117. The Conservatives' £1.4 billion recycling u-turn

James Piper 0:06

And snappy headlines and one-sided stories. In this episode, we will discuss the Conservatives saying they might scrap EPR. Our Golf Balls rubbish or not. I have a question about the timings around DRS and how will grapes be packaged in our dream shop. I'm James Piper and I'm joined by Robbie Stanley for my far from rubbish friend. Good morning, Robbie. Hey James. How are you today? Yeah, very well. Very well, thank you. Very good. Today is brought to you by the letter G. What is it Sesame Street suddenly? I was thinking, like, I love QI and they do things by letters. Maybe we should start doing that. So yeah, we've got grapes, government, and my residual rubbish is actually about glitter. Oh, geez. Grapes, government and glitter. The three G's. Completely unintentional. I just thought, what's our intro gonna be? I had a look at what I'd done. I thought everything starts with G. Trash talk. Andrew Griffin stood up on stage on day two of the Conservative Party conference and said the following: What would we prioritize? Tax cuts that make life simpler and fairer. I'm announcing one today. An administrative nightmare for businesses that puts up the price of every supermarket shop. We will scrap Labour's packaging tax. He goes on to say it's a tax most people have never heard of, except listeners to talking rubbish, but I include it to make a much bigger point. It's the sort of thing the old Conservative Party went along with. They would have said, don't make a fuss, or it's only a couple of billion. Well, no more. We are unafraid to tell the truth. And when we see Labour inflicting self-harm, doing damage to businesses, or adding extra cost on families, we will never hesitate to call them out. What do you think? Do you think I have a career as a politician? A very rousing speech there, James. I particularly enjoyed in the middle of that. We are unafraid to tell the truth. Andrew, you are a little bit afraid to tell the truth because you called it Labour's packaging tax. But Robbie, who introduced EPR? Yeah, Michael Gove and the Conservative Government. Michael Gove and the Conservative Government. But yes, this is the uh it's EPR. They're calling it the grocery tax, but it's EPR extended producer responsibility, which we've talked about a lot. We're going to go into a bit more detail today. But yes, you are right that Michael Gove on the 18th of December 2018 introduced the resources and waste strategy. And on the government website, it says Gove launches landmark blueprint for resources and waste. And its opening line announced proudly that businesses and manufacturers would pay the full cost of recycling or disposing of their packaging waste. And I guess it's intriguing that one year in, one year of retailers having to take responsibility for their packaging waste, they're really kicking up a fuss. And government or some government, conservatives, are already saying we would scrap it.

Robbie Staniforth 2:59

Yeah, no, it's amazing how quickly they've turned from landmark, world-leading new system, making the producers ultimately of the waste that we consume in our homes responsible for it, suddenly turns to, oh, this is very bureaucratic and very difficult, and a tax on business, and actually we don't need any of this. And you can tell by the lack of depth in the announcement that they're they are going for clickbait, aren't they? They're just trying to get a headline out there to steal a march, to steal a bit of spotlight from the Labour government, as they're in a relatively sort of weak position at the moment. Anything they can do to kind of gain ground, and they've announced this without saying what would happen instead. Yes. And that's the critical thing. And jumping off point, I suppose, is that it's easy to say we're not going to do something or get rid of something, but then what happens with what you're left with afterwards?

James Piper 4:05

So at the time, and bear in mind this is a conservative government that wrote this, so then calling it Labour's packaging tax has really made me laugh this week. But a conservative government said EPR is a powerful tool, powerful policy approach, and it incentivizes producers to design their products to make it easier for them to be reused, dismantled, and or recycled at the end of life. And that's really important. This is not just a cost thing, it does change behaviour of brands and retailers. And we're going to come on to all of this and explain it. But just to remind everyone what EPR actually is, it's basically the cost of collecting and recycling our waste from local authorities has shifted from council tax to brands. And so now whoever places a product on the market has a fee linked to what they're putting on the market, whether it's paper and cardboard, glass, aluminium, steel, uh, plastic, wood, they have a fee linked to that based on the recyclability of the product. The more recyclable something is, the cheaper that fee. And the worse it is, the more expensive that fee.

Robbie Staniforth 5:08

And the trickle-through of that is that citizens pay in both scenarios. You either pay some tax, and that pays for the collections of your recycling, or you pay because it's embedded in the costs of the products that you buy because the brand owner is paying these EPR fees. And so the idea that the system cost, which is about £1.4 billion a year to run all the trucks, do all the collections from all of our homes of all of the packaging, that needs to be funded somewhere in all scenarios. What the conservative governments did with this policy that they um they formulated and uh brought to pass, started by Michael Gove, but then successive conservative ministers continued on the same path, is effectively shift that cost and put it into the brands.

