76. Why your council tax isn't paying for your recycling anymore

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and one-sided stories. In this episode, we will discuss the second year of extended producer responsibility. Are glow sticks rubbish or not? And I have a question about why we can recycle aerosols at home, but not gas canisters. I'm James Piper, author of the rubbish book, and I'm joined by Robbie Stanley, my far from rubbish friend. Robbie, obviously, I can see you on the camera. Every time I read out the rubbish question, you do this face that's like, I'm interested in that one. It is like you've never read it before. Cards on the table that particular time I hadn't actually read it before. We start 2026 as we have historically, and mean to go on, I'm sure. I love it. Sorry if my voice sounds weird again. My sinuses continue to be blocked, so I'm starting 2026 as I ended 2025 as well. It's ridiculous. I've got like a completely different voice.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

I like it though. Do you? Okay. Oh yeah, nice. Nasal. A bit lower in the tone.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Great. And I think, you know, I just want to say welcome to all our new influencers because just before Christmas, I was putting up all these um videos about the battery fires, and people were loving it on social media. Well, I say loving it. Half people were loving it on social media. Half the people were saying we're the most boring people to ever exist. I like to think that half who enjoyed it and followed us are now listening to us. So welcome to Talking Rubbish if you're a new listener. Great to have you with us.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, fantastic. I mean, isn't that just the way with social media? Half love it, half hate it. That's sort of true about everything, isn't it? Not just talking rubbish.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

On reflection, because I have reflected on it over Christmas. What is interesting is when we set out to do this podcast, I genuinely said to the producers at the time and to the people I was thinking about setting it up with, I think our podcast is for everyone. And you realise quite quickly, actually, there is a portion of people who really, really don't care. And quite a lot of people were like, I pay my council tax. Why should I have to recycle? Everything's going in the bin. It's up to the council to do it. And there was a lot of very strong views that actually that people shouldn't have to take responsibility. It should all be the companies. And I've realized our podcast isn't for everyone. It is for people who want to change their behaviors, to improve, and are willing to go the extra mile. And say, I guess because I'm viewing 2026 as a year of growth for our podcast and bringing new influences in and looking at how we do that, the best thing you can do, as we say every week, is for you to tell your friends and family about us because you guys are going to be the best judge of who should listen to us. Definitely not social media. So it's been a while since we've talked about EPR, extended producer responsibility, and a lot has happened. So I thought it was worth us doing an update episode. Now, I am conscious we have a lot of noob influencers because of this social media thing. And uh if you haven't had a chance to go back and listen, then our previous episodes on this were episode 31, where we talked about, I think the title was Is This the End of Glass? And that was all about how extended produce responsibility was affecting glass, and episode 44, where we talked about the RAM, which is the modulated fee. That we're gonna we will talk about all these things today. Give you a bit of background, just to remind you of where we are at the moment or just to explain. Basically, extended produce responsibility is a piece of legislation that has started to come in that is moving the costs of our collections at curbside, so the collections of our bins at curbside from our council tax to brands. So they are charging brands a huge pot of money, which is then getting split amongst local authorities in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah, and in order to do that, there a new whole new organization called PAC UK has been set up by the government. It's housed within government, but it kind of reports to all the four different nations around the UK equally. And it's been set up specifically to get the information from the brands about how much packaging they're placing onto the market, and then to work out how much of that bill each of those companies should be picking up because it's not just financed by council tax as it previously was anymore.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

And that's the money sort of coming in, but then the money going out, PACUK are also working out. They're basically saying to brands, hey, you need to pick up your fair share of the bill, and then we're gonna give that to local authorities based on how big the local authority is and how much rubbish they collect. So back in July, uh so July 2025, PACUK wrote to local authorities to inform them what they would be receiving in year one. And we're sort of in year one now, aren't we, Robbie? This is the first bill's gone out. We'll talk about that in a second. The money has started flowing to local authorities or will be soon. And the first year amounted to about one and a half billion. Pac UK invoiced all the brands in the UK based on their market share, one and a half billion. They're holding that money in a bank account ready to be distributed to local authorities. I say this with actually no knowledge of when local authorities will start receiving the money. Have you got a view on that, Robbie?

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Over the next couple of months. So it has to be offset because obviously they've got a time lag between when the money comes in and when the money goes out. So they had only just started doing that, those first invoices and direct debits in uh November, December 2025. So it's going to be around the beginning of this year. In the first quarter of this year, they'll start to get their first payments. And then it will get into the usual kind of quarterly rhythm of payments being handed over.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

I heard on the grapevine from several people at several conferences last year, local authorities are pretty happy with year one because I think they're still receiving double payment. They've sort of got council tax money coming in that has been assigned to waste management, and they've got EPR money coming in.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah, and this was one of the big worries was that the government would pull the council tax away from them before they started to get the money trickling through from EPR. And it was a huge concern in the run-up to this over literally five or so years of implementation. How is the timing going to work, et cetera, et cetera? The government were very fair and continued to finance and have the same or similar levels of council, uh, of it's not actual council tax funding, it's central government funding that goes to local authorities to help them to run their waste management services. So effectively, the government haven't pulled that funding before they start to get these new payments. So you're right, in year one, they will effectively be seeing a small increase in their overall budget as a local authority, which will then dip back down again for the following year. So, in terms of are they happy, yes, it maybe makes their lives a bit easier in the short term, but actually it's always very challenging working in local authorities, keeping local services going. So the likelihood of them having their feet up saying that the money's rolling in, it's got really easy for us, is zero. They're probably already starting and thinking and planning about what happens when it changes back and reverts to the normal levels of funding that they'll have to get used to over the next five to ten years.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

