83. Is climate collaboration illegal?

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weeky podcast delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and unsided stories. In this episode, we will discuss the issues of environmental collaborations. Are triggers rubbish or not? And I have a question about how to listen to us. I'm James Piper, author of the Rubbish Book, and I'm joined by Robbie Stanaforth, my Far from Rubbish friend.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hi Robbie. Hey James. How are you? Yeah, very good. Excited about this one. Environmental collaboration is something I talk to friends about quite regularly. Um, people who are like got their own startups or work for NGOs and so interested to get into some of the legislation around it.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

I was a bit light on the heading. What did I say? Issues around environmental collaboration, but we're actually talking about the legality of it. Could it ever be illegal? Yeah, well, hope not. But before we get into that, I just wanted to mention back in episode 77, I said, and it was just after Christmas, and I said Bristol Waste hadn't taken my wrapping paper. Well, as we know, Bristol Waste listen in and they like to email me after I've said things about them. And they emailed me to say Bristol doesn't take wrapping paper. I I just haven't I've never even looked it up because I just thought, of course Bristol takes wrapping paper. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

They only take like white paper, normal like printer paper, they don't take wrapping paper.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

It's because obviously it can be metalised or it can um have bits of plastic in. So all of those are real issues with wrapping paper. Of course, I have spent a long time procuring wrapping paper that I know can be recycled and avoiding the metalised and plastic. And I know that people who give me gifts know to also avoid the same. And so I spent a lot of time sorting out this wrapping paper. So I did say to them, look, guys, I'm gonna put a sheet a week out. And I'm sorry if that's breaking the rules. I'm sorry if I'm a recycling bad boy. I'm gonna put a sheet of wrapping paper out every week and let the recycling crew take it. And they have been taking my wrapping paper one sheet a week. So sorry to Bristol waste that I'm breaking the rules, but I think this is like extremely harmless wish cycling. I know this stuff can be recycled. Trash talk. Our trash talk today is about whether environmental collaboration or cooperation could ever be illegal. We sort of trailed this one because we have done it live at Packaging Innovations. So we got this opportunity to do this trash talk to a massive audience. It was it was awesome, and we don't want you guys to miss out if you couldn't make it. So we're sort of re-recording it. Inevitably, we will say slightly different things, but uh but we are uh recording what we did at the live show. Radical environmental activists do not have the right nor the avenue to suppress business operations in our markets. Not my words, the words of James Uthmeyer, the Attorney General for Florida. It's it's very bold, isn't it? Radical environmental activists. Yeah, what's it saying? So it says radical environmental activists should not suppress business operations in our market. It's already a motive, isn't it? The word radical and activist. It's like stirring up this like real hatred of like that left side of politics. It's super fascinating. And I have to thank Sabra, who was our interviewee for episode 55, for drawing my attention to this. So she wrote an amazing article for Bloomberg. This was back in January, and it inspired this trash talk. I started writing it up when her article came out, and I thought this is going to be perfect for a live show because it's a little bit political. That's why we did it there. And I just think it's a really interesting case study and a really good opportunity for us to talk it through. And so, as I said at the time, Sabra's written an amazing book called Consumed. I would urge anyone to read it. If you haven't already, it's super interesting. It's about how brands got us into plastic. So I believe that the real question here isn't whether environmental cooperation restricts competition. That's obviously an important point, but I don't think that's the question. The question is, is competition law fit for purpose in a world that needs systemic change?

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah, that's exactly right. I've always been fascinated by this and what humans have achieved in competition and in collaboration, because there's two ways you can look at evolutionary science. And the problem is that evolutionary science says you've got to compete on all things in nature, and that somehow translates quite often through to society, whereas actually lots have been achieved in nature through sharing of resources and knowledge, and in terms of society, a lot is also achieved through sharing things, the rule of law, and things that are non-competitive processes. So this is one of those philosophical discussions, I suppose, about how we as a planet make the best of our resources and whether really that can we restrict competition or at least some efforts in competition for good purpose.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

And as individuals, Robbie, our careers have always been about collaboration. Like just this podcast alone. We're just sharing what we know and what we've learned over the last 20 years. If we were restricted from doing that, it would be a real shame. People wouldn't understand what they could or couldn't recycle. So I do genuinely feel in most things collaboration is more beneficial than competition.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

They'd also probably listen to your podcast instead of mine. So I'm very grateful too, James.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

I don't want to derail us, but I do do a lot of the research. So your podcast would be a lot of laughing at yourself and the occasional joke.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

It would be very honestly actual talking rubbish due to the lack of research.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

So this story s comes from the end of October 2025, actually. It's quite a while back. And five attorneys general in the US, they were the ones from Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, Montana, and Texas. They wrote to the US Plastics Pact, Green Blue, and the Consumer Goods Forum to say what you are doing might violate antitrust laws. And these are organizations, I mean, we know Green Blue very well. They are the guys who invited us out to Boston. And we talked back then when we did that episode. It was great to see the collaboration. It was great to see the retailers coming together to look at how you could design packaging better. The best part of that conference was the fact that people were coming together and sharing knowledge. And here we are in a situation where that organization is getting written to and being told what they're doing is wrong. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