James Piper 6:01

EPR is meant to work like this, it's meant to be a cost to the consumer. Because the idea is if you've got, I don't know, two products on a shelf and one of them uses polystyrene and one of them uses PET, for example. And PET is more recyclable than polystyrene. Where when I come to make that purchasing decision, in theory, assuming the product was the same in every other way, the polystyrene one would be more expensive than the PET one. As we've said before on this podcast, it's very similar to the sugar tax. Soft drinks have a sugar tax. And so the idea is that a sugar version of a product, I'm not going to say full fat because that's completely wrong. There's no fat in any of it, but a sugar version of a product should be more expensive than a diet or zero product. And quite often you don't see that because the brand has just kind of mixed up the sugar tax across its products. That's really where EPR is falling over because people aren't actually passing on the cost in the way they should be, which is the worse the product is from a recyclability perspective, the more expensive it is. It means that actually you as a consumer, if that was operating properly as a consumer, like with the sugar tax, you might make a different decision when you come to make your purchase.

Robbie Staniforth 7:15

Yeah. And it might not just be the type of packaging you choose, in your example, polystyrene versus PET. It might be in the total volume of consumption that you have. And the great analogy that I remember, I think you've said it on the podcast long time ago, but I've heard you talk about the Amazon boxes. If someone next door is getting deliveries from Amazon every day, they're paying more to dispose of all of those boxes because the cost is embedded in all of these cardboard boxes turning up at their door every single day. Whereas if you choose not to be buying packaged goods all the time, you're not paying the cost. So it's like a consumption tax, really, more so than uh EPR and brands paying.

James Piper 8:00

So that's the consumer. The consumer, us as households, currently will pay more if we use more packaging because of EPR. Obviously, our council tax hasn't reduced. We've talked about that a number of times, and we'll come on to what councils are doing with the money. But it's not like they've gone, oh, we're not picking up waste bills anymore. Here's a discount householder. They're not doing that because the reality is most councils in this country are cash-trapped. So any ease of burden, any like, oh, we can find you additional funding, just funds something else. But the other thing it does is it changes the brand because the brand can reduce its bill by putting something on the market that is more recyclable. And we are seeing changes. I have been in enough meetings with brands who have said, no, no, this is significant, and we are actually making decisions based on this fee. And so if we scrap that system, not only do we affect the consumers because we're just putting it back into council tax, but we stop the brands being incentivized to use better packaging. You know, that's a really key thing. More recycle content helps you avoid the plastic packaging tax. More recyclable helps you avoid some of your EPR bill. And and while brands hate having to pick up bills, always, they hate having extra cost, it's right it sits with them because it allows them to be better at what they're putting on the market.

Robbie Staniforth 9:18

Yeah, and this is becoming a global norm, as we've talked about in previous episodes. It's happening the world over, you know, it started in Europe and countries, even America, you know, is this is the new norm. So for the Conservatives to say we're gonna scrap this eat this mad EPR tax is quite retrograde and sort of a very regressive kind of statement, really. Strange. And it bucks what everyone else is doing globally.

James Piper 9:49

But the reason they've done it is obviously because it EPR could not have arrived at a worse time. The only time I think EBR could have arrived a bit worse is 2008. Because it's literally arrived at a time where inflation is going a little bit haywire, costs are going up everywhere. That, you know, we've got heat waves that are damaging crops, which then cause increased costs. We've got the Strait of Hormous, which is closed, which is then causing the price of oil to rise. I mean, there's just so many things that are causing our prices to go up at our supermarkets, and you chuck this EPR bit ill bill on top. And it's quite tempting. You can understand why, from a government perspective, particularly from a conservative government who love reducing tax, it's hard to get the strait of or moose opened. It's hard to grow more crops when you can't grow more crops. It's quite easy to go, oh, there's a tax on packaging. Let's just remove that. But you forget the good that it's doing and the the things it is driving. And, you know, the supermarket's argument that it's passing additional cost on to consumers. Well, they're picking up that cost anyway, as I say, through council tax. And really, I think we should when we're buying and when people make stuff and put stuff on the market, I think they should have the cost of its disposal built into the product. And for too long, I think brands have sat and and you know, I don't criticize them for this because your job is to get the cheapest product possible, but for too long brands have sat and thought, I don't need to think about my product after it's left the supermarket. And now they do have to think about their product after they've left the supermarket, and that has a bit of pain, of course, because historically that's just been a council's problem.

