81. The sudden rise of food waste bins

SPEAKER_02 0:01

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 simpler recycling. Our contact lenses, rubbish or not, and I have a question about whether refill packaging is actually packaging. I'm James Piper, author of the rubbish book, and I'm joined by Robbie Stanaford, my rubbish fit. Good morning, Robbie. Hey James. How are you doing? Yeah, very good, thank you. We have been meaning to do this simpler recycling episode for a while, haven't we? And it's just the amount of social media from councils going, we're launching Food Waste Weekly, and the anger coming back from residents makes it all too tempting to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah, definitely. Um, but at least the world is talking about recycling and improving the way that they recycle at home, even if there has been a little bit of ire.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

They definitely are. And uh before we get into that, Ellie, my wife, you know her. Listeners know her now from episode 75. Well, I don't think she's listened to an episode since her episode. I think she stopped listening to us. I'm not going to ask why. I mean, obviously, there's a really good test here in that I can say, Ellie, if I'm wrong and you are still listening, just let me know. Like, you'll hear this now. She won't. She's not listening. So imagine my surprise when Ellie turned to me and said she had a new favourite podcast the other night. Oh, okay. How quickly we can be replaced, Robbie. Now, my surprise was elevated when she told me that the name of the podcast was called Sentimental Garbage. Oh no! We've literally been replaced with something that could be a spin-off of talking rubbish. Sentimental garbage. Oh my word. According to the description, it's about the culture we love that society can make us feel ashamed of. Very different to talking rubbish. Okay, yeah. It's only the title that's similar by the sense of it. So it begs the question, Robbie, what would our version of sentimental garbage be, I wonder? Would it be like our favourite bin? I've got a bin that I'm very sentimental about.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

It was a particular collection day when the guy was very kind to me and took my rubbish even though I was late with my recycling.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

So uh I'm not gonna say hello to Ellie, she's not listening. I hope she's enjoying sentimental garbage. Why are we all suddenly getting weekly food waste collections? Or to put it in its more boring terms, welcome to Simpler Recycling. We have been talking about Simpler Recycling pretty much since we started this podcast. And for consumers, I think it marks the biggest change to UK recycling ever, since the introduction of UK recycling.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah, no, you're absolutely spot on. And we promise it will be simpler eventually. But just like any change for the average person, it can feel complicated because it's a change from what you're used to. But I think the government have quite rightly titled it correctly with simpler recycling.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

We'll come on to it, but this aim for consistency was the main thing, wasn't it? And that just isn't really happening. But it will happen over time, as you say. And if you Google Simpler Recycling, it will tell you it was developed by DEFRE in 2023. But that actually isn't true. Simpler Recycling actually started life as a piece of legislation called Consistent Collections, which came out with the Environment Act in 2021. So it's actually an older piece of legislation. So all of these, there's lots of news stories saying this is a Labour government initiative, they're making me have loads of bins in my garden. That just isn't true. This is a conservative initiative that Labour have just carried on with. And it is one of four pieces of legislation that are currently changing UK recycling. We've talked about all of these a lot. So plastic packaging tax, which is a tax if you don't use recycle content, the legislation formerly known as DRS, more on that in your residual rubbish, I believe, Robbie. So I won't spoil what that is. And EPR, extended producer responsibility. And we have covered a lot of episodes that cover legislation. So if you wanted to just hear the legislation episodes, they are 8, 23, 31, 44, and most recently 76. I actually categorize all our episodes. So if you go to our website, which is talkinrubbishpodcast.com, you'll see that legislation is one of the categories. If you do that, you can filter all the episodes by legislation. I don't know why you would do that. Are they the boring episodes?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Some people find them the most interesting, actually, how the laws are changing, because it has a massive impact on what we actually experience at home. Yes, and I think we can make this interesting, Robbie. Uh yeah, so simpler recycling at its core is trying to get all the councils to collect the same materials. So from the 31st of March this year, 2026, they'll be mandated to collect the residual, non-recyclable waste that we've all had collected for many years from our homes now, food waste, which can be mixed with garden waste if it's appropriate. More on that in a sec. And then paper and card as a separate container, and then all dry recyclable materials, all the rest of them. So plastic, metal, and glass. And you can subdivide those obviously into different types of metal containers. You've got jars and bottles for glass, and obviously lots of different types of plastic.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

And food waste has been the real focus. I mean, it's taken over my social media, particularly the talking rubbish social media. When I'm logged in as talking rubbish, Facebook thinks this guy just wants to talk about recycling. So I'm getting every council's food waste announcement coming through. Which is great. I get to read the comments, I get to see how the public feel about it, which is mixed. It's definitely fair to say that. Uh, but they're definitely focused on we're introducing food waste. There is, uh I haven't seen much, if anything, really, about the paper and card and keeping that separate from the other dry recyclables. If we take Bristol as an example, because that's obviously where we're based and so the system we know best, they currently mix paper with glass. That means you can get some liquid contamination from the glass. If you've got like a leftover beer bottle or wine bottle, it's gonna be a little bit of liquid in it that could contaminate the paper. So the idea is to get the paper and card together so that your contamination is reduced. Now I'm gonna come on in a bit as to whether Bristol are actually changing.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