It seems incredible to me because it's exactly what is needed in order to have a suite of better designed packaged products that we can all actually have a chance of recycling at home.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah, so I'll go a little bit more detailed as to what the Attorneys General actually said. So these are the words from the letter that they wrote to those organizations. They said, these organizations have spent years pushing major corporations to align on restrictive plastic production and packaging standards, actions that could unlawfully restrain competition, increase costs, and limit consumer choice. And by collectively dictating what materials are deemed recyclable and setting uniform production and packaging targets, these groups appear to have distorted product quality and driven up prices for consumers. It appears that such a mission is nothing less than a frontal assault on the basic policy of the Sherman Act.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Wow. What's the audible version of rolling one's eyes? Because that's what I was doing throughout the statement.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I saw it. Yeah, you really were. So let's quickly explain what the Sherman Act is, because that's the bit that was at the end of that statement. So the Sherman Act was approved on the 2nd of July 1890. It's named after John Sherman from Ohio. And essentially its goal is to avoid agreements that restrain trade, price fixing, and market coordination between competitors. And taken that it's kind of most aggressive interpretation, climate alliances could be framed as co-competitors coordinating and reducing fossil fuels by moving away from things like plastic could be classed as restraining trade or causing customers to have less choice. Okay, you can easily see how they've made that leap. They've said, you're saying no more single-use plastic or whatever it is. And that's bad because the oil company should be allowed to freely trade. And if you just let market dynamics play out like that, plastic is often the cheapest. It's difficult, isn't it? In other countries, and we'll come on to other countries. We kind of have these systems to go, actually, we'd quite like you to move a bit away from plastic, because while it's the cheapest, it has an environmental impact. And the US is just doing the exact opposite. So should we take a look at what these radical environmentalists are up to? Bear in mind, those aren't my words, radical environmentalists. That's a James from Florida. In the case of the US plastics pack, they are doing such evil activities as designing 100% of our plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Boo. That sounds terrible. Boo. 30%. I'm hoping people could sense the sarcasm, otherwise we're screwed. Like be obviously we're being sarcastic. 30% post-consumer recycle content or responsible bio-based content in packaging. Boom. Terrible. Bans on problematic and unnecessary materials.

unknown 9:29

God.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

If only these radical environmentalists would care about the corporations, the poor, poor, money-making corporations that are really struggling out there.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

I want problematic and unnecessary materials, if anything.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Well, then you would be able to. What did we say a couple of weeks ago? We said you couldn't do the weight of microplastics in your brain because plastic spoons have been banned. In this world, you could definitely say you've got microplastic worth of spoon.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

You could do that analysis. But has anyone actually been sued under this act, this Sherman Act? Or is it just something that's like, I mean, it's pretty dusty on the shelf if it's from 1890?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yes, but the US love a lawsuit, Robbie, and lots and lots of industries have been sued under this act. In fact, I think every industry has probably had some form of lawsuit under this act. But the ones that I found were things like oil and energy monopolies, healthcare price fixing, shipping cartels. I mean, you name it. You look it up, there are so many industries that have found themselves in trouble under this act. And now it's the turn of environmental initiatives.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

It's crazy that they've moved on to environmental initiatives of something to put in the crosshairs. It really does feel like corporate America is just trying to maintain the status quo. I suppose the logic is that it was quite an old idea in 1890. It's like, what's that, 135 years old or more, 136 years old. And there's no real like morality clause or exceptions for doing things that are going to save the planet. Because at the time there was no context of why you would need that. So surely they need to update this law or at least have a sort of asterisk put to it.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

I guess there is something very unique and interesting about America in that they hold on to these very old laws, you know, the right to bear arms being a really good example where it's like that can't be updated. It's such a foundation of our system. And I think the Sherman Act often kind of comes into that space where it's really important that we have these anti-competitive things. So we'll we'll rely on this act from 1890, we won't update it. And as you say, like there'd be a really good opportunity just to go, oh, actually, in these cases, it's okay to work together. But essentially, what they are saying is that companies cooperating to make packaging easier to recycle and reuse are giving consumers products they have not asked for and may not be willing to pay more for. Really? And I'm not, yeah, I'm not sure I agree with that. I think customers, and we'll come on to it a little bit. I think consumers do ask for it. I think consumers do want environmental choices. And I do think it gives you a competitive advantage. I guess their argument is, but if you all do it together, there is nobody out there doing the wrong thing, if that makes sense. So they feel there should be choice. You should go in and see all sorts of different packaging and you should be able to choose between wooden cutlery or plastic cutlery or metal cutlery. And if someone says actually, no, we're gonna have no plastic cutlery, you don't actually know if every consumer accepts that. You should let the market decide. So it it I I can see their logic, but I don't agree with it.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I I sort of feel like on that kind of logic, that certain public services should just be made competitive, then. What they should have multiple roads all charging different tolls to go down them, and you choose which road's the most important. What we're talking about here is something that's the fabric of society, how we design things so that they can go into a system called recycling and in the more broad sense, waste management. And so it's this collision of two worlds, isn't it? The hyper-commercial world with what actually is a public service.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Right, and as we know, environmental products typically cost more, cost more to produce. You know, if you're using recycle content over Virgin, if it's plastic nowadays, it's gonna cost you more to produce. And so you need to do that en masse. Otherwise, that company that's doing it is gonna go bust because they're gonna be putting something on the market that is more expensive than their competitors and no one's gonna buy it.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

And we've definitely seen that with reuse, haven't we? Like it's just so expensive to implement a reusable, refillable system comparative to the very cheap units of packaging that a comparable product could come in. It's just such a high barrier to entry that it's very hard to get that systemic change.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

And the very helpful example that Sabra explores in the articles, which was our episode 62 of the podcast, is toothpaste tubes. You know, Colgate Palmoliv led an initiative to change their toothpaste tubes from a plastic aluminium mix to all plastic. But this only makes sense if they all do it. Because as we said in the episode, we all get through a lot of toothpaste tubes, and in order for them to be recycled efficiently and not just sent off as mixed recycling, we all need to recycle them. That's how you get the volume through that means it's worth separating them out, it's worth recycling them, it's worth creating a dedicated stream for toothpaste tubes. If only one brand does it, it's not worth the recyclers. First of all, the messaging can never be consistent. You know, you can't go around saying Colgate can now be recycled and nothing else can. So you can't create a consistent message like we've done now in the UK. They're going to get downcycled because no recycler is going to pull that material out. So it was in the brand's interest for everyone to change. And now 95% of toothpaste tubes on the market are recyclable. And it's a classic example of where environmental outcomes require coordination to work and where unilateral action would fail. And I mean, these attorneys general must hate the toothpaste companies for getting together and making their stuff recyclable. But it's it's not had any detrimental impact to the consumer. Consumers haven't even noticed. Council said you can now start recycling your toothpaste tubes, and we put that clip out on socials. We get loads of comments going, God, I had no idea they've changed. Because it doesn't change the price. It hasn't changed anything other than we can now all recycle our toothpaste tubes.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