Robbie Staniforth 11:26

Yeah, so I think the brands and the retailers can argue about the definitions and the rules and is it driving the right incentives? Is there a big enough benefit from getting a better recyclability rating and the money that you will save for the investment that you're making to change your packaging? All of those are really valid arguments about how the system is being run. But the argument that says philosophically, EPR is the wrong type of policy instrument to pay for packaging waste is is madness. Like, what is the alternative version? Because the alternative is not just let councils pay for it and we'll just generally fund it through taxation, however, central government raise their funds. That really is a backwards step.

James Piper 12:15

The Bank of England have actually assessed what this is going to cost an average household and come to the conclusion that it's £48 per year. Which works out at about 0.5% inflationary increase. It does add costs, you know, roughly £50 per household per year. And some of those costs are definitely passed on to shoppers. We should not pretend otherwise. I know I guess we need to keep all this stuff in perspective. I mean, this is such a small amount of money compared to the significant price increases from energy, labour, ingredients, transport, all the things that have been skyrocketing. And what makes EPR different from all of those is actually it's designed to get you to change behavior. So as a brand, you can reduce your exposure by just making your packaging better.

Robbie Staniforth 12:58

Yeah, and they don't just have to pass it on, by the way. I've got countless anecdotes that unfortunately are confidential, so I can't share here about brands who are going to their packaging supplier and saying, This is what my EPR bill is going to be for this packaging format. You need to maybe not meet me halfway, but what are we going to do in my next procurement round of this packaging format? What are you going to do for me on price? So it isn't a pinch that's felt directly by the producer themselves. They also have various negotiations, obviously, ultimately a negotiation with the customer, how much are we willing to pay, but also the negotiation with the supplier, how much are you willing to take off, and what discount are you willing to give me, given that I'm now paying this new EPR bill. And I have on for a fact, I know that brands have been doing that. So it's not a single cost to single businesses who are the packaging producers.

James Piper 13:54

I think sometimes, and we've been guilty in this, although not when we did the beans. We've been guilty of this where you sort of talk about a pound per ton rate. Because like the EPR costs, so for aluminium, it's £266 a ton. For plastic, it's £423 a ton. And then those vary depending on how recyclable your product is. Sometimes we just get a bit lost in what does that mean. So what I thought I'd do is run around my house. Actually, I didn't even run around my house. I just grabbed packaging off the rubber shore knot wall. Ah, yes. We've got a whole host of packaging at our fingertips now. Yes. And I thought I'd work out what the EPR bill would be for some common packaging types.

Robbie Staniforth 14:31

Ah, okay.

James Piper 14:31

And what I did was I looked at the retail price. So I said, okay, if you're taking the retail price of an item, what percentage of that product, what percentage of that retail price is now going to councils to fund the waste management of this product.

Robbie Staniforth 14:46

Okay.

James Piper 14:46

So if you take the MS roast chicken sandwich skillet, one of my favourites. Very good. One of my favourites. 0.17% of the retail price of that sandwich skillet is going into the EPR pot. Okay. The Smint container, classic, 0.39%. Petty for Loo Yoghurt, 0.52%. Starbucks tall coffee cup, 0.12%. Worthy Farm Cheddar, 0.07%, and Muscle Pot White Wine, 0.81%. It's a lot of numbers. It tells us a couple of things. It tells us why the glass industry are annoyed. Yeah. Because 0.81% is the highest. So almost 1% of a wine bottle is going into the EPR pot. Shows the power of flexibles. Sure. Because cheddar, that 0.07%, shows that lightweight packaging really can reduce the fee. But yeah, I think just to keep it in perspective, when the bank says inflation of half a percent, it completely depends what packaging you'll put on the market. If you decided to wrap your cheddar not in a flexible but in a box, in a plastic box, then you're going from 0.07% up to probably half a percent like the others. But you can see how it skews you towards lighter weight packaging. That coffee cup needs a bit of a premium, I think. 0.12%, I'd be increasing that. Absolutely. So let's talk about what the money's actually doing. And this is one of the biggest criticisms of brands and retailers, I think. In their mind, they're putting money into a pot and it's not particularly focused where that money is then spent. And the Telegraph wrote about this around the conservative announcement. They say critics say there is no guarantee the funds will be spent on environmental projects as it is not ring-fenced. I'm going to agree with this criticism that I wish it was ring-fenced money. Sure. You know, I wish it was EPR has to be used in this way. Now, the way the government have done it is my understanding, is PACUK, who are in control of kind of distributing the money to local authorities, have the right to not give a local authority money if they haven't used it correctly in the previous year. So there is a I don't necessarily agree with the telegraph that it's quite as uncontrolled as they suggest and it's just going into the coffers of councils. That's not true. They have to demonstrate that they're using it correctly, which means using it for waste. But I I don't get why they didn't just ring fence it as part of the law. Do you have any insight into that?