I think that's a fair point. And thank you for uh saying it, because that will prevent some of the emails that could have been inevitable there. Because I know enough of our influencers work for local authorities who be saying, What are you talking about? We haven't got any money. Hopefully, we've covered off enough there to say that actually it is still tough for local authorities because we know that is the case. Just to summarize that, just to be really clear, I know we're repeating ourselves, but I do think it's useful, particularly if we've got new listeners. We used to pay council tax that covered our bin collections from curbside. That is moving to brands, and the brands have put a load of money into a pot, one and a half billion pounds, which is now being distributed to local authorities. You will not see a reduction in your council tax. We talked about that before, because it's just going to get moved to other other areas like social care and areas that really need funding. But what it does mean is that brands suddenly care about recycling a hell of a lot more from home because they're paying for it. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about what the brands are actually paying for. The first bills to the brands went out in October in 2025, so last year, and they were called notices of liability. Here's your notice of liability. And a few brands have publicly talked about their costs. So MS, I think, have said that theirs was 40 million. John Lewis have said theirs was 29 million. Heck, who we talked about in the podcast before, were 153,000. And Belvoir Farms, whose drink I am currently searching for, because I have actually been tasked with buying some today. Um very coincidentally, Belvoir Farms bill is £860,000, which I will slightly increase today when I buy some additional bottles coming into the new year. So these are the bills that or these are these are people who have gone public with their bills. So we get a rough idea, you know, a retailer a size of MS is paying about £40 million. So we can sort of scale up, scale that up to Tesco, Asta, Sainsbury's, and a brand like Belvoir Farms, who make very nice drink, or Heck, who makes ostriches, they're sort of sub a million in their bills.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah, and that's how this 1.5 billion is distributed ultimately. It's got to come from somewhere, specifically their share MS with 40 million, for example, that comes from their 2024 data. So what they sold in the calendar year of 2024, the various uh packaging that they placed onto the market in those common categories, paper, aluminium, glass, etc. Because of those huge bills, it really didn't take long for PAC UK to announce that there was a huge risk of fraud and that fraudsters were basically writing to these brands to say your invoice or notice of liability is incorrect. We need to update it, please use these bank details, which of course would have sent the money to the scammers. Now, we've got no evidence that they've actually got away with this and that people have mistakenly uh sent over money to scammers, but it just goes to show how much money is floating around as soon as you get criminals uh involved like this. Hopefully, most organizations have two or three times authentication and authorization to pay these huge bills, but it is somewhat of a worry.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, absolutely. And fraud was not the only issue. There's a couple of things that have angered brands um at the start of this as they've received their bills. So things they sort of knew but potentially didn't expect, I guess. And the first one that's been an issue is this thing called an impairment charge, which basically, in the first iteration, is a bill of about 60 million spread across all the brands, which is to cover brands that don't pay. In business, of course, you have these things. You have bad debtors and you have to try and plan for it, and you sometimes have to charge a bit more to people to make sure you're covered for bad debtors. That makes lots of sense. I think in this example, it doesn't make a huge amount of sense because we're talking about the government essentially that has set this up. And they have very strong levers. There are there's a charge of penalties of 5% of turnover if you don't pay. I don't know how much you have to charge a kind of protection fee, an impairment charge, when you've got very strong fines on the other side if you don't pay, because I would imagine most people will pay. And if you don't, you're gonna get a hell of a lot more than the notice of liability was through that turnover clause. It's a bit of a strange one, that, and I can understand why if you're already paying a huge bill that's unexpected, paying a premium on top feels a bit unusual.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, and then obviously as a brand, someone paying into the system, you say, what is the absolute minimum amount of impairment charge you can operate with? It's in nobody's interests for them to run into like a cash deficit or whatever. I appreciate that. But ultimately, as you say, PAC UK is backed by the government. Whether they recognize that or not as an organization, I'm sure they don't want to go into bad debt. But it is a very sort of strange one and has definitely got some people's backs up.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

And that fee, I think that 60 million will be revised each year as they get to know who doesn't pay and who does pay. So they'll have more of an idea. I do think, you know, experience tells me it's very hard to give money back to brands. So you end up with this situation where it's like, oh, we didn't need all that 60 million, but we now can't give it back. So it ends up discounting future years, and it just from an accounting perspective ends up getting very complicated. So it's not quite as simple as it sounds in terms of going, oh, we didn't need it, we'll give it back to you. Brands just don't work like that. And another issue that's happened, and I'm gonna put this down to teething issues.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Big old teething issues, this.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

There are 11% of registered companies who will be saying, Don't you dare call it teething issues. This is like the dribbling toddler of a teething issue for sure. Fairly horrendous. So some businesses obviously set up a direct debit to pay their notice of liability. And if they were organized and set that up before the 24th of November, which would have meant they were organized, in I think every case, they were charged twice and sometimes three times for that notice of liability. So this was 11% of registered companies. There's nearly 500 companies that were charged by accident by the payment provider twice and sometimes three times. And when you're already talking about a pot of money that is very, very expensive for some of these brands, they're already struggling to have that come out of your bank account three times just must have been horrendous.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah, and imagine the cash flow problems it could have caused. Meanwhile, PAC UK have got this nice little pillow, safety blanket, so to speak, of 60 million quid of the producer's money, and they're taking payments twice or three times. That really, I'm sure, rubbed salt into the wounds.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