And it's not a forced collaboration, is it? It's not like you couldn't come up with a new toothpaste brand and decide to use some other packaging format or an old school format with the aluminium plastic mix if you wanted to. You would be mad to, but it's not restricting their ability to compete and use a defunct format. So I think it's slightly shaky ground, isn't it, to say this forced environmentalism. Nothing's forced. It's a voluntary collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Fear really affects sustainability initiatives. I know you mentioned before, Robbie, about green hushing. This idea that you do good stuff, but you don't tell anyone about it because you're scared that people are going to call you out. In 2023, LinkLators surveyed sustainability executives at 500 firms, found that 60% felt a fear of antitrust laws discouraged collaboration on environmental, social, and governance issues. Well, I mean, luckily in the US, we don't have anything that could be considered anti-competitive in the oil industry, right? Allow the ironic pause and then enter stage left, organization of the petroleum exporting countries, or as everyone likes to call it, OPEC. So for those who don't know, OPEC is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1960 to control oil production levels to stabilize global markets. It covers about 35% of oil production and is made up of 12 nations. Okay, now those 12 nations, none of them are the US, just to be clear. I don't want anyone to think I'm suggesting the US are part of OPEC. But it is quite interesting when you dig under the surface of this. So if we look at the definition of OPEC that the OECD give, which is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, they say OPEC is an example of an international cartel. Really? Yes. On the US Energy Information Association website, they say it's an intergovernmental organization whose stated objective is to coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of member countries. Nothing negative about it. And does the US like cartels when it comes to oil? Well, just last month, Donald Trump said he would like Venezuela to stay in OPEC. So he has decided that OPEC is valuable for Venezuela. Look, it's not a perfect comparison as OPEC is a load of sovereign states coming together, not companies. But can you imagine if a load of sovereign states got together to improve the environment? It would be amazing. Why can't we do that? Why does it always have to be about oil?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Well, they try, but then they don't seem to get anywhere with all of these various summits. And I suppose that's not the only one where big organizations have got together to collaborate. I've got a domestic example from the US too. The Super Bowl was played recently, and most people would probably agree that it's one of the most hyper-competitive events in the world, not just between the two teams on the field, but the brands competing for the ad space. I think it was something like 30 seconds of ad space was about $8 to $10 million to promote their products ahead of others. But the reality is that in the NFL, there is so much collaboration and joint working in what you think is a really, really competitive space. They share revenue from media rights, sponsorships. It's all divided equally among the 32 franchise teams. The clubs share the general admission of ticket sales. I think the visiting team gets something like 30% of the ticket sales, and they operate this unified salary cap so that there is a certain cap on how much each of the teams can play, can pay wages to their players. So in the US, they've managed to make collaboration work in the interests of sports. Surely the same can happen for the sake of the climate.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

And I guess luckily in the UK, everything is a bit more sensible. We have the Green Agreement's guidance in this country, which was released by the Competition and Markets Authority in 2023. And honestly, reading through it, it is a breath of fresh air. The first page says, given the scale and urgency of the challenge to ensure environmental sustainability and particularly to combat climate change and the degree of public concern around such issues, the CMA, so the Competition and Markets Authority, is keen to help businesses take action on climate change and environmental sustainability without undue fear of breaching competition law. You know, this isn't anti-competition versus pro-planet. It's just about how the rules are written. You can still have rules. You can still have antitrust rules, as you should, because you shouldn't just allow collaboration for the sake of collaboration and things like price fixing and restricting consumer choice is definitely important that there's rules around it. But I think most consumers would agree that it is good for companies to come together to design out problematic things. Take the milk bottle lids that we talked about. Like, who's gonna go in and say this is so anti-competitive? Consumers should be allowed to have colored milk bottle lids. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And yet it increases recycling by 5,000 tons.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Yeah, it's absolutely true. I've had cause to read this guidance many times because of the various industry collaborations that I've worked on. And it sets out some great conditions under which the potentially anti-competitive environmental agreements can still be permitted. So there's things like provide real benefits, either environmental or technical. They're necessary and proportionate, they allow consumers to share the fair benefits, and they don't substantially remove actual competition on products, etc. Even more important than the guidance on this, they operate this open door policy for the Green Agreements guidance. So essentially, one can proactively ask the question of the Competition and Markets Authority and say, this is what I'm planning to do. Uh I've seen, read through your criteria, and I think it meets them because of A, B, and C reasons. Am I correct and can I go ahead with this collaboration? Which I think is just fundamentally such a grown-up and mature way to think about allowing collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