According to the government, in England, this is gonna end the postcode lottery of collections, by which they mean that different people experience different things, and it's a bit of a roll of the dice as to where you live, as to what you get collected. Interestingly, they mention England. And now it's England because waste in the UK is a devolved issue, which means that the four governments are free to set their own rules and laws and systems around waste and recycling as long as they don't restrict trade. And so this is one of the policy areas that was in scope when the devolved administrations were created in the late 90s. And as a friend who works for the government pointed out to me back when I mistakenly said English government as a term in an early podcast episode, there isn't such a thing. While Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have devolved governments, there isn't one in England. There's no English government. It is the British government that's created simpler recycling, and the only waste that's in their remit is for England. So it's a little bit of a nuance of how the UK is structured in terms of the politics. And so the policy really is an attempt to catch up with Wales. So prior to devolution in 1998, Wales was one of the worst recyclers. The recycling rate was only 4.8% of household waste. Since taking charge of their own affairs, it has shot up and risen to the third best on the planet. And again, another little teaser for later on in the episode, more to come on that in my rubbish news because the Welsh government have come out with an announcement on their recycling. But they have their collections blueprint that they released in 2011 and it got refreshed in 2025. And this is like best practice advice about how to collect more recyclable material, drive up recycling rates in local authority. But as well as that carrot of advice and guidance and some some money, some funding for these new services, they also introduced statutory targets which really penalized people.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

And I guess historically on this podcast, we've made simpler recycling sound quite black and white. You're either doing it or you're not. And councils need to do it, and we're calling out the ones that aren't. But of course, the devil is absolutely in the detail on this one, and and having a full trash talk allows us to get into the kind of exclusions as to why you wouldn't have to. The first interesting note on the government's simpler recycling page is this line. It says, We will maintain flexibility for local authorities to deliver these changes in the most appropriate way for their area. It just gives real outs, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Yeah, that sounds like the biggest get out of jail free card ever. Although there must be some politics around it, because this is a sensitive issue, and messing with any local authorities' autonomy to choose how they run a service is a bit of a political football to be kicked around. It absolutely is.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

And so let's start, let's go bin by bin. Let's start with cardboard and paper. Why would you not have to separate cardboard and paper from the other recyclables? So why as a council could you say, I'm just going to keep the cardboard and paper in the metal bin or in the glass bin or whatever, wherever you've got it at the moment? This is down to a lovely acronym, which is TEEP. T-E-E-P, which stands for is it the thing you're doing, technically, environmentally, and economically practicable. So the government says you should collect paper and card separately from other dry recyclable waste unless it doesn't meet one of those criteria. So technically practicable is going to be we couldn't go down that road with a truck that allowed us to separate out paper and cardboards. You know, we had a teeny tiny road, so we had to put a little truck in. That truck only has one compartment, so we had to mix everything together. Economically practicable might be we couldn't afford to put in a load of new bins. It didn't make any sense to put in a load of new bins. That would cost us a lot of money and way more than we'd ever make from collecting up the paper and card. And no significant environmental benefit if you can prove that you haven't got high amounts of contamination and actually you can sort and recycle it just as well. It's not necessarily going to have an environmental benefit to create the carbon of new bins, new routes, new trucks, all those kinds of things. Now, councils have to prepare a written statement to explain why they are applying TEAP, why they're saying, for us, it's not worth separating cardboard and paper.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

And there's consultants out there who will help these local authorities literally do the sums around the environmental benefit or economic uh benefit of mixing things together, like this piece of legislation says you shouldn't be doing at a top level.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Yeah, and Bristol's such a great example here because as I said earlier, at the moment Bristol mixes paper with its glass. So I sort of thought what might happen is they might put round leaflets saying, Oh, can you now put the paper in the cardboard bin? You know, that instead of a glass bin, put paper in cardboard. So I spoke to Hannah, who's the um marketing manager for Bristol Waste yesterday, just to understand what they're doing. And Bristol is not changing. It's saying continue to put the paper in the glass. That is because on the cardboard bag that we have, it says on the side, no paper. And they feel, quite rightly, that it will be extremely confusing to say, start putting paper in there, ignore what it says on the bag. So then you get to a point where you need to have new bins, you know, and now you're starting to get into the it's not economically practicable. Paper isn't worth that much compared to cardboard, you're not collecting huge amounts of it anyway. So it's not worth putting in new bins. Now, as we said, uh, I think it was episode 76, didn't we? We said that Bristol had rejected three weekly general collections, and one of the things they'd managed to do was unlock some funding for new bins. And so this will change, they will move to paper and cardboards. But I completely understand the point that you've already got bins that say no paper, and it would be extremely confusing to now change that message. Now, Bristol Wastefield, and we've got an outstanding addition and correction on this, because I haven't quite got an answer. Bristol Wastefield, that because they curbside sort, they actually mix the paper and cardboard together on the truck. So even though I, as a consumer, am putting paper in the glass, when they sort it onto the truck, the paper and cardboard go together. They feel therefore they are already meeting the requirements of simpler recycling. And that's the bit, if I was to get into the technical detail, that's the bit I'm not sure about. Because to me, simpler recycling is what the consumer experiences, what I experience. And that is very clear. You need four bins, you need to collect these four different waste streams. It's not actually about what the council do with the waste. So I am just finding out whether Bristol Waste are saying to the government, look, we're not meeting simpler recycling because we've decided to keep paper in with glass, or we are meeting it because we curbside sort. And it would be good just to get an understanding of that real technical detail.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

So I assume there was a different compartment on the truck that had glass in one silo and then paper in another. But what you're saying is they tip the whole uh box straight into one compartment.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

No, no, they mix the paper and cardboard. So they separate paper from glass. So they will curb sort the glass paper bin, but the paper will go in with the cardboard. And that's because there's just first of all, as consumers, we don't have much paper anymore. Bits of newspaper, you know, office paper, those kind of things. You have tiny amounts of paper and it's not really worth anything. And for the council, it is worth more mixed in with the cardboard. They can sell that as a higher weight. So they decided that actually it's better for them to mix those materials together, like long before simpler recycling.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

And in fairness to them, if the issue is that the glass is making the paper wet or the fact that glass is getting mixed up with paper, they say, well, it's not, because when the refuse operative gets to the back of the wagon, they're pulling out the jars and bottles, they're putting that in one compartment, and then the paper's going separately anyway. So I can sort of see their argument.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