It was not great. And the I mean, we should say the refunds were processed very quickly. I think I read about it on the Monday, and the refunds were processed by the Friday. But I think in terms of giving people confidence in the scheme and confidence in what we're doing here, it was quite hard to take, I suspect.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

From my point of view, I think the comms on the upside, and it's always like me to look on the bright side, PAC UK did get out in front of it, immediately own up to the error once they worked it out, immediately look at remediating it. But yes, even though uh they didn't try to sweep this under the carpet and they faced it head on, it was still an absolutely massive fundamental error that does erode confidence.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Speaking of IT and issues with payments, Phil Conran, who we both know, who is a consultant and operates a website called 360 Environmental, had been looking into the IT system. So the producers are submitting data to an IT portal and uh reprocessors also get registered on the same portal. He issued a freedom of information request to look at how much this was costing and discovered that that system was costing at an extremely eye-watering 84 million pounds. Unfortunately, we've ended up with an IT system that is a little bit worse than the IT system of before and is causing huge issues because, so, for example, with recyclers, the recyclers now have to provide way more information to be able to get funding through this system, which is great in terms of feeling like there's more accountability and more checks, but it has left the environment agency quite overwhelmed. And so they are missing their own deadlines of getting recyclers accredited, which means as we came into the first of January, there will be a number of recyclers who didn't know whether they were accredited or not to issue evidence that recycling had taken place. So there will be a lot of data missing because they've changed into a system, they've missed their deadlines, and they've spent a huge amount of money, which is ultimately going to get picked up by these brands, which then gets passed on to us. So a huge amount of money on an IT system that seems to not be as good as what we've left behind.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah, and I think I would describe it as more than teething issues. Like fundamentally, it's not been designed in a way that meets the needs of the users, and knowing a thing or two about IT systems, as all businesses operate having to use IT infrastructure in the modern world, and knowing how producers submit that data and the kind of rows and columns that they need to deal with, 84 million just seems absolutely crazy. Like, and I'm talking like 10 times more than what I would consider would be the top ceiling of what you would need to pay to design this thing. It's mad how much money's been spent on it and how poor the system actually is. Onwards and upwards.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Let's bring this up. I'm sure lots of lessons have been learned, and we're now moving to phase two of extended producer responsibility. So last year or and and now, notices of liability have gone out that have been pretty static. It's just you put this much plastic on the market, you pay this. We are moving into a world of modulated fees. So it's very, very different. We want to spend a bit of time on this, but I guess before we come into modulated fees, let's talk about the base fees, which are a starting point for the calculation. What they've done is sat down and gone, okay, if we need to create this pot of money, let's say one and a half billion, how are we going to split that up by materials? What are we going to charge per ton of material going through the system? And every material has seen a significant increase between year one and year two. So just before Christmas, they announced what the year two fees will be, which will be going out towards the end of this year, end of 2026. And most of them have seen an increase of between 7 and 11%. And if we compare that to inflation, which is about 3%, obviously we're seeing a double and sometimes tripling compared to inflation. Just to give you an example, if you were to put a ton of glass on the market, that's going to cost you £192. Whereas if you put a ton of fiber-based composite on the market, so that's like paper and plastic, like a tetrapack, that's £461. So it is over two times as expensive to put fiber-based composite on the market as it is to put glass on the market.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah, and of course, with these base fees increasing over time, that's because PAC UK didn't really know what the total tonnage was going to be from all of those producers of packaging. And so a lot of this change in the fees is not coming merely from the fact they want to charge more and you need to pay more. It's that the amount of tons, you know, everything is based on how many tons you place onto the market, is a lot lower than what they thought.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Yeah, you're absolutely right, Robbie. And the fees are up. So there's two things that have caused the fees to rise: a 1.9% inflation increase, but also, as you say, that decrease in tonnages. Because ultimately, just to reiterate, if it's not obvious, if you've got one and a half billion pounds to split across a load of tonnage and the tonnage goes down, then your price per ton has to come up. That decrease in tonnage is both very interesting and very suspicious. So brands are basically reporting how much they have sold and the packaging weights around them. They have been doing that for nearly 30 years. Okay, under produce responsibility. Before it was called extended produce responsibility. You would expect, therefore, quite a lot of similarity in the data, because if you've been doing it for 30 years, what's going to change it? But it is fascinating that the invoices went out in October and the difference between the tonnage between September and November had a drop in plastic tonnage of 50,000 tons. So between September and November, the data reporting, and in the middle of that were some invoices going out that were pretty high. Somehow the obligation for the UK dropped by 50,000 tons.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yeah. And given that plastic is sat at 423 pounds per ton, there's probably 423 reasons why that tonnage dropped.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

No real drop between January and September in plastic. Huge drop between September and November. The only thing that happened there is invoices went out. Now, to be fair, if I had a big invoice land on my desk, I'd also probably go over my data and find some issues and say, oh, I could update this and fix these issues and save some money. Very rarely do you see a brand do that and increase their tonnage. They go, oh, I found an issue. I'll fix that. And it increases tonnage. That doesn't really happen. It's normally a decrease. I guess our hypothesis is that either there's been some errors in data over the last 30 years, which will almost definitely be true, and these invoices have prompted people to have a look at that data, or perhaps the money has gone up so much that actually they're trying to make savings. Now, the interesting thing about that is because we're talking about a market share situation, let's say one or two companies decided to be dishonest and find ways of decreasing their tonnage, perhaps artificially, it will cause all the other brands to have to pay more. So your competitors potentially pick up a much bigger bill because you have decided to be dishonest. And I guess that's the problem with this. It incentivizes you to find errors in your data, either rightly or wrongly, because Not only is your bill lowering, but your competitors' bill is increasing.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

