and things like that that's well understood. You're probably thinking, why is this relevant to residual rubbish? Well, the thing that I was looking at is, after seeing that European statistic, is how much recycled material is used in the car, you know, as a key sort of component of what I would go for. And gosh, I wish I hadn't thought about it because it was so confusing. It was, I found it really hard to get statistics around, you know, it was like anecdotal stuff, like the seats on this particular model are made from recycled fibres or the parts of the aluminium in the chassis are made from recycled material. But there was no sort of like one number metric on either the recycle content, which is what I was specifically looking at, but also, I suppose, the recyclability. And then I went down this wormhole of natural materials and hemp being used in the construction thing. So, anyway, basically, I'm asking you, James, I'm pleading, can we do a trash talk about it sometime to help me out? Because I've got a few months before I need to buy this new car and I'm totally confused.

SPEAKER_00 58:57

Great. Okay, let's add it in. So, what is the best car to buy as the follow-up of what is the best toilet roll to buy? I'm in. This is good. As always, thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We absolutely love getting the opportunity to do this podcast. Join our Discord, follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. Everything we've discussed today can be found on our Linktree, and the details to everything can be found in our show notes. Nothing left for me to say other than see you next binding.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 59:30

Bye.