I mean, we've actually done this a a number of times, but most recently with the flexible plastic fund. We talked about it in episode 5960. So if you haven't had a chance to catch up, it's worth listening to those episodes. But essentially that was bringing a load of brands together, creating a fund to boost flexible plastic recycling, which I'm not sure we would have been able to do in America, I don't think, based on this. But in the UK we could. And we approached the lawyers and said, Look, what do we need to do to make this right, to make sure we're not doing anything wrong? And they came up with four criteria. So they said it has to be open to everyone. So any brand. And can be part of the Flexible Plastic Fund. There's no restrictions. It did not stop any other initiatives or funding. So there couldn't be any element of exclusivity. If you're part of the Flexible Plastic Fund, you can't do this thing over here. Just made sure we didn't do any of that. It needed to be not for profit. The scheme itself needed to be not for profit. And the brands could terminate any time. It wasn't locking them into long-term contracts. And so these are at the time, this was before, because we did this before the Competition Market Authority came out with their green agreements guidance, which probably would have helped us actually define this better. This was what the lawyers said we needed to do.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah, that's exactly right. And that open-to-all point is really important just at the moment because lots of brands will be interested who've not been part of the collaboration, the Flexible Plastic Fund, before. They'll be wanting to join pretty soon. Because if you've got evidence that you can collect and recycle uh this type of flexible plastics, you can change the grading of your packaging from red to amber under the recyclability assessment methodology we keep talking about. So really vital that that isn't just limited to those founders of the fund. The fact it's an open marketplace and others are welcome to join at any point.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

And this list will not be exhaustive, but countries I found where competition authorities have published draft guidance or final guidance on sustainability agreements include Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, France, Greece, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Portugal, Singapore, the UK, and the European Union. Obviously, I'm aware of the European Union is not a country, just to be clear. But countries within the European Union, I will say. And none of these allow you to price fix or be anti-competitive in the traditional sense, but they do allow companies to work together. I found a really interesting document from uh the ICC, which is the International Chamber of Commerce, not an organization I've particularly come across before, but they had a really good document that gave practical advice on this. So in the UK-EU section, under examples, for example, of bad practice, as in something you wouldn't be allowed to do, it said agreeing a price increase or surcharge to pass on the cost of adopting sustainability initiatives, which I thought was quite interesting in the context of EPR because the brands have said they're going to pass on 80% of the cost of EPR to customers, which feels like you're agreeing a price increase to adopt a sustainability initiative created by the government. But let's not let's not brome into that too much. But I'd love to know what the International Chamber of Commerce thinks of that. Under good practice, they had things like joint consumer campaigns, including lobbying on sustainability issues. So companies coming together and saying we're going to lobby on an issue. And we've seen that a number of times where brands have wanted like flexible plastic, they want it collected at curbside. And we made that happen through the Flexible Plastic Fund. And that's from getting brands together to show they're serious about it. So they have this section on the UK EU. They also have a section on US. So let me just read a paragraph from that. While European competition authorities, like the European Council and UK Competitions Markets Authority, have indicated a willingness to issue advisory opinions on initiatives to protect parties to sustainability agreements from enforcement action and fines, there has been no similar approach in the US since this episode. Absolutely not. Yeah. I do think in the US, like the Attorneys General are stretching what is antitrust law. I think they're stretching it. Because what the Plastics Pact, Green Blue, and the Consumer Goods Forum are doing is they are essentially standard-setting organizations. They're saying we are setting standards. We would like companies to meet those standards. The attorneys general are turning that into something that's much bigger. And I think if this was tested in court, they will not win. I'm pretty confident. It's been tested before, and the Sherman Act does allow collaborative setting of standards to meet customer preference. So the important thing here is do customers care about the environment? That is the question that would be tested in court. So as long as customers show a willingness and a preference towards the environment, which I think in court would be successfully argued, look, the average consumer cares about the environment, then I think that's acceptable under the Sherman Act, even if meeting that customer preference restricts products that don't meet standards. As long as you go into it saying we're a standard-setting organization, all we're doing is saying what best practice is. If companies then choose to meet best practice or sign up to meet best practice, that's okay as long as it goes along with what customers want.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Are we going to need to insert a disclaimer that this is not legal advice?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yes, I mean look, we're 83 episodes in. People know. We don't know what we're talking about when it comes to the law. But if you are just tuning into this one, we are not lawyers. We have no idea what we're talking about. We've just spent a bit of time thinking about it, but please seek the advice of an actual professionally trained person. Would you like me to give another defense though? Oh, go on then. There's a second one, is there? Well, I guess the other defense would be that marketing your product as sustainable is actually a good way to compete. And so by definition, it can't be seen as anti-competitive. You know, because if more people are likely to buy a sustainable product, then it is actually a very effective way of competing. Even if the whole market's doing it, it doesn't matter. By its nature, it is a competition-friendly thing. So if I was a brand in the US worried about this stuff, those are the two angles I'd be looking at. Do my customers want me to actually do environmental things, in which case there are definitely exemptions, but they're a bit woolly and they're a bit historic. So you'd have to get proper legal advice. And also I think I would argue that sustainability activities are not anti-competitive just by their definition. But uh, having said all of that, as we know, the US is very different to the UK, as we have seen with the royal out of VPR, which is being done state by state. And when Robbie and I went out to Boston last year for the podcast, we learned that there were democratic states that have bans on plastic bags, and there are some Republican states that have bans on plastic bag bans. So because some city could ignore their state and introduce plastic bag bans, there are states that ban the ban. So what does that tell us? That tells us that even if federally the US agreed to a follow other countries and allow collaboration. So even if Trump, can you imagine, said, I will allow collaboration for environmental initiatives, actually at a state level they could block it. And so you would have likely Republican states saying, no, we're gonna block it, like we have done with the plastic bag bans, and you would have Democratic states saying, actually, we're gonna encourage collaboration. And so it is not as simple in the US as it is in the UK, where you can just have the competition and markets authority just come up with some guidance that we can all follow.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah, and definitely, I'm not gonna lie, it is a bit messy, the sort of lawmaking in the US when it comes to this. And it's made me realize just how much autonomy the states actually have. And it it's a the United States of America is a bit more like the EU than you at first think. You know, countries or states, uh in the US example, do have the ability to kind of apply the law in a slightly different way.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