And interestingly, just in case influencers wanted to know this, I have noted that councils have to keep an updated record of why they are not collecting paper and cardboard separately, and they have to make it available to citizens if they ask. If you are curious as to why your council is not following Simpler Recycling specifically on the kind of paper-cardboard rule, then you are actually allowed to ask and they have to tell you why they've chosen not to do it. I guess the trouble with TEEP is that it's a really easy way out. It's very, very easy for a council to go, it's not technically, economically, or environmentally viable for me to collect this stuff. That's pretty easy to justify. And so what we end up with is substandard recycling because our valuable cardboard, stuff that should be worth money and should be collected separately and not contaminated, could end up getting mixed with lots of things that have liquid that end up ruining it.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

And just to give an example on that, here's the list from that the government provides on why collections might not be just economical. So there will be a whole load of other reasons on the practicability of whether it's technically possible, environmentally possible. This is just the economical ones. If it's the container costs, vehicle costs, including purchasing or leasing and running costs, management costs, overhead costs, including depot and transfer costs, gate fees and income from the sale of materials, cost of contractual changes, cost savings and efficiencies, not sure what that one means, and other relevant economic factors. So it's so easy to imagine that in that long list of things you'll find something that's going to mean it's not possible to change to this simpler recycling mandate.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Yeah, the skeptic in me just says, give your manager a massive pay rise and then say the management costs are way too high. Like it's ridiculous, isn't it? It's absolutely ridiculous. I think the government really should have said, no, simpler recycling is important. Consistency is important. That is what we're going for. Every council has to collect and recycle in the same way. And we will ring fence a pot of money to help councils get out of their contracts or to help them with the things that aren't economically possible. We will ring fence that money and then you can apply for funding to go beyond those barriers. I think just going, oh, you can't afford it, don't bother then, gives way too easy an out for councils and stops that entire aim of this legislation, which is about it being consistent around England.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

And I think alternatively, what they could have looked to do, which is what Wales has done, is get the councils to change over time. Don't just bring it in and say, we've got to do this now, and then here's all these get out of jail free cards if you can't do it. Actually say, in 10 years' time, we want all of our collections to look like this. And as your contracts come up for renewal, you must do it in this way. There's no TEEP assessment that means you can keep doing it the way you used to, or just introduce a whole different way of doing it because you think you know better or you've got a slightly different way of working things.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Okay, so that's paper and cardboard. Let's talk about everyone's favourite at the moment, food waste. Uh the first thing, Robbie, as you said, is that the food waste can be collected with garden waste. And I think I read on the government website that there was no evidence that this lowers the quality of the recycling process. So wherever you're sending your food and guard waste, composting, digestion, anything like that, it will not be lowered by mixing garden and food. It's quite interesting. And I have noticed, as I've said a couple of times, a massive influx on social media of councils sending out food waste bins and confirming that people can now collect food weekly. And this is really the main requirement. The paper cardboard thing is important, but as we have said many times on this podcast, introducing weekly food waste dramatically increases recycling rates. The government want to see recycling rates up at like 65%. The only way you can achieve that is by having weekly food waste. And so it's great to see so many councils implementing it.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Yeah, no, I agree. And the government are actually under new burdens, you know, this piece of kind of legislation that where you introduce a new burden to the local authority, you have to provide the equivalent funding so that they can lay on this new service. So this is an area where actually there is some funding available to bring on this new service. And in a way, is sort of what they should have been doing elsewhere with this piece of legislation. But for food waste specifically, it's a new burden on local authorities. So that means that all of the costs, new wagons that they need to get, bins, etc., communications, they can apply to the government to say this is what the cost of doing this new thing is. So in a way, it's quite exciting that we'll get all of these new systems and processes for food waste.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

I actually didn't know that. So presumably that doesn't cover, though, the costs because it well, there's a footnote, isn't there, in food waste. So there's this footnote from the government that says where long-term waste disposal, be it mechanical or energy from waste, where long-term waste disposal contracts present a barrier to introducing separate food waste collections, a longer implementation period may be required. And DEFRA will continue to engage with affected local authorities. So presumably they're not saying we'll provide funding to buy you out of your contract. They're just saying we will provide you funding to set up the service at the time that your existing contracts come to an end.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Yeah, that's exactly right. Where there's something in place, they just can't afford to buy all of those out and start across all local authorities. So they're basically granting some exemptions or extensions to when it needs to be implemented.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

In episode 16, we talked about incineration, and we talked about one of the issues with incineration being that councils have these long-term contracts to supply a certain amount of waste, and it will include things like food waste. So if a council has a contract with an energy from waste plant that doesn't allow it to send its energy from waste for recycling, we can end up in this locked position where they can't meet simpler recycling. And there's actually a statutory instrument which lists local authorities that have been granted extensions to introducing food waste. And from what I can tell, there are 31 local authorities that have been granted extensions, and this is 15% of households in England. It's interesting actually, because Birmingham was not on the list, and we said in episode 78 that they will not meet the food waste deadline. They, I think they said they're introducing it in June, so they're going to miss it by a couple of months, but they are not listed in the statutory instrument. So I think there are gaps. I think there are local authorities that will miss the deadline that are not listed in that long list.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

And if you're a local authority, effectively you're going to central government and you're either asking them for an extension or you're asking them for some grant funding. But either way, you need to be in touch with central government, British government, uh, if you're an English local authority, to try and work out what you're going to do on food waste. I think for Birmingham, food waste is probably the least of their worries.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Absolutely. Although they have now got approval to introduce it, of course. And just speaking of councils locked into long-term contracts, very, very bad luck if you live in the city of York or North Yorkshire, because your councils are the longest on the list, and you might have to wait to get food waste until, and I can't quite believe I'm saying this, you might have to wait till the first of February, 2043.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