So this places a huge burden of responsibility on the various environmental regulators around the four nations of the UK. So this is the environment agency in England and their equivalents in the other nations. Because they are the ones who can scrutinize this data, visit sites, work with compliance schemes to ensure that the right guidance and information is out there so that brands and retailers are reporting this information correctly. And they're so mindful of this drop that they've recently issued a statement on it. And that reads, in accordance with the regulations, 2024 packaging data resubmissions may be submitted onto the report packaging data RPD portal, that's this new IT system, until the 28th of January 2026. So what they're saying is you have until a few weeks' time to change this data. However, they go on to say, and I won't quote it directly, that you need to do it with a few weeks' advance notice for them so that they have time to do their checks, a week to go and look through and accept the data because of the real unforeseen consequences of these late changes. And not just unforeseen, but the magnitude of changes that they are receiving now. Because, as you say, James, everyone's turning up rocks to try and work out what definitely is their accurate uh obligation. And what will then happen is they will recalculate these disposal fees and as you say, respread this market share. And there's certainly going to be individual winners and losers. Now, this is great from a desk-based data point of view, but the real work is actually getting out there into the real world and speaking to producers, visiting their sites, checking the weights of what they're claiming, checking that it actually is predominantly paper rather than predominantly plastic, and that they're making the right classifications.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

So to be clear, we're not necessarily suggesting fraud is happening. We're just saying it's interesting that people who've been reporting for 30 years and not really made you know, there have always been resubmissions, but not to this level, suddenly are doing huge resubmissions at the time where their invoices land on their desk. And it could be genuine. It could just be that you've got complacent with your data over the years and you're now fixing it.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Yeah, and I think what lots of them have found, and we're going to come on to it in a second, is when they've been scrutinizing their packaging for 2025 that they placed on the market in 2025, looking to classify the recyclability of it, which we'll talk about in a minute. They've suddenly gone, wow, there's a massive error. Quick, go back to the 2024 data and let's amend that with this new finding, because they have been scrutinizing their data much more. And to be fair to lots of those brands and producers, these are just honest mistakes that have happened or misunderstandings of classifications. They've suddenly realized it for 2025 when there's more scrutiny, and that's had an impact on them being able to go back on previous years' data and apply that same logic. Yeah, that's interesting insight.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

We've definitely seen that in the data that we've managed. The main change that's coming in for year two is this modulated fee thing. So let's talk about this. So, and we talked about it in episode 44. There's a whole episode on it, but we'll go through it again in a bit of detail. This is people classing their packaging as red, amber, or green. And the red, amber, green thing is based on the collection sorting and recycling of a packaging type. So if I just give a quick example of rigid plastic, when we look at the collection of plastic, this is hard plastic, if it is collected by more than 75%, then it can be green at a collection level. So plastic bottles are collected by 100% of local authorities. So plastic bottles will meet that green criteria for collection. Pots, tubs, and trays, it is 88%. So again, higher than 75%. So that will be also green. Any other type of rigid plastic might start going into amber or red because it may not be collected to that level. Amber is more than 50% of local authorities collecting it. And if it's fewer than 50% and you haven't got a take back scheme, then it would be red. So if we think about like a milk pod that you might get with like a Tasimmo coffee machine, I have to say milk pod because coffee pods weirdly are not classed as packaging at the moment. For now, let's imagine a milk pod made of rigid plastic. Well, that's not collected by more than 50% of local authorities. So that will be red as an example in the collection. It will also be red in the sorting, which is the next thing, because the main thing for sorting is size. And these things have to be greater than four centimetres in two dimensions. And that's why we talk about tennis ball size. So again, a PET bottle would be fine. It's bigger than four centimetres on two sides. But something like a milk pod wouldn't be or a coffee pot in this example if we were pretending it was packaging. The other thing you can't do with rigid plastic with sorting is use carbon black. That would make it immediately red. Now, interestingly, that size thing doesn't count if it's attached. So things like tethered bottle caps would be classed as green as part of the PET bottle because they're attached, even though they're smaller than four centimeters. And finally, with recycling, there's lots of technical things. So any of these would make it red if it's made of these materials. So PVC, polystyrene, oxo-degradable, which we talked about in a previous episode, biodegradable, compostable plastics, and then there's loads of specific things. But basically, if you go through those three things, collection, sorting, and recycling, if you put a boring PET bottle on the market, 100% of counsels collect it. It's greater than four centimeters on two dimensions, and the recycling super easy, then it would class as green.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

So the way it's gonna work then, once you've classified your packaging as green, amber, or red, is effectively amber is the standard in the middle. So those base fees that we're talking about, that's that midpoint basically. And then red items, classified as red, have a penalty of 20% against the standard amber baseline, and green has a 9% discount or uplift, if you like, because they're much better than that amber average. So what that means in practice is that amber and red are very much fixed fees, and then green fluctuates on the data reported based on how much money was yielded through the red penalties, if you like. So it's quite complicated to explain on a podcast without a piece of paper to sketch it out, but effectively you need to hold in your mind that amber and red are fixed and they set that at a rate, and then green is just any benefits you might get from those formats in your particular material being classed as red.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