So just to wrap us up, because this is quite a technical, detailed, legal trash talk, even though you definitely should not use this in any legal defense. I believe sustainability can be pro-consumer. Recyclable packaging reduces waste costs that are borne by taxpayers, standardization increases recycling rate, which consumers tell us they want, and long-term affordability beats short-term price minimization. There is a big difference between competitors collaborating to fix prices and designing packaging that is easily recycled. These letters serve to scare off companies. It puts them off taking part in initiatives that are making big differences in other parts of the world. And unless US antitrust law evolves, or regulators at least, clarify safe harbors, the risk is not just low recycling rates, but a complete retreat from voluntary environmental action. And the lesson for sustainability teams is this: structure collaboration around open access, voluntary participation, clear consumer benefit, and take professional legal reviews, and you can dramatically reduce antitrust risk. Additions and corrections. We've had quite a long Discord, Robbie, about uh councils not meeting food waste uh in time or ever. And I know we discussed it a little bit, well, we discussed it a lot in episode 81, which was the simpler recycling episode. But I just wanted to clarify a point. And I so I'm sorry, because I am springing on this on you because it's sort of just the chat's just happening in the Discord right now. But for example, we had JB the Rockstar, which is a bit odd because we both know a JB and we both know he would use the name JB the Rockstar, but um I don't think it's him. It's not that person, yeah. So I don't know who JB the Rockstar is, but we do know a JB who would definitely call himself a rock star. And they were saying that why Forest Council have come out to say it's gonna cost us a million pounds a year to do food waste, so we're not doing it. We've got a freeze in terms of money coming in, we're not gonna do it. And I guess I was reflecting on what you said in that episode where you said actually the government is providing funding for councils to do food waste. But that is not coming across from a narrative, so I just wanted to be crystal clear on that as to why a council would say it's gonna cost us a million pounds a year to do food waste, so we're not doing it, when there should be government funding.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

There's a certain application process under new burdens by which they will get funding. So it's not simply a case of saying it's gonna cost us a million quid central government. Can we have that money to put on this new service? It's a little bit more complicated than that. I don't know uh why Forest Council's particular circumstances, but it's possible that they aren't getting enough money under new burdens to cover the service. So they're just deciding we're gonna have a sit-down protest. But the legal standing and ability to do this is pretty questionable. And so they can expect uh to be finding themselves in hot water if they choose just to ignore the law.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Yeah, they're in a difficult position because obviously they've got, from what I can see in the article, frozen funding. So they can't actually spend a million pounds a year extra. I can't quite understand why it's going to cost them a million pounds extra. Because my understanding is the government funding is for sort of the set-up costs. We're getting trucks, we're getting new collection routes, getting new bins, whatever it is you apply for funding for that. And then the ongoing costs are the burden of the council. But food waste should be a way of making money out of your waste, or or certainly cheaper than sending it off for incineration, which is what most councils are doing now. I suspect what has happened is they're saying it will cost us a million pounds extra, and they're not being completely transparent about the savings that they might make from not sending this stuff off for incineration. Because I would have thought net recycling food waste will be much better for you net as long as the government have picked up the initial costs of new trucks, new bins, whatever it is, which is my understanding, that's what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Yeah, if I was them, I would be reaching out to the simpler recycling team uh at central government and say, look, this is our situation. What do you expect us to do? Um, because that is what many councils across the whole of the of England uh are doing just at this moment.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

And our conversations around social media, in my opinion, have been a little bit negative recently. We've had lots of recycling is a scam, battery fires aren't real, and just generally, why did we bother doing such a boring podcast? So I just have to share this this amazing thing that happened. Um, really, really kind. So this could almost be a review of the week. So I apologise for stepping on your toes a little bit, Robbie. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

But it's not technically a review, is it?

SPEAKER_00 33:55

It's not a review, not technically. Okay. Although, I don't know. I have put some like comments from Castbox's review of the week before, and I feel this is probably in a similar vein. But a couple of weeks ago, I put a social clip on TikTok and it was discussing the milk bottle lid colour. You know that one. Yeah. And the first comment was from a user called Lookout, sir, who said, I thought I would comment for the first time. I don't comment or like any of your videos, as I don't want to be bombarded with recycling topics by the algorithm. But I enjoy seeing this pop up and learning new things. So thank you for doing this podcast. I appreciate the information, even if I'm not engaging with it. Wow, that's amazing. The silent supporter. I'm really worried about Lookout, sir's algorithm now because they have commented and that means they're going to be flooded with recycling.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Yeah, the bad news, Lookout, sir, is just by pausing and watching it all the way through, the algorithm already knows, even without that comment that you've now put to.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Oh dear. I would have sent us an email. But anyway, this then led someone else to reply saying, I'm exactly the same. Good work, boys. How many silent supporters are there? Anyway, thank you so much to both of you. Thank you to anyone who's just looking at our content thinking, I must not like that because I really do not want to just be bombarded with bins. We completely understand. And we appreciate you sitting in the background just watching our content. 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 if you'd rather be a vocal supporter and not a silent supporter, you can leave a review. And if you leave us a review, you could be Robbie's review of the week.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

And this is a great one on Apple. Again, five stars from someone called Ringing Out My Socks. So we've had Lookout, Sir, and Ringing Out My Socks so far today. Interesting. So funny I say interesting because the headline is interesting discussions for recycling nuts like me. Stumbled upon this podcast today, and I've listened to a number of episodes. I would happily say I'm a recycling nut and regularly dive through our household black bag to recover whatever I can. Collect vapes off the streets and pick up recoverables in the park, beach, and roadside. I've a real issue with flexible plastics, and great to hear that discussion in an earlier episode, but I'd love to see it collected curbside. Other topics I'd love to hear more about deposit return, pens, my wife is a teacher, worn-out clothing, cloth, nappies, and anything with not currently recycled printed on them. Keep up the good work.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Thank you very much for ringing out my socks. And I've done the work for you. So deposit return schemes, episode 23, pens, episode 47, clothing, 36, 38, and 39, and nappies, episode 21. So we're doing all right. We've ticked a lot of those off.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Ringing out my socks has got a lot of work ahead of them. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