That's absolutely crazy. I'm trying to do the mental arithmetic, but it is decades.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

So this is down to long-term contracts with recyclers, as I say, who are expecting food waste mixed in with the waste. And there are 31 councils on that list, and the longest is 2043. I mean, it sort of staggers between now and then. Of the 31, 26 of the councils cited barriers linked to existing contracts with energy from waste plants. So it's 26 of the 31 that are affected by energy from waste. The others will be affected by other contracts that they have. It might not just be energy from waste, but that is the majority. And it's just such a shame. I mean, reports have consistently shown that when residents recycle food waste, it increases the recycling of other materials. It makes you more aware of recycling. We know that. Because food waste, I think, is like the hardest one to do. So if you get used to doing it, you're like, oh, I might as well do the cans, the cardboard, the plastic. You know, if I'm putting all this effort in with the food waste, in people's minds it's the hardest one to do.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Lots of people don't make a distinction that it is a recyclable waste stream. And so it seems the biggest change to make. You've got things that are a lot cleaner, like containers and cardboard boxes, which to them are instantly recognizable as possible to recycle. Whereas food waste people just don't necessarily make the connection until they do. And then it suddenly seems very weird. I'm sure you must have had this experience too, James, where you're in a holiday let or somewhere around the UK and there is no food waste provision, and you're just scraping uh food peelings or whatever if you're cooking into the normal bin. It just feels really, really quite weird. And it's strange that most of this is about behaviour change, isn't it? And once you get into the rut of a certain behaviour, then you will just keep doing that.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Yeah, and it's not just about recycling other materials. If you collect food waste separately, people create less food waste. Once it's visible to you, you do create a lot less of it and you are more aware of it, and you buy better and you dispose better and you use stuff up to make stocks and all sorts of things, and it just is something you become more aware of. And I think it's a real shame for those 31 councils. And I guess it flies in the face of the government objective of ending the postcode lottery. You know, 15% of households do not have the same collections as the other 85%. So it is not consistent and it is not um reliable. It is still a postcode lottery. Yeah, I mean, they're councils that have prioritized incineration over recycling, right? In the last couple of decades, they have signed contracts that have prevented them from increasing recycling. Now, their argument is that's not our fault. You know, we we needed to sign these long-term contracts to get the best price for the council. And my argument is there is a balance between best value and what we should be doing as a society. And you've got to balance those things out and not just go for the cheapest cost. So the fact that these councils are locked into contracts now for extremely long periods of time, some of them, is a real shame and actually just a symptom of trying to get the lowest cost for your council rather than the best route for our packaging. Let's come on to social media because there's definitely a big issue in getting the public on board with foosed waste collections. And so I picked some of my favourite comments from Facebook. Now, I just randomly selected one of these posts. It happened to come from Blabey District Council, which I think is in the southwest of Leicestershire. Not a place I've actually ever heard of before. But hello if you're listening from Blaby. Hopefully, well, maybe this is one of you. I'd I'm not sure. I'm not sure if influencers would write these kind of things. So I'm just going to respond to some of these comments. So, first one I saw, how do we opt out? I will not be taking delivery of a new bin, thanks. Stop increasing our council tax for this nonsense. Now, let's just respond to this. There's no opt-out. You get given the bin. There's nothing you can do about it. I saw quite a few comments saying, I'm just going to put my bird seed in it. Fine, put your bird seed in it. I don't care. But take your bin. Now, this stop increasing our council tax for this nonsense. Let's cover that. Our old friend the gate fees we discussed in episode 77. Sending waste to incineration costs counsels £121 per ton on average. Sending food waste off for anaerobic digestion costs on average £24 a tonne. So by not recycling your food waste, you are the only person increasing council tax. It is more expensive for the council to deal with your waste in the general bin than it is in the food waste bin. I did the calcs for you, Robbie. The average household wastes 210 kilograms a year food waste. Southampton Council had a report that suggested it was costing two pounds per household for the actual bins themselves, so one pound for the bin that goes outside and one pound for the bin in your house. This means it would take this person who commented 36 days to make back the cost of the bin in council savings. That's pretty compelling evidence, isn't it? Even if you think the bins have wasted your council tax, in 36 days you will have paid it back in reduced skate fees.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yeah, I wonder if we councils need to get out there and make people understand that not even in the long run, in the short run, the medium term, it will actually decrease costs for them if people take part, do their bit, accept their new bin.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

It will stink in the summer. Comment two. Most people have general waste bins collected fortnightly now and sometimes longer. And the food waste has to be collected weekly. Case closed. The only way it's going to smell is you putting it in your general bin. Third comment. Let's save the planet by creating thousands more plastic containers. Or this was a this comes up a lot, doesn't it? You're giving me more plastic to save the planet. I mean, my argument is always, what the hell would you like them to be made of? Do you want your glass food waste bin? It has to be made of plastic. Now, interestingly, most caddies, most bins are made of 100% recycled plastic. That's why they're grey, a lot of them, or brown. They're made of 100% recycled plastic, and it is a great and useful route for low-value plastic. So things like this, where we suddenly all need food waste caddies, it's actually very helpful for the recycling industry.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Yeah, and there were lots of reports last year that there was a severe shortage of these food waste caddies. And even just locally, Bristol residents were saying that they were waiting for months to get one of these uh caddies. So I had a thought that maybe this could be the side hustle for talking rubbish. Maybe we should go into the business of sweeping up all this recycle polymer, uh recycle content and making our own food waste caddies. I reckon there's a business in there somewhere. I'm up for it. I'm in.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Our faces on the side, is that what we're thinking? Comment four. We will spend all night sorting our rubbish. Right. I timed myself last night. I do food waste, I do general, I do recycling. It was all last night. Time myself 13 minutes, start to finish. Now, I am a professional recycler, so I've got speed on my side. But you're not going to spend all night sorting your rubbish.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