And that red fee is increasing over time. So right now it's a 20% penalty, next year it's 60%, and then 100%. So you will pay double the cost of amber if you're putting red packaging on the market to unrecyclable packaging. And I guess this is my concern that this all works in the early days of this scheme. But over time, brands will say, Well, I don't want to put any red on the market because the fee is so high. So maybe MS say at Christmas they're not going to include batteries in their packaging, right? Because that's always let's hope so. So let's say we do that. So slowly everyone's packaging migrates to amber or green, and therefore there's no penalties. So green has no discount. And so I guess the concern is that we're sort of funneling all our packaging to amber to middle of the road, because in order for there to be a discount for green, there has to be red on the market that's creating increased money that creates the discount. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Yeah, and I think over time they will have to change how they do this classification and how they apply the logic for the invoicing against red, amber, and green as things get mature. The final thing is it's really easy to see what red packaging is. Like what's really bad stuff that you don't want on the market. Things like batteries and packaging, for example. However, it's much more nuanced between what you can tolerate, as in amber, and what you really, really want that's classified as green. And I think what will happen as producers stop using as much of this red packaging is we'll get down into the nitty-gritty and the detail of what is truly really great packaging.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

And one of the most interesting pieces of data that's come out of having these fees is we now know how much of our packaging is green, amber, and red in each of the materials. And I'll include this table in our link tree because we won't be able to go through it all. But as an example, currently reported, 91% of glass is green, you know, because most of it can go through the collection, sorting, and recycling. There's very few things that are going to stop glass going through that process. So 91% is green. Compare that to like fibre-based composites, so TetraPak and um cartons, where 18% is green. Because there's loads of things that will stop it getting recycled and loads of things that stop councils collecting it. I guess what's really interesting is we've now got this very clear breakdown of by material how recyclable our packaging is. And plastic will be the one everyone's interested in. So plastic at the moment, 45% of our plastic is red, and that will include things like flexible plastic, dragging that right down. 45% is red, 24% is amber, and 31% is green. And over the years, what we will see is a shift from red towards amber because from 2027 flexible plastic will be collected from councils, and that will start moving flexible plastic into the amber category.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Yeah, so there's two major things that will happen. Those packaging formats that are red because they will never ever be recycled at scale. Companies will start to move out of those formats and they will start to be a legacy thing. You won't see them anymore. That will decrease the amount of red packaging. And as you say, the stuff that is red at the moment, but can be recycled at scale as long as we invest in infrastructure and collect the stuff will move out of red because we're actually improving recycling systems in the UK. And at the end of the day, that is the reason why we've moved to this new EPR system to try and improve recycling outcomes for packaging.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

As we have said in previous episodes, EPR is a monumental shift for the UK. Moving away from council tax funding our waste collections to brands. Now, there is a side note here that I suspect the brands and they have said they will pass this on to the consumer. So we are still paying for it, just in a different way. But on a per pack basis, it's quite a small amount of money. We won't really notice it. A lot has gone wrong in the first years. So the IT systems, payment issues, increasing fees due to some very odd data and decreasing tonnages. However, there is a huge amount to like. Brands have clarity on their bill quite far in advance. They're already looking at what the end-of-the-year bill is, and that is the kind of clarity that brands have been calling out for. We can now see how much of our packaging is recyclable. And this was data that never existed before. And we have structures in place for everything to move a bit more easily. So big fingers crossed on that one. But I do think we will start to see packaging move out of red and into amber and green. And the structures are in place for payment systems that hopefully make this a lot more simple. I'm massively behind this legislation personally, and the team at Pac UK, who I know want to and I think are doing an amazing job in very difficult circumstances, albeit there's some mistakes along the way. I definitely also support the brands who are incurring a cost they've never had before and how tricky that is for them to navigate. But I do think most people recognise the importance of funding the end of life of products that they place on the market. And I genuinely think this legislation, alongside its siblings, so deposit return schemes and simpler recycling, will transform the UK packaging market. Additions and corrections. Robbie, you're gonna be shocked I've never done this pun before, but the email bin box has been overflowing. You found a new one. Very good. Yeah, email bin box. That's sticking around. That's great. Back in episode 73, you talked about glass recycling coming to Bedford. And you've rather boldly, particularly in my opinion, made the claim that they are probably one of the last councils to collect glass. You did invite influencers to correct you, and correct you, they did, Robbie. Oh no, how badly wrong was that statement? Thank you to Lizzie in Southampton, Louise in Ferrum, Ian in Belfast, Susan in in Verclyde, Eleanor in Exter, and Louise in Wokingham. Apologize if I've missed anyone, there were lots of messages. And I had a quick look through. In fact, research from RAP and British Glass has found that 36 local authorities do not collect glass at curbside. Now that's interesting because we've literally just talked about how 100% of local authorities collect plastic bottles. So more local authorities collect PET bottles than glass bottles. And I think that's a surprise. When we think about the negative connotations around plastic, most people I think would expect more councils to collect glass than plastic.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Yeah, no, that's very true. And I know that glass isn't that well collected, hence why I added that little asterisk on my statement to get people to write in. But that's definitely flushed out that there's a lot more to be done on collecting glass at curbside than I thought. And just for the influencers, he only does this because he doesn't have to manage the bin box.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