This is a good time to remind about the directory, which is a piece of our website that tells you everything we've discussed in every episode. So just go to talkingrubbishpodcast.com to see that. But it also is a great opportunity for me to do a big announcement on something that Robbie and I have been working on in the background. And that is to make everyone's life a little bit easier. Because we have decided to launch a sister podcast to this podcast called Talking Rubbish Recycled Content. I'm not going to lie, ever since we started this, I knew one day I'd use the recycle content pun. I just couldn't quite work out where it fit in. It was too good not to use. Now, what this is, is we're going to pull out all of the rubbish questions, rubbish process and the rubbish or nots, and just host them as short episodes under Talking Rubbish Recycle Content. So it'll be a completely different uh podcast. I'll put the new cover art up on Instagram so you can see that just as this goes live. But basically, it's an opportunity for you to be able to find exactly what you want. Just as you're hovering over the bin and you're thinking, gosh, uh is play-doh recyclable? Where you can go into Talking Rubbish Recycle Content and there'll be a little episode about play-doh and you'll be able to find it really easily.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

And it's also a great way when you're chatting over dinner about something about whether it is or isn't rubbish or not, you can just quickly ping over. And here's the five-minute segment that says exactly that recycle content.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yeah, so I'm really hoping it'll make it much easier for people to find us, much easier to find the exact thing you're looking for rather than going which episode was it, what timestamp. You won't need to do any of that. It'll all be clearly labelled. So we're going to launch this on the 18th of March, which is Global Recycling Day. It'll probably be live a couple of days before just to make sure it's in in time. But on the 18th of March, you'll be able to find Talking Rubbish Recycle Content, and we will start populating it. It'll take a while to catch up to today's episode. We'll just be releasing it in batches. But go over to Talking Rubbish Recycle Content on the 18th of March. Give it a follow, an opportunity to give another review if you've already done one, because it'll be a whole new podcast. But yeah, we look forward to hopefully making everyone's life a little bit easier. And 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? Last week we did hand soak pumps, and we promised that this would be like a two-parter because triggers are very much linked to pumps. So today we are doing triggers. So this is the kind of thing you find on top of a bottle that you would use to spray like an anti-back spray, and you've got literally a trigger like a gun. Robbie, what do you reckon? Rubbish or not?

SPEAKER_01 40:00

I think this is an or not. Because the issue is definitely that they used to contain a metal spring which caused contamination for the plastics recyclers. But I think, and I know that some have moved to these. So Unilever definitely have a couple, Sith and Domestos in the UK for UK influencers out there, that they changed it in the early part of this decade, they changed to an all-plastic trigger. So I'm gonna say, or not, but there might be a few still with a metal spring around the place.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

What's the difference between this and a hand pump? That's worth us just thinking through. I mean, the triggers typically are just for the life of the bottle. So a hand pump, what we're seeing brands encourage now is you buy a new bottle, but you don't buy the pump. I mean, like Carex, you can just buy a Carex bottle or refill, you just reuse the pump, which is great. We should all be doing that. And with pumps, they therefore need to last quite a long time. And I think I said last week carex are rated for like 10,000 pushes. And so they've done that so you can reuse it. Whereas typically a trigger, once your anti-brack spray is finished, you just go and buy another one. And they don't sell them as much without the trigger on. So they don't have to be used 10,000 times. So they can wear down a little bit. It's not quite the same force to bring it back up because it's held in a different way. So I think the trigger was just easier to get rid of that metal spring. And from what I remember, it changed a while back, like late 1990s, early 2000s. I remember we were going to conferences in like 2010 where people were saying, you know, we fully moved out of springs. Best way to find out if this is recyclable is to look for the OPRL label. I went to a supermarket yesterday, had a look on the back of a load of bottles with triggers on, and most, in fact, everyone I looked at said cap on, which just means leave the trigger on and it'll be recycled.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

Oh, great. Okay, so we're definitely sticking with all not then.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Yes, I think just to wrap up our two-parter pumps. I think most of them just need to go in the rubbish bin. They contain a metal spring, but we would advise reusing them. Triggers, we definitely would advise reusing them till they break, but most manufacturers aren't thinking like that. So when it reaches the end of its life, if you want to recycle it, it can be recycled. Historic news feels like an oxymoron. So here's some historic news. Uh it was an article from the FT last year, so the Financial Times. The reason it's kind of come across my desk now is because it was shared on Reddit just the other day, and I thought this is super interesting. So even though it's historic news, I thought I'd just share it because I didn't pick it up at the time last year. And this was news that China has basically over-indexed on z on incinerators. So they've built over a thousand incinerators during the past decade, and they're running out of waste to fill them. And the capacity of the incinerators in China is about a million tons a day, which is huge. What's happening is consumption from consumers, but also the economy is contracting and they're increasing recycling rates. And so you have both of those things where people are buying less so there's less waste in the first place, and people are recycling better. And it means that there is a big gap between the incinerator capacity and what you're actually getting through the incinerators. And over the course of a year, if you extrapolate it up, it's about a 20 million ton difference between what's being thrown away and what could be incinerated.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

And they can't just turn off the incinerator for 20 days, presumably.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