That's crazy. 13 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

I love these. I love I did think about responding to all of them, but honestly, there are so many on every single council post, I just do not have the energy. Uh, a final comment I enjoyed. Don't need one, would like a rebate. As I said, as I said, you should be paying more if you don't engage with it. We will give you your £2 back for the bin that you have no longer taken, but you would need to pay £20.37 a year to cover the increased gate fees of not recycling your food. If you're willing to pay an extra £20 a year, I'll give you two pounds back for the bin.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Honestly, it's a great point because if we move to the model, the so-called pay as you throw, i.e., you have to pay for how much unrecyclable waste is in your uh general waste bin at the end of the week. I'm sure these people would very quickly see that food waste is worth moving to. I don't think that's going to happen for lots of political reasons, but it would be uh very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Anyway, just to wrap up this section, in both these instances, paper and cardboard and food waste, which are kind of the two that are worth talking about because you've got teap with paper and cardboard and exclusions for food waste if you've got long-term contracts. As I say, I wish the government had just ring-fenced a pot of money to help people get out of their contracts so that we actually had consistent collections. And I think there is a bit of a pretense at the moment that simpler recycling is going to solve all these problems. And I think without that, with all these barriers to entry, with all these councils doing slightly different things, it is not quite the consistency that we would like to see. We have some power here, Robbie. Very small amounts of power. Really? We have a lot of listeners. Oh, we have a lot of listeners in lots of councils, and I think it's worth us keeping a record of what councils are doing. Because we could we could just have a database of all the councils. We could build that really easily. I haven't quite worked out how we're going to do it yet. This episode's going out middle of February. March 31st is when this legislation goes live. But around the end of March, I think we should set up something that just a form that influencers can fill in to tell us what their council's doing. And then we will start calling out councils that aren't doing the correct thing and try and get them fixed. Very good. Alright, so if you're up for that, listen out for that towards the end of March. Additions and corrections. We had Ian on Discord who was listening to episode 79, giving us very good feedback specifically on the ready meals. We talked about coloured plastic and we talked about the ready meals in Asda being terracotta or green.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Oh, yes, I remember your Asda list. Don't remind me.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Ian was loving it. I've had lots of positive feedback about that Asda list. James walks around a supermarket. People loved it. There are two different types of ready meal tray that we use at home. I sort of should have called this out, really, because this is this is a really important point. If a product is microwave only, then you can use a PP tray, which can be uncoloured. So where I talked about the fact that you get more uncoloured trays now because of UPFs and people wanting to share as veg in there and things like that, the uncoloured ones, the clear ones, will typically be made of PP, polypropylene, and you will find that they are microwave only. But when plastic starts getting into the oven, you've got to use what's called crystalline PET, which is C P E T, and it just has a higher melting point basically. Now when you start using C PET, which has a higher melting point, it's opaque, it doesn't look very nice, it's not clear, and so they add colour to make it look nice. So there is a difference between a ready meal that you put in the microwave, which can be made of clear plastic, and is typically something like polypropylene, and a ready meal that you put in the oven that uses a plastic that's got a higher melting point that needs colour to look attractive. So thank you very much, Ian, for writing in with that, because that is a really, really good addition. And another addition this week is Greg's. We talked about Greg's nine episodes ago. And I had noticed for a number of months that Greg's did not have any recycling bins and instead had a sign that said, our recycling bins are coming. And my argument was hang on, you're 10 months after the law required you to have these bins. When are they going to turn up? Two months after we talked about it, I couldn't believe it. There they were. These beautiful recycling bins in Greg's Bristol. So the Greg's that is most local to our office, most local to where we are now, Robbie, has fully segregated recycling. It has a coffee cup bin, a liquid bin, plastic aluminium. They've gone above and beyond. They've got coffee cup bins.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Wow, I might have to go over there just to use their new bins. I felt like a bit. Have you seen um have you watched the American office? Yes. There's a scene where they're trying to stop the branch closing and they're sort of doing nothing, and then the branch stops being the branch has announced that it's not closing, and so they start celebrating going, we did it, we did it. And then wait, what did we do? Feel that about this. I have no idea if this Greg's bin that's local to us is because we talked about it on the podcast and we gave them a couple of months to fix it, or whether it is a complete coincidence that after 10 months the Greg's most local to us now has separated waste. So I don't know. I'm gonna have to go round all the Bristol Greg's, have a look if see if they've rolled this out all over. But whatever the truth, I am so happy to see it.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Well, maybe we can get the influencers to write in and say, yes, my local Greg's has changed too, and we can see whether it is a national changeover or whether we just got lucky stroke, they knew to prioritize us because of the influence we've got.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Yeah, we know they listen. I don't know. We're gonna have to find out. Do we have any influence or is this just a coincidence? So, Robbie, the question is do they get a talking rubbish round of applause? So we always said we would reserve a round of applause for positive change, and so far only Morrisons have received it for the sun-tried tomato paste. Is this an example where you feel they deserve a talking rubbish round of applause?