He's deliberately baiting you to wind me up. But that last one, so Louise in Wokingham, she sent a very interesting email because actually I hadn't spotted this, but Wokingham is super interesting because there was a press release where they said while we'd prefer not to delay the introduction of curbside glass collection, our future financial position remains uncertain until the government settlement is confirmed. And we currently propose starting monthly curbside glass collections in February 2027, which is beyond the legislation's April 2026 requirement. Now, this is big. If you actually think about it, we've just talked about EPR, right? And EPR is providing a load of money to local authorities to collect consistent materials. So every local authority has to collect paper, cardboard, glass, metals, plastic, and food and and then general. For a council to come out and say, we're not going to do that. We want the funding from EPR, but we're not going to bother collecting that material, in my view, is a huge breach of the law and makes a mockery of it. And I really do not understand why they're saying, oh, we don't have the money to do this when all the money is coming from the brands. We've literally just spent half an hour talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

It's absolutely crazy. And we do definitely wonder what penalties will be incurred if they do go ahead with this course of action. So we'll have to take a look at that and and do a correction on our correction in future and let you know what will happen to Wokingham if they do uh delay past the legislative start date of April 2026.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

And if you were a brand based in Wokingham, you'd be absolutely furious, wouldn't you? You'd just say I sell glass in Wokingham, I'm funding this collection, I'm spending millions of pounds funding collection, and you're just not doing it because what? You're saying you don't have enough money when the money is coming from someone else and has been calculated in order for you to pick up that glass. Now, what they're saying is, well, we don't have the trucks, we don't, you know, we have to invest to start collecting this stuff, which is true, but you sort of should have done that 20 years ago. Like it's not the time to start complaining about that now. You should have been collecting glass for many years. So all these 36 councils, if they delay glass collections, in my view, that is completely unacceptable because they should have been collecting it for years. Now they're being forced to at a time where they've got no money. You know, so I've got very little sympathy for that, unfortunately. And also in episode 73, we talked about Wayserve in Malta, where we talked about battery fires, and I found an open letter from them in the press saying that they had been struggling to get insurance, and we talked about that. Wayser of Malta actually listened to the episode. What? Really? Yes, we have listeners in Malta and confirm that they do and have always had the correct insurance. Really? I cannot believe that. I did not want to slide them, so I promised that I would make sure I corrected that because it's great they have insurance, but I do think it's interesting they put out the same letter, and they literally said, we can't get insurance, and then they never put out a statement saying, Don't worry, everyone, we did get insurance. So uh hopefully they don't mind me correcting that, and I apologize that I could not find anywhere that suggested they did. Um, and I'm very pleased to hear that they do have all the correct insurance. And finally, we had Dan on YouTube. Now, Dan is not the only person who wrote in, but Dan is the one I'm most concerned about because he said, first time listener, but I'm concerned. When talking about batteries, did you say thermal runway? I'm sure you mean thermal runaway. And if you really did use the former, I may never listen again. So we don't know if Dan's hearing this now. I did message him and say, look, don't give up on us, Dan. We'll correct. We did have Nick on Discord also pulling us up on this. So at the risk of losing listeners, which is always a risk with my vocabulary, um particularly when I say things like nutritionalist. At the risk of losing listeners, please allow me the opportunity to correct. I did have a quick check through it. It was correct in my notes, but when I listen back, it does sound like runway. I'm gonna put that down to the sinus issues.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Yeah, you had a cold. Don't give yourself a hard time, James. You just didn't get that A in the middle there.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Yes. And to get over my cold, what I need is a nice steaming glass of thermal runaway. So let's remember it's runaway, not runway.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

And I had one final correction from the Christmas episode, and it's about that dairy milk advent calendar. I talked about the fact that it was easily recyclable and you could just peel off the aluminium foil from the plastic tray. Well, after Christmas, I obviously got to recycling the thing. It was very easy to get the cardboard box, put that away, but when it came to peeling off that aluminium foil, it literally took me quite a long time of peeling off very small pieces and then obviously bawling it up to the size of a tennis ball with some other aluminium foil I'd used over the Christmas period. So I would say it's doable, but it's not exactly a speedy or easy process. So I still think it is or not recyclable, but you're gonna have to put a lot of effort in. And we don't really want to be encouraging that kind of packaging.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

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 as we said at the top, the best thing you can do is share us with your friends and family and also leave us a review. We've had some amazing reviews come in recently. I suspect as this goes out, Apple's going to be very close to 200 reviews, so thank you for that. If not, has surpassed it.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

And if you leave us a review, you can be Robbie's review of the week. And this one comes from Apple, one of those 200 odd reviews from Heathy33 in a bit. I love this. Surprisingly fascinating. Really makes you think.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Thank you, Heathy33 in a bit, which I'm assuming is a typo for healthy, because uh when I Google Heathy, it means resembling or full of heath, which is a low, shrubby plant landscape like the moors. But I suspect they are healthy 33 in a bit. But I could be wrong. They could be quite heathy. You can 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. And the link to all those things is in the show notes. Rubbish or not. Today's rubbish or not comes from Mike. Mike is the host of a podcast called Waterfall, which is a water podcast. And they recently actually just did their episode 100 just before Christmas, which they called Talking Rubbish, in honor of us, Robbie. Oh, really? Oh, that's nice. That's very nice. And it was about uh how why we're good at communicating recycling. As in not us, I mean the UK, but not water. Now I would argue based on my social media, we are not good at communicating recycling, but I can sort of understand why the water industry might feel we're better at it. But thank you very much, Mike, for this question. So glow sticks, super interesting. It's a plastic tube with one liquid with a glass tube inside that has another liquid in it. And when you bend them, you break the glass, mixing the two liquids together. So, Robbie, are they rubbish or not?