No, not at all. You have to keep incinerators going, unfortunately. So according to the article, uh some of them are running at 60% capacity, which is just too low to be economically viable. Now, what this means is in some regions it's led to them actually excavating landfills to find materials to burn. Really? Yeah, they really have it. Now I think we've talked about this before about excavating landfills and how that might be a solution for certain things. But I think in this example, you've just built too many incinerators. And I think it's just a really cautionary tale because there are lots of countries that rely on incineration. Uh top of my head, you've got Like Singapore is very big incineration, uh, the Netherlands, Japan, Norway, and to some extent the UK. We've signed off a lot of incinerators. We talked about the fact that it's not great because you need to keep them running. In the um simpler recycling episode a couple of episodes ago, we said councils are tied into long-term contracts, which is why they can't do food waste. Talked about it in our incineration episode about the differences between incineration and landfill. What's happening is you've got infrastructure that was needed in the last decade or two decades that was built really fast. And then governments are going, actually, we want recycling to become a priority. And now you have infrastructure that isn't needed. Um and excavating landfills is an option, but it's not as easy as it sounds. You know, you have the risk of disturbing dangerous substances that are in the landfill and releasing landfill gases like methane. So it's a really interesting story from China, but it will be relevant to other countries, perhaps including the UK, in the future. And as I say, serves as a bit of a cautionary tale for governments when they're signing off new incinerators.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Yeah, should be thinking about recycling and reuse before they think about burning. My story this week comes actually, it's been circulating for a couple of weeks now. It's not quite historic news like yours, James, but um, I've seen it in a couple of different places. And this is the headline that for £2.50, you can get broken electricals collected from your home. So this is reverse logistics at its absolute finest. And realizes an idea that we had decades ago, James, about people who visit your house to deliver things. Could they just pick up some of your recycling while they're there anyway? Uh, this story comes from the Modern Milkman that you may remember from an early episode. They are my milk delivery company of choice. Although I must say I've ceased my order at the moment and I'm using HTPE bottles from the supermarket because I'm moving house. So I've temporarily cancelled them. But anyway, the founder of Modern Milkman, a guy called Simon Mellon, says, We did a lot of research and there is not a really convenient way to deal with this stuff. It's about how we build a stronger proposition and make ourselves more valuable to our customers. So this is brilliant. They're literally thinking, we're here delivering the milk anyway. What else can we take to make ourselves valuable and sticky with that customer base? They cover 40% of the UK. You can request this bag from them that they'll drop off for £2.50 as part of your order, and then they'll pick it up the next time they come and deliver your milk. It's available in Newcastle, Preston, Blackburn, London, and Bristol too. But don't worry, if you're based in Bristol, the council will actually take it for free. So you don't really need this system if you're a Bristol resident. But maybe if you're in South Gloucestershire, just outside Bristol, they might cover you with it. So I'm left wondering: this is great news that we're getting more collections. £2.50 is a smallish charge to pay to get something picked up from your home. And you'll definitely want to make sure you fill the bag with all of your old mobile phones and broken electronic devices, etc. But I'm just wondering whether the other online delivery companies will follow suit. Uh I hope so.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Oh gosh, it depends how meta. It's very meta. Really? Yes. We had a WhatsApp from Joe basically asking how to listen to the podcast. So it's not a recycling question. It's just for all our new listeners, they may be wondering how to listen to the podcast. Now, this one won't make it to talking rubbish recycle content. Because no one's going to want to look this up later. But basically, Joe said, newish listener here, making my way through your episodes, I'm absolutely loving it. It's the podcast I didn't know I needed. A quick question. If you discovered a podcast that you were really enjoying, like this one, and there are already 70 plus episodes, would you, A, keep up to date listening to new episodes every week and go back every now and again to listen to old episodes? Or B, listen from the start of episode one and work through numerically, ignoring new episodes until you get to them?

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Oh what a great question. I think it's that is like a total personal preference thing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Yeah, it's it's a big question. It's sort of like, how do you watch Star Wars, right? You know, you've got to start with a new hope. Um what do you think, Robbie? Are you what would you do? You've about you've just found out about a podcast. It's got 80 episodes. What would you do?

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Well, James, if you think back to your advice that you gave me about the Marvel films, which I was very late to late in the day on phase one and two of that Marvel Cinematic Universe storyline, I watched them in chronological order rather than release date. So that I think I started with Captain America and then worked all the way through. So I think on that basis, oh, I don't know. I really don't know. It would be weird not to listen to the topical one that week and just be plowing through from one to well, now 83 uh in order to get back up to date. I think a little bit of both. Is that an option?

SPEAKER_00 49:35

Uh yes, that's exactly what I would do. And what I do do when I discover a podcast. So this assumes you're listening to more than one episode a week. Otherwise, you'll never catch up. So you've got to be listening to quite a few episodes a week. You've got to be dedicated. Assuming you are, I would start from episode one. That is how we intended for it to be listened, and we do definitely build knowledge as we go. However, every time a new episode was released, I would listen to that. Because then your news is sort of live. We don't quite, you know, it takes a while to produce and edit this, so we're not quite live, but you get your news sort of live, and you'll be prepared for things like legislation changes. You know, simpler recycling is a great example, where if you were coming to that end of 2026, it kind of wouldn't be as relevant. So yeah, I think start from episode one, get the base knowledge, but also every week an episode comes out, have a quick listen to that one as well. Now, Jo did end her WhatsApp with, after reading the podcast titles, I can't see any episodes for textile or clothing recycling. Is there anything planned for the future? Definitely. I get so many messages about fashion and food waste and whether we will do more on it. And of course we will. And I have lots of thoughts on things we can cover on both these things. So just watch this space. Residual rubbish. It's just something that has happened to us this week that has made us feel like an emoji. I mentioned that our news is live-ish, as is this. This is a toy from McDonald's that may or may not be being served as this episode goes out. But right now it is. So McDonald's have a friend's meal. So you know the TV show Friends, Robbie?