SPEAKER_00 34:33

I think whether we had an influence or not, they definitely deserve that round of applause.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

Congratulations to Greggs for getting the second talking rubbish round of applause. Now, when I mentioned, I actually asked Ellie this question, I said, should they get a round of applause, you know, while I was thinking about this? And she said, No, because they were bad in the first place. Ten months late. Yeah. And this is a classic issue we have all the time, isn't it? That if you start off bad, like the Pringles tube, if you start off bad and then you make it better, everyone claps, including us literally and metaphorically. Should we? I don't know. But I like it, and I think we should call out when companies do the right thing. So well done, Greggs. And a small but very important correction on episode 79, which was the colour one that we just talked about with Ian. I said that Asda was owned by Walmart, but of course, since 2020 it hasn't been. So thank you to Holly who commented on Spotify for picking me up on that. Nothing to do with recycling, but it's important to get our corporate structures correct. We'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor of EcoSurity, 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 ecosurity.com. I was having a word with the guys actually at EcoSurety, and they said they might change the wording of this, and I'm like, I've learned it off by heart. It's gonna be an absolute disaster. Don't do it to me. It's gonna be so when this happens, you guys at the influencers, you're all gonna hear me kind of get it completely wrong because I'll be doing the one I've learned from heart and trying to wedge in the new wording.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

So we'll see what comes out. Maybe this is the time that I take over doing the sponsors and socials, and I have to learn it. Actually, what am I volunteering myself to it for here? No, I'm in.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Let's do that. That's great. And if you are enjoying the podcast, the best thing you can do is tell your friends and family about it and share the podcast around. And the other thing you can do is leave us a review. And if you leave us a review, you could be Robbie's review of the week.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

And this is the bit that I really do in love and enjoy doing. And the reason is because there's always, or most often, so many good puns. And here's just a simple one: a five-star review uh on Apple from the USA, actually, from Judd McDee. And they say, We'll been enjoying this. It's great. We'll been enjoying this. It's perfect. Stumbled on this podcast and have listened ever since. As a garbage man in California, I love hearing about the differences in recycling on that side of the pond. Keep up the great job. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Thank you so much, Jad. It's a great review. And I just I do want to just acknowledge I was walking home last night and our reviews jumped from 203 on Apple to 205. Literally, while I was walking home. Apple's a bit weird, you leave a review and then it takes a couple of days to flow through, so you do get a little batch of them. And um there were two lovely written reviews, which will be your review of the week, I'm sure, in a couple of weeks, Robbie. And I just read them and I was so touched that people write these amazing things, and they're just so nice and it's so supportive. And literally, I can't describe I read them all and they all have such meaning to me. I just read them, take them in, spend a bit of time thinking about the podcast, really, really enjoy it. So thank you to people who take the time to see that. I genuinely held so much meaning if you if you're able to write some words about what we're doing and whether it's worth it.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

It's just incredible that there's a garbage man in California who's enjoying listening. It's so cool. I love that so much.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

You can follow us at IntoRubbishPodcast, 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 is contact lenses and their cases and packaging and all the things that go with contact lenses. Now I don't wear contact lenses, I do wear glasses now as I get older and my eyesight starts deteriorating. But um, I've never worn contact lenses except one time. Do you remember, Robbie? We had a uh fancy dress party, and I like to go quite extreme on fancy dress. I I don't know if I've said it on the podcast, but I did once go to an Indiana Jones-themed party as the Boulder. But um, in this example, it was a James Bond-themed fancy dress party, and I decided to dress as all of the James Bond films. I remember I had something on my body to represent all James Bond films. And for Goldeneye, I decided to put in a golden contact lens. Oh my goodness. It destroyed my eye. I was like the whole night, just it was massive, swollen, red. I had to get someone else to put it in because I can't go anywhere near my own eyes. Horrendous. Absolutely horrendous. So it was great commitment though. It was good commitment. I wish I'd gone for something slightly more expensive. I think it was just quite a thick bit of plastic I was shoving in my eye. So because we don't, I don't uh you don't wear contact lenses, do you? No, I've got perfect 2020. Whoa. Okay, just showing off now. So because neither of us wear contact lenses, I'm not 100% sure if I'm getting this right. But my understanding is the lenses come in a cardboard box, which is definitely recyclable, and then each of them come in individual plastic containers, like plastic containers that have a foil top with some liquid in. So rubby, are they rubbish or not?

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Well, yeah, as you say, I don't wear them either, but I've seen these on the side in friends' houses and stuff. I think they're rubbish because they're just too small to be positively sorted in your recycling. A bit like those medicine blister packs that you get for pills, etc. paracetamol, ibuprofen, etc. But also similar to blister packs, there probably are specialist schemes out there that can take these things and recycle it because ultimately it is a plastic that will be able to be granulated or ground up and recycled again. It's just that they're quite small. And that foil top, you know, if you bundle it up like any other aluminium foil, I'm sure that can be recycled. But I think I'm gonna go with rubbish because they are just so specific and small.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Yeah, when I was thinking about that foil top, I was thinking about advent calendars. You know, you were saying you could get all the foil off and boil it up. It'd be the same here. You could definitely do something with that. Plastic is polypropylene, the the little plastic cases that hold the contact lens. It's size that's the issue. So I guess if you knew that you had like a polypropylene bottle, which would be like a shampoo or shower gel bottle, you'd have to have a look. Maybe you could put them in there. I'm not sure. We might get some recyclers advising against that. They tend not to like putting material into material um unless it's like aluminium into an aluminium can. But I think if you knew the type of plastic, you might be able to do that. The reason you wouldn't do that is you change the weight of the bottle so that affects the air jets and the sorting. So you might just do like one case or a couple of cases in a bottle. I believe there's also like solution bottles. If you've got long-term contact lenses, you've got to keep them in a solution. Uh those bottles of HDPE or PET, definitely recyclable. Uh we will come on to specialist schemes, but it's just worth noting the contact lenses themselves are also not recyclable. Um, they're not biodegradable, they're generally made of plastic-like materials, so like a hydrogel, silicon hydrogel. Uh, there are some non-hydrogel variants, but it's just basically, you know, like a rubbery plastic type thing. And that is not recyclable either. I found a stat, I think it was from Johnson ⁇ Johnson, that said 20% of the UK's 3.7 million contact lens wearers admitted to flushing the lenses down the toilet or in the sink. Definitely don't do that. So if you're in that 20%, don't do that. And if you wanted to find a scheme to recycle them, and this would include their packaging, the one that I found was with Spec Savers, they've partnered with My Group, MY Group, which is a recycling company. I think they do so do they do some of the boots stuff? Is that my group?