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Daughter comes home from Birthday parties with these all the time and has for many years. Really annoy me. They look cool, they do look very nice with the lights off or at a disco or whatever. But I'm pretty certain these are rubbish.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Yeah, lots of chemicals involved. Yeah, they're single use. Once the chemical reaction has happened, it can't be undone. There's lots of myths online about chuck them in a freezer and you can restart them. I'm pretty sure it's a myth. I haven't tested that, but I don't think it's true. And I guess it's quite interesting. There's no batteries, there's no electricity, it's just chemicals. It uses a process called chemoluminescence, uh, which is just a chemical reaction. And what you have is basically in the glass tube on the inside sits some hydrogen peroxide solution. And on the outside, I think it's a diphenyl oxalate and the dye. And so when you crack it, what you're doing is breaking the glass, you're mixing the hydrogen peroxide and the diphenyl oxalate. They together create a lot of energy, and that energy is absorbed by the dye, and it's the dye that gives the colour. So the dye is actually separate to the chemical. It's not like they go, oh, this is the green chemical, this is the blue chemical. They just are creating a chemical reaction between two chemicals, which then is absorbed by whatever dye you've put into the product. As you say, they are definitely not recyclable. That mix of plastic and glass alongside chemicals, absolute nightmare. And I guess as I was doing the research for this, I suddenly realized how much glow sticks are used in kind of emergency and safety settings, so aviation, military, they used it with divers to identify during a night dive. They work underwater, they don't heat up, they function in all sorts of temperatures. So super useful for emergency settings. So even if we ban them at kids' parties, they're still going to be quite an important part of our infrastructure just in different ways. What I found was actually one of the chemicals that is sometimes used is a phthalate. And we talked about the phthalates back in episode 43. And we talked about them. They're used to make PVC flexible, particularly in medical settings, but they are toxic and they leach into our bodies and they they can be very hazardous to our health. So go and listen to episode 43 if you want to know all about that. They used to be used, or sometimes still are used, in glow sticks to help the solution move round so that your light is evenly spread across the glow stick. So they put it in there and it causes the light to spread across the whole glow stick rather than just sitting in one bit. That would mean that those kind of glow sticks with phthalates in are banned in the EU because they banned phthalates in toys back in 2007. So a report from the Danish Ministry of the Environment did find the chemical in glow sticks being sold in the EU and said the use of phthalate in glow sticks, considered to be toys, is a violation of the law. Now, I think you will still find this in America because the North Carolina poison control website said the substance inside these glowing items is usually usually dibutyl phthalate, a clear, oily, colourless liquid. It is low in toxicity, but can cause irritation to any part of the body that it comes in contact with, including the eyes, skin, and mouth. Now, having said it, they've literally just written it's low in toxicity. They then go on to say, if you ingest it, don't be alarmed if your lips and tongue glow for a few minutes. I mean, it sounds horrendous. I think it is pretty toxic. They said things like, oh, you might go a bit numb, don't worry about it. It's like, this is horrendous. So um, so it's just interesting. Glow sticks have contained chemicals that have now been banned in the EU. They potentially still do, although I think that will have been phased out. And it is illegal to sell that in the EU, so so probably not. But let's be honest, we've basically got here a bit of plastic with glass inside it with chemicals that are pretty nasty. I think I'd be looking for alternatives. And it's it will take you two minutes online to find some battery-powered glow sticks that can be reused that I think would be way better than the single-use alternative.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

And are most likely to be able to be recycled at the end of their life as a waste electrical.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Rubbish news. Devastating news, Robbie. Just before Christmas, Bristol voted to reject three-weekly general collections. Something we have discussed many times. So for noob influencers, we talked about it a lot. We recognize that slowing down the collection of our general waste, so our normal rubbish, is a great way to increase recycling rates. Because if your recycling is collected more frequently than your general, you are more likely to utilize it. All around Bristol, all the councils around Bristol have implemented three-weekly collections, but for some reason Bristol decided to go into a very politically charged consultation, which everyone got behind to say we don't want this, and it just became very, very political. That has now led to the council rejecting the three-weekly collections. Now, on the plus side, they have agreed to replace over 8,000 bins with sacks. And I think this is to get to places that don't have the space for a bin. So what they've typically done is given everyone a wheelie bin, and then there'll be places like flats or places without gardens where it's just not practical to store a bin. So moving that to sacks should increase the amount of waste being collected. And they've agreed to invest 13 million pounds in modernising the collection fleet, which will ultimately allow them to collect more recycling. I think specifically cardboard and plastic, it will increase the space on the trucks for cardboard and plastic. So again, that's going to be good in terms of increasing recycling. So they're doing some fairly minor, subtle shifts that are going to will make a difference. But I tell you, moving to three-weekly bin collections would have been the thing that makes the most difference.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Yeah, and unfortunately for my rubbish news, I've also got some, well, bad news overall, but maybe a useful intervention. And this was news that came from the reported in the Financial Times that the EU is moving against cheap plastic imports because of recycling plants shutting down. So the EU Commission basically is planning to introduce and hopefully already introducing those checks because it they were saying it would come in in the next week or so for stricter rules around imports of cheap plastics generally from outside of the EU, obviously, uh in the East and Far East. And so Jessica Roswell, who's the EU Environment Commissioner, said that there was a deep crisis and that it's important that they make changes now. Ten plants have closed in the Netherlands alone over the last 18 months. And across the block, about one million tons of recycling capacity are shut down in the same period. And that's the equivalent of France's total annual output, obviously a huge member of the EU in their own right. So they plan to step up monitoring of these imports and to introduce a new customs code that distinguishes between recycled plastic and new material with the hope of verifying cheap plastics that are coming in and damaging the economics of these recycling plants and basically making it much cheaper to import brand new material than use recycled content. This is something we've talked about many times over previous podcasts. The plastic recycling capacity in the EU reached 13.2 million tonnes in 2023, but it's forecast to fall by a million tonnes in the following two years. So they're yet to do the statistics on this, but they're anticipating that we have peaked in the EU in terms of recycling capacity, which is just shocking news.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

Hopefully a nice quick rubbish question today. Which a few people asked following our gas canister discussion in episode 73. So the question was: why can we recycle aerosols at home but not gas canisters?