Robbie Staniforth 17:14

Yeah, it's just very difficult to do. Like the government generally, HM Treasury and also PAC UK, as uh as the tax collector in this example, just don't have the powers to ring fence it. It's too like legally complicated, and they never want to hypothecate a tax to a particular issue. They just want total control over where the money goes. You're right, though, that what effectively would happen is if a local authority goes rogue, uses it on whatever they want, they don't use it on waste. The next year, when they go to submit their bills, they'll actually probably get less because you'll say, Well, actually, we can see how much you spent last year on the waste services, and actually you don't need as much as what you claimed. And so it's a clunky mechanism. And I agree with the Telegraph that it's not ring-fenced, but there is a mechanism that sort of keeps local authorities honest and means they don't just bloat up their other services as a consequence of EPR fees.

James Piper 18:16

And the truth is if you're a local authority that's spending, I don't know, let's keep it simple, because they're gonna have loads of budget lines. But let's say there's three budget lines. You're a council that's got 30 million coming in uh through council tax, 10 million spent on waste, 10 million spent on roads, 10 million spent on social care. Suddenly the government gives you 10 million pounds what do you do? You you just sort of go, oh great, that's 10 million pounds I don't need to spend on waste. I can now spend 20 million on social care, which was proving to be quite difficult. And I wasn't able to budget for it. Now I can stretch to that. And I guess that's the question, Robbie. If a council was already spending 10 million collecting packaging waste and it suddenly receives 5 million from EPR, what do you expect it to do? Do you expect it to spend 15 million because it already had 10, now it's added five? Should it spend 10 million, but just half of it is now funded by producers? What's your view on what a council should do with that money?

Robbie Staniforth 19:13

Yeah, I think the reality of operating in the council is that their other payments will be trimmed accordingly. So they won't end up with extra money. And when I've spoken with local authority colleagues, they've said, no, we we will just get less for social care because they'll say, well, the budget that you used to apportion for waste that you now don't need because you're getting it from PACUK instead of from central government funding or council taxes, you can now use that for your social care. So we're actually gonna give with one mechanism from PAC UK and then take from the other mechanism because all local authorities get direct funding from central government. They don't just run their own council taxes. That's not their only way that they run their revenues. They get grant funding from central government to run services too. And so, coming to your point of what they should be doing, well, at the moment, the way that the formula works, many of them will just be running the same services, like doing nothing differently, just continuing.

James Piper 20:18

Although I have anecdotally heard that councils are spending more than they've ever spent on waste. I have anecdotally heard that the average council has increased their spend on waste since EPR came in.

Robbie Staniforth 20:29

I think there's like winners and losers in the formula. And so some are struggling and doing what they were doing anyway. Others who are like, there actually is, and it's not a spare 10 million quid, it's like a spare few hundred grand, are thinking, right, what could we do with a few hundred grand to improve waste in our area? We're gonna change our some line or our sort facility or get one extra truck, or you know, these are the kinds of decisions that we are starting to see through come through. And PAC UK, as you mentioned, who manage all of this money and distribute the money, are starting to get those examples comes through of where local authorities are upgrading what we as citizens can expect as a consequence of getting this EPR funding.

James Piper 21:14

And we will see more of that and we will report on it. I know there's a survey that's gone out asking people what they're spending the money on, uh, local authorities. So there's definitely a drive for getting more information on how it's being spent. Um, PACUK actually published what local authority receives what. So I'll put that on our link tree if people want to find out what their council got. Uh the greatest, the one that received the most money is Greater Manchester. Uh, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, they received 23 million or just close to 23 million pounds. Second on the list was North Yorkshire at 18.5 million. Famous on this podcast because they're not introducing food waste until 2043. Oh gosh. It's like if you get 18.5 million, you could start thinking about where to spend the rest of your money. Introducing food waste would be nice.

Robbie Staniforth 22:01

Yeah, well the reality is you want them to spend that money on the packaging bit and hopefully it leaves them with some cash elsewhere to spend on the food waste.