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Yes, they do. Yeah, they do very similar things. Yeah, the the medicine packets and cosmetics, hard to recycle stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:03

Yeah, so Specsavers has partnered with them, and they sh there's bins in their local store that you could drop contact lenses and their packaging in. Should you wish to do that. Rubbish news. My news this week, back in episode 63, we discussed the waste on a plane, but we did not discuss internet on a plane. And this has become headline news thanks to a dispute between the CEO of Ryanair, Michael O'Leary, and the CEO of Starlink, amongst other things, Elon Musk. I guess I just found the impact of us having internet on planes to be really interesting. It's not something I've ever thought about before. But if you want to have internet on a plane, you have to have a little dome on the outside of the plane. And then that affects your fuel efficiency. So the trade-off for us having convenience and internet on a plane is a plane that is less efficient. And the way Starlink does this is it puts like these antennas. on the outside of the plane and a a couple of humps as well that hold all of the um the satellite information. And basically Michael O'Leary, who's the CEO of Ryanair, now Ryanair, they're a cost focused airline and Michael O'Leary basically doesn't believe people would pay for internet on their short tool flights. They do flights for like an hour. Who's gonna pay to have internet for that hour? And his argument is the investment and the fuel cost do not justify. Now he was saying it would impact fuel use by 2%, which is about 100 million euros a year. Can you imagine? Like that is crazy, this idea that our planes are 2% less efficient, so we could just have some internet for an hour long flight. It's just it mind-boggling. Now I think he's overstating it. Starlink's website itself says that it's 0.3% on average. And the interesting thing here is it's actually positive for most of the airline industry because most of the airline industry had installed antennas for internet, but they were legacy systems, not Starlink systems. And they were up at 2%. So what's happened is a lot of the airline industry has come away from these kind of very bulky legacy systems that were affecting fuel by 2% down to Starlink that brings it down to 0.3%. It's just really quite fascinating that this kind of convenience of do and it's a genuinely open question do we need internet on a plane? I must admit there is one time where I have been extremely thankful for it because I was having an article in the newspaper published and it was coming out as I was flying back from America and I really wanted to read it. And so I was delighted that I had internet and I could download this article while I was flying back from America a few years ago. It was just as my book was coming out. In an industry that manages the weight of coffee stirrers adding antenna is a massive deal and it does have an effect. And I think in this one I agree with Michael O'Leary we don't need internet on short haul flights and I would much rather that planes were maximizing for fuel efficiency.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

So my rubbish news this week as I said earlier on in the episode comes from Wales who've recorded a municipal recycling rate of 68.4% for the year 2024-2025 which is up from 66.6% which was already really high the previous year and those figures were released the a couple of weeks ago by Welsh government and it is just incredible and inspiring for England particularly as we're talking through simpler recycling. So the data shows that 12 of Wales's 22 local authorities managed to get over 70% and achieve their statutory target compared to seven the previous year. So this kind of means that over half of the Welsh councils are now meeting their target and recording improvements um on previous years. So in terms of who was the best, I know you love these James Pembrokeshire leads the rankings with a recycling rate of 73.5% which is just incredible. Food waste garden waste all of these recycling collections for various packaging that's what's contributing to a 73.5% ranking in Pembrokeshire. They were followed by Monmouthshire which was 72.3% and Swansea that was 71.7 and there were five local authorities that crossed that 70% threshold for the first time so brilliant effort across lots of local authorities it's just such great news and really inspiring for many other local authorities not just across the UK but across the world's question welcome to packaging or not so Adam on LinkedIn uh Adam friend of the podcast on LinkedIn was asking a question about fussy or wild deodorant so these are both refill brands of deodorant.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

So basically he had ordered wild and fussy deodorant which came with a plastic applicator so the thing that holds the deodorant stick it is delivered to you without a stick of deodorant in it. You have to add it yourself and he was asking the question is the empty plastic applicator a product or is it packaging? And I think it is fair to say on this one LinkedIn was very divided. So I thought it would be good for us to try and at least have a discussion about it. I don't think we can solve it. What do you think Robbie?

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Well the reason this is important is because if it's a product it won't get those EPR fees. If it's packaging defined as packaging it will get those much more expensive fees and so wild and fussy will be getting a big bill in EPR fees. I personally think that this is a product and I would be arguing that case to the regulator saying look this is reusable. The whole point of it yes it does house my deodorant but it also helps me apply that deodorant it's meant to last a long time it's specifically designed not to be thrown away every time and for you to buy a new stick and put it in. So I think they've got a very strong argument that it's a product.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