SPEAKER_01 51:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

Yes. They've got a bit of a partnership going on and it's been described as the adult happy meal. So the deal is you order a specific meal that comes with either a Big Mac, a McPlant, or nine chicken nuggets. You get a side and a drink. But that is not all. As the press release says, it's not just a meal, it's a moment. I hate my way, because it's not just a meal, it's a moment. Um, I just rushed out to buy one just before recording. Had a moment, yeah. I ordered uh chicken nuggets and my side, just in case Ellie's listening, which we know she's not, but if she is, were carrot sticks. Because I'm trying to lose weight. And um you can tell nobody ever orders carrot sticks at McDonald's because they forgot them. So if they were chips, they wouldn't have forgotten them. Anyway, if you order this Big Mac, McPlant, or nine chicken nuggets, you also get a collectible friends toy, one of six to collect. Now, they come in a blind box. So Oh really? Oh no, that's even worse. Back to episode 61. Do you want to know our thoughts on blind boxes? I've got it here, Robbie. It's quite a big box. Oh wow. Do we know if w if one is rarer than another? Well, they are different rarities in different McDonald's. So some McDonald's have a lot of one figure, and then you have to go to another McDonald's to get a different figure. So you're bound to order more than six meals if you want to collect them. Inside the box is a bit of paper, like grease, you know, it's almost like what they would put a burger in. Oh, yeah, it's like burger wrap. Lots, yeah, yeah, lots of M's on it. And then you get this relatively large plastic toy. So mine is Ross. It's got Marcel the monkey on his head. I can't work out what plastic it's made of. It's quite hard and reasonably heavy, actually. It's more, it's sort of like a Funko Pop. If I was to describe it, it's like a Funko Pop, if people know what that is. I know. Oh sure listeners do. You can Google it if required. So as I said, different McDonald's will have different levels of stock. Now, sometimes when they do happy meals, you can actually buy the toy separately for the kids. You can't do that with the friends' ones. You have to order the meal. Um so if you want all six, you are very likely to need to order more than six meals because the law of averages are not going to work in your favour. I don't think unrequested toys, and I guess there's an argument to say this is requested, you ordered the specific meal, but you don't know what you're getting. I do think it's gimmicky. I do think some people will go for it. McDonald's have a long history with Happy Meal toys. Um it was introduced in 1979. The first Happy Meal toys had a circus theme and they included a stencil, a wallet, an ID bracelet, a puzzle lock, a spinning top, and an eraser. So sort of Christmas cracker level toys, I think it's fair to say.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

And in 2021, they pledged that their Happy Meals would go plastic free and they focused on books and paper-based toys. I always felt had we been doing a podcast then, I would have said that is not gonna last. And we will find out when plastic is acceptable again, when McDonald's make toys for their happy meal out of plastic. And it turns out that was last year, because McDonald's decided that plastic was allowed back in the Happy Meal toys last year. Slight difference in that they're looking at plastic made from like old cooking oil and plant-based PE. So very similar to the kind of things we discussed in episode 74 with Lego. They are looking for certified sustainable plastic. But I don't know. I'm not sure. Speaking of Lego, I'm not sure as a Lego collector I'm allowed to complain about plastic toys. But I will complain about the blind box nature of it, and I will complain about the fact that it sort of creates a market that doesn't need to be there. You know, why do we need adult happy meal toys? I think if you want a toy, you go and buy a toy. You don't need it with your fast food meal.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

It's a totally fair point. Um, and speaking of adults and toys, um this week I was feeling very embarrassed for my emoji.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

Where is this going?

SPEAKER_01 55:26

I went to a comedy night last week in Bristol. Uh they were raising money for an organization called Sweda, which is like an eating disorder charity, southwest of England, very noble cause. So I was in this small venue, maybe 20 or 30 people, and the compare was doing a bit of just warming people up, a bit of audience participation to get things going. And they asked the question, who's got an interesting job? So obviously everyone hid, or at least kind of looked at their shoes, myself included. But unbeknownst to me, my partner was pointing across the table at me. So then the compare looks at me in the eyes, clocks me, and says, Your partner seems to think you have an interesting job. And so now I'm embarrassed, like flushed red. I was also probably a little bit flattered that she thought I've got an interesting job, uh, but mostly embarrassed. Now, I knew that she wasn't talking about me being a government advisor on recycling policy was going to be the interesting job. So I told the room that I did a recycling podcast, uh weekly podcast. However, I forgot to mention the name, which was classic. Absolute classic. Absolute classic. A recycling podcast is literally what I said. But when I said we had over 200,000 downloads, they seemed genuinely impressed. You know, the room was sort of like, oh, whoa, okay, this is like a real thing. This isn't just a niche thing or whatever that nobody would ever have heard about. However, the embarrassment got a lot worse than that because the first act up obviously had been listening. So when they came onto stage, they were doing uh a bit that they had about getting a divorce and having to dispose of belongings at the tip in order not to take too much stuff to their parents' house. And they looked at me and said, You'll be interested in this, which of obviously I was. I was sort of waiting for some advice that they might possibly need on how to recycle something. But unfortunately, my face dropped when the punchline of their joke was about recycling a certain electronic device aimed at adults that was no longer working. So embarrassment ensued.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

And what, like a scaleetrics, that's what you're thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Oh, yeah, you're absolutely on the money there. Anyway, keeping it safe, you know. We have children listening. Anyway, this was just a long-winded way of me saying I need some new business cards because several people came up to me afterwards because it was so funny, uh, this joke that had been made. Excited to listen, though. There were clearly influencers in the making who were like, Oh, I love recycling. I'm always talking about it. What's the name of the podcast? And I did get to pass on the name, but I definitely should have had a few cards to hand over to them. So I'll get that sorted.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

We're pretty lucky that I work hard at the SEO because I think even if you search recycling podcasts, we'd come up. So, you know. Ah, you've got me covered. Yes. I know what you're like. As always, thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We absolutely love getting the opportunity to do this each week. Uh, take a moment to 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 be found on our link tree. Details to all those things can be found in the show notes. Nothing left for me to say other than see you next wind day. Bye. Bye.