James Piper 22:10

I must admit, this is the area I think if I was a brand, I would want to understand where my money was going. And I get it. I get that if you're a brand suddenly funding EPR and you you I guess the way to think about it, or just the way brands will think about it, is they are hyper-efficient, you know, profit centres looking at how to make money all the time, how to create efficiencies, reduce cost, etc. etc. EPR is a massive bill, you know, one and a half billion pounds coming out of the brands and into what they would consider quite an inefficient system, you know, because it's happened very fast. Councils haven't had a huge amount of time to work out how to spend this money.

Robbie Staniforth 22:53

Yeah, and I suppose if you're a brand and you're sat there and you've got a 10 million pound bill, you'll probably look down the list and say, which local authority is getting 10 million pounds? And go, oh, okay, so my fees are paying for all of the collections in Birmingham, say, if that's about 10 million pounds, I'm not sure where they are on the list. So don't quote me on that one. Go take a look in the link tree. But that's how I would be thinking about it as a brand. This is my contribution. And yes, that's not how it works. It isn't a direct run-through. But they are literally the monies that they're raising through the cost of their products that they're selling, is could be going directly to a single council, and they could choose to think of it in that way and maybe start thinking about how do they work with a single council to actually get better. Because if you work through PAC UK to make the whole thing better, it suddenly becomes quite inactionable and very difficult to manage. Whereas working on a one-by-one local authority basis, you can see these changes coming through as we've seen examples start now.

James Piper 24:01

I do think there's a legitimate debate about whether EPR is working properly. We we absolutely should be asking whether councils are delivering better services, whether they're using the money correctly, uh, whether the system is encouraging businesses to make better packaging decisions, which I think it is. But again, we should be reporting on this quite regularly. All of those things, though, are arguments for improving EPR, not scrapping it. Sure. If a system isn't working, you have to fix it. Don't just hand the bill back to the taxpayer, which is what's gonna happen. I really debated whether to do this trash talk because I think it makes the issue seem bigger than it is. You know, ultimately, as you said, this is conservatives m uh making a bit of a PR grab. I think it's fair to say that the government, as far as we're aware, is not considering this because they recognise a billion and a half whole is hard to fill. One question that came to me while I was thinking about this was what could be really strange, very, very strange, is if DRS is in, which it will be this time next year. DRS will be in. If you then scrapped EPR, you've got a very strange situation where bottles and cans, plastic bottles and cans, suddenly have more cost than EPR, which is the opposite of where we've been, which is EPR is the more expensive of the two. You will start seeing soft drinks companies go, well, we're coming out of PET into HTPE because we want to be outside of the DRS because there's no EPR. Yeah, absolutely. It will be um a very, very strange thing to have EPR scrapped, but not DRS. And I do think for certain, once DRS is in, that is very hard to scrap because you've got machines, it's physical. It's a it's not just a moving money around, it's a physical thing.

Robbie Staniforth 25:44

Yeah, it's a physical change to the waste management infrastructure. And that's one of the reasons why when I got asked about this conservative announcement, I just took one look at it and was like, it doesn't pass the SNF test at all. And that's one great example of why it won't be as simple as just scrapping it. I think they will change scrap EPR to change it from a tax to a fee-based system, and it will be the same money, it just won't go via the government.