It's tough isn't it I agree I think personally I would say product. However from a technical perspective there is a there is a document called packaging technical guidance which gives us views on different products and it doesn't cover this but it does say role on deodorant itself is packaging and it does not distinguish between whether the deodorant is preloaded into it or not. However I I agree with you I think this is worth taking to the regulator because a good example is an inhaler case. So in the regulations it says an inhaler case is product but the cartridge is packaging. And this would be basically the same thing here. I think there is definitely an argument to say if the applicator doesn't contain the deodrint when it's delivered, you would be able to argue with the regulator that that was a product. It would be really interesting to see how refill plays because obviously there's a way of gaming that system you know you could if you start doing that for example what would stop a beer company you know selling you empty bottles and and on the side having a bag of beer and say you fill your own bottle you know a pla a flexible plastic bag of beer on the side of the bottle fill your own bottle. You start getting into this world of it creates a loophole you might not want to create so it would be interesting to see what the regulator thinks about it. It actually makes me think about watch boxes. I remember we had two clients who were watch companies they were arguing they were both arguing that the box that a watch comes in shouldn't be packaging because you keep it with the watch and you keep the watch in it and it's more a display case. You know some of these things are really heavy and expensive. And one local author one EA officer in one area agreed that it was product and the other one felt it was packaging. And so I had a situation where I had two watch companies producing identical products one EA officer said it was product one EA officer said it was packaging and they had to report completely differently and that is the problem with this tab. I think it's much better for us to come out with rules and say look it's clear this is what it means. Because obviously the argument is if you said the applicator was packaging it's only picking up the EPR bill once you don't then buy another one the next time you buy the refill deodorant. So for Fussy and wild that is a much cheaper EPR bill than their competitors. So I think technically it's classed as packaging with a strong argument to get it classed as a product.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

Yeah and they should definitely be writing to the regulators to get a position on it. And I think that will definitely help. And your example of the watches uh and different offices in different areas giving a different view that has reduced massively over the last decade or so and with this new legislation and EPR they are trying to get standard rulings on things like this. So hopefully I've got my fingers crossed for you wild and fussy.

SPEAKER_02 52:09

You are dating my uh packaging expertise because yes this watch thing would have been about 15 years ago rubbish this is something that has happened to us this week that has made us feel like an emoji this week I visited Westernbert Arboretum which is quite close to Bristol lovely um a lovely arboretum lots of trees and I was pleasantly surprised very pleasantly surprised to see at the end they had a specific bin for leaflets and I just thought this was great. You'd look into it and it's full of maps of the arboretum and you people grab one as they come in and they use the map and then they leave and they don't need it. And having a specific place for it was just really useful. It's super easy for that paper to be recycled but very unlikely if you don't have a dedicated bin because people just put it in the general waste. And with about 5000 people visiting the arboretum each year I suspect those leaflets will stack up. Now of course it's better to have an app and have it electronic and have your map on the phone so that you you don't need to take a piece of paper but there will be a significant portion of people who want that leaflet who want the information written down in front of them. And so having a root for recycling at the end really made me smile.

SPEAKER_00 53:24

Yeah that's great. And my emoji was I think it's an intrigued what's that one uh stroking your chin kind of thinking face because I saw on LinkedIn that the deposit management organization who were set up to manage this deposit return scheme we're getting for beverage containers in the UK in 2027 have released a new logo and a new slogan too which is called Exchange for change. And it really piqued my interest and there was lots of discussion on LinkedIn about this logo. It's basically moving from left to right it's a bottle that sort of morphs into a can that then morphs into spinning coins with sort of three different rotations of the coin. So this logo is quite difficult to explain but it's visually striking.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

I'll put it up on our social media so that people can say we have a logo section on Instagram I'll put it in there.

SPEAKER_00 54:20

Ah brilliant and but it's basically showing beverage containers turning into coins. And it was quite striking but here's a flavor of the comments that I saw people were questioning whether anyone under 30 knows what change or coins actually is because lots of cashless places around society these days some thought that there won't actually be the return of coins from these vending machines. So you're most likely to be vended a voucher or a paper slip that you then redeem in a retailer. Maybe there is a cash equivalent that you can get but it's probably highly unlikely that these reverse vending machines are going to dump out a load of coins when you put your bottles in. Some people called out that they're using the exact same slogan as the container deposit scheme, a slightly different acronym, CDS, that's used in New South Wales in Australia. And then one that I really enjoyed was the spacing of the lettering was a bit too far apart. So it seemed to make the returns exchange process seem quite slow. So great to see that the deposit management organisation are trying to heighten people's awareness of a deposit return scheme coming in. There's uh a lot more work to be done I suppose in the coming weeks and months on exactly how they label their bottles and things.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

That last comment must be someone in marketing. The typography makes it seem like a slow process God no one's thinking about I actually did not I mean my immediate reaction was I don't like this logo like that's the truth. Having said that it has really grown on me and it was actually seeing it on cans and bottles itself that have made me quite like it. So initially they shared the logo I thought it looked quite dated. I think using change is a bit weird when it's a voucher but it's funny I hadn't noticed that the bottle turns into a can. So that's quite clever. I've looked at it I can see that that I like that. And when you see it vertical on a bottle and can like they've shared and I'll put this on our Instagram it actually looks quite modern. So initially I thought it looked dated. Now they put it on a black and white bottle and can label so it looks nice. It'll be interesting to see how it looks on you know the red Coke or blue Pepsi but um but yeah it's it's really grown on me.

SPEAKER_00 56:35

Exchange for change it's okay we would prefer a funnier pun.

SPEAKER_02 56:40

That's the reality of it I think it's about as good a pun as you're gonna get I just think it continues that trend that the media also have of like you're gonna get money back for giving us your bottles and it misses the whole point that consumers paid the money in the first place. Now you don't want to say that in your title right this isn't like we're borrowing your money you can't call it so I'm up for exchange for change. I think my concern is as it has been with DRS from the start when the media turn on it which I think is inevitable when the media start saying did you know you're now paying for your recycling and they're making you go back to supermarkets having things like exchange for change that doesn't tell the whole story potentially is a risk. But I like the pun and the logo's grown on me so I don't hate it.

SPEAKER_00 57:25

Yeah it's not so catchy to say loan us your change and we will give your change back to you at a later date it's more honest though.

SPEAKER_02 57:35

As always thank you all for listening thank you for the reviews and engagement we love getting the opportunity to do this podcast. Join our Discord follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast you can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us and everything we have discussed today can also be found on our link tree and the details for all those things can be found in our show notes there is nothing left for me to say other than see you next day bye bye