SPEAKER_00 52:11

That's a very good question. They're really thick, aren't they? Gas canisters compared to aerosols in terms of like the thickness of the packaging. That's got to be some reason for it.

SPEAKER_01 52:24

Yeah, I think some people do just confuse it because we often say, look, gas canisters need to go back to household waste recycling. People forget, they think, oh, aerosols must be the same, you know, deodorants, hairspray, air fresheners. It must be the same. It's also going to cause an issue for recyclers. But recyclers are well set up to deal with that. And it's basically because they contain relatively small amounts of product that could ignite. And it's at a relatively low pressure, whereas gas canisters are storing product that will readily ignite and at a high pressure. So it's just a balance of risk. And as I say, yeah, gas canisters, even when empty, they will still have some flammable product in. They are highly pressurized, which is why they need to go back to a specific part of the household waste recycling centre. Because if you start compacting them in trucks or using equipment at recycling centres to crush and pierce them, it will cause them to explode. Whereas with aerosols, what they will do is depressurize it first by puncturing a hole in, but essentially it's a low risk of ignition.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

And that's ultimately the reason why those aerosols are pretty thin metals around them and gas canisters are much thicker. It's because of the pressure inside the container.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

Residual rubbish. Something that has happened to us this week that has made us feel like an emoji. And I was feeling very excited over the fested period because it was my son's first birthday. He was very spoiled, and he received a climbing set from a company called Good Evers, I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

It looks a bit like Lady Goodiver, but with good instead of Goodiver. So Goodivers?

SPEAKER_01 54:09

Goodivers, I like it. Okay. So I'm sorry to this company for definitely mispronouncing your name, but they make really cool wooden, you know, indoor climbing sets. And he received one of these from my family. And it came in a box. And once we opened it, we realized quite quickly that the box was turning into this game for adults, which was amazing. And Robbie, you came over to my house last night and I said, look, we've got to play it so that you can describe to the influencers what it's like. But I mean, how would how would you describe it?

SPEAKER_00 54:39

It's it's basically a box with two elastic bands at each end, and it's kind of like air hockey, but there's no air involved. You've got little pucks that you're trying to spring through a hole in the middle of the box between two players playing on each side. And we were frantically trying to get these little wooden counters pinging through this hole in the middle. And I think basically you win when you get all of the counters over to the other person's side, and that's the end of the game. So you're frantically trying to uh catapult, I suppose, using these little pieces of elastic uh band, uh these counters across to the other side.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

It was a lovely way of making packaging a more interesting, more fun, you're more likely to keep it, use it for as a game, and it genuinely is really it was cool. I guess my reflection on it was is it good? Because they gave you 12 wooden counters, you know, that were not part of the the climbing frame. Maybe they were off cuts, actually, now I think about it. And then this made sense. But it came with 12 wooden counters that are not part of the thing you've bought. Obviously, a couple of bits of elastic that are not part of the thing you've bought, a little bit more cardboard than you need because it's got things like the scoring mechanism built in. I was reflecting on is it good to have something that you didn't expect that's a nice surprise, but requires more packaging to work. So the wooden counters and the elastic, is that better than just having a cardboard box that I can recycle and not having a game that comes with it? Now I think for me personally, I love the game. I'm enjoying it. It's brilliant. And if those wooden bits are offcuts of the production process, amazing. I guess we need to be careful that not all companies do this because people ordering something from Amazon every day and receiving a game every day that they never play and that includes product that they haven't asked for could be a real waste of materials. But as a one-off, something I'm never gonna buy again, something that my son is enjoying, and I can now enjoy the packaging. I thought it was brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

And the emoji that I felt this week was definitely exasperated, frustrated. My daughter recently, again, my daughter got invited to a birthday party, and that's where she recently got those glow sticks we were talking about. But it was at one of these bounce parks, indoor things, where you have to use the socks that they provide. So you have to buy the socks. It was Ninja Warrior UK, is the naming and shaming. And so she came back with this unnecessary pair of socks that she doesn't need, also that I assume they can brand up their experience. And I now looked in her drawer. She has a pair from Free Dog, a pair from AirHop, and this pair from Ninja Warrior. So this is a young person with three pairs of branded socks from an activity they went to do, like an indoor sort of climbing adventure activity that she doesn't need. So a quick shout out to any of those indoor trampoline parks, bounce parks, soft play assault courses where you can just bring your own socks. Come on, people, we don't need branded socks for every young person's activity out there.

SPEAKER_01 57:58

As always, thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We love getting the opportunity to do this podcast. Super excited to start 2026 with you and go into a whole new year. We're gonna get our hundredth episode this year. Oh, exciting times. Yeah. Uh join our Discord, follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. And everything we've discussed today can also be found on our link tree, and the details to all of those things can be found in our show notes. Other than that, there's nothing left for me to say other than see you next video. Bye. Bye.