James Piper 26:14

What we've seen in recent weeks is brands and retailers jumping on the Conservatives' announcement and saying, this is great. A government has said they don't want EPR, well, neither do we. So let's talk about how much we don't want EPR. And MS in particular have been quite uh vocal about their £40 million annual EPR bill. But you need to look at that in the context of their reported adjusted profit, which was 671 million, you know, or the 60 million they paid to shareholders and dividends. You know, it's not, this is not driving them from profit to loss. It's taking a bit of their profit, less than 10%, and saying, actually, you're responsible for that. You're responsible for putting packaging on the market. Go packaging free if you don't like it. Like you can completely avoid this. You can turn your supermarkets into packaging-free environments where everyone brings Tupperware and I can finally get my zero-gram meal deal. You know, it's pretty straightforward. You can avoid your entire EPR bill. You might not make $671 million in pre-tax profits, because the truth is people like buying stuff in packaging, whether we like that or not. And you should take responsibility for it. I'll get off my soapbox now. Whether you support EPR or not, there's one thing we should all be able to agree on. You can scrap the policy, but you can't scrap the rubbish. In episode 113, my residual rubbish was complaining that the Lego recycling truck set suggests you should recycle your coffee cups, which went against UK advice. No matter what social media thinks, because a lot of social media people said, you can recycle your coffee cups. Really? You need to listen to us guys. I promise you, I can send you all the documentation from the Confederation of Paper Industries that says please don't recycle coffee cups. Send them to a dedicated coffee cup recycling facility through Burger King Costa or whoever is part of the national cup recycling scheme. But please, please, please don't put them in the recycling bin. Anyway, I wrote to Lego, as I said, and I got a response. Come in, Denmark. Yes. What do you think in Denmark? So thanks to Lan for responding to me, who I don't think is actually in Denmark. I think they're in the UK. Okay. Um, and they said, I'm afraid, I'm not quite sure how to answer this. Yes, in Denmark, as well as most other European countries, there is a greater variety of rubbish sortation procedures. For instance, I'm from Slovenia and we have bins for plastics, paper, glass, and biological waste with quite hefty fines if there is any cross-contamination. I believe Denmark is similar, but I do actually live in the UK and I promise I put my paper cups in the general bin. So land from Lego knew to put it in the general bin. Oh, there we go. I did not answer my Denmark question. So luckily I reached out to some listeners from Denmark, because we're listeners in Denmark. Said, what do you do with your coffee cups? What are you meant to? And they confirmed that they also go in the general bin in Denmark. So look, we're just going to call this a a mess up. Yeah. A slip. A slip. Although people did say maybe in the world of Lego, coffee cups are recyclable. And I'm like, yeah, but you have a responsibility to reflect real life. Reflect real life. And this is it, isn't it? It's a bit of a laugh. We've had a joke about it. We got a response from Lego. But there is this interesting question about what role companies play in shaping the next generation and how they make sure they're correct. Because I do just genuinely view this as a mistake. So it should there should be a general bin, and there should be a coffee cup screen, the general bin, and here's why, and here's what we can do about it. This is why it's important to remember a reusable cup, or this is why it's important to engage with your local scheme. What an amazing opportunity this would have been, rather than an instruction that just says coffee cup in paper bin.

Robbie Staniforth 30:03

Yeah, and we do have to have the context of the fact that this is a recycling truck that someone is buying. So you've got to get it right. You can't, this isn't just any old Lego in any old set we're talking about here. We're literally saying get the one thing right with the practice that you're trying to promote.

James Piper 30:21

And I have another instance of someone changing their website uh after we've talked about something on an episode. Oh brilliant. I'm not convinced this is because of us. Because I mean it's coincidental though, isn't it? It might be us, because I did reach out to them. Okay. So this is the mouse phone case. We talked about the duo phone case, and they said, Oh, if you don't get your duo in time, yeah, you know. Temporary case for a permanent case. Which, by the way, became even more pointless because the duo went on pre-order today as we're recording this. And I had a quick look, and within minutes, it was January as the delivery date. So because everyone wants a duo, there's already been complaints about how few people are getting them in time. So this phone case they've developed is coming in November, the proper one. Oh wow. So I was like, well, you actually don't need to send a second one to anyone because hardly anyone's gonna get the phone case. Before November.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Oh wow.

James Piper 31:13

So just a reminder, this was Mouse who were making a phone case, but they didn't have time to make the phone case they wanted. So they were gonna go send you a second phone case in advance of the proper one arriving, which as I've mentioned, is probably pretty pointless because not many people are gonna have the duo early. Um now, when I looked at their website yesterday, I noted they changed it to say you can either have a second case delivered to you or a 10% discount, and you can actually make the choice. Now, I'm pretty sure when our episode went live, that was not the case. Okay. Pun intended. We'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, 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 ecosurety.com. And if you want to help our podcast to grow, which so many of you do, and we are very grateful for, you can tell your friends and family about it. Or as someone wrote to me this week, their Pilates class. Oh, good. Um, you could tell anyone about us. Don't reserve it for friends and family. Tell your enemies. Tell everyone. Just stop people in the street randomly. Wonderful. That's really good, isn't it? 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.

Robbie Staniforth 32:40

This one comes in from Ruben Fam, which is via Apple and five stars. What a treat. Wonderful podcast. I learn new things every week and have gotten a much better understanding of what happens to our waste. I have taken to picking up discarded vapes from the street to find the right bin for them, to the horror of my friends. Really enjoyed the discussions about recycling policy and thinking more about the nuances and trade-offs involved with how to design waste systems that work for people and the environment. Very nice. Thank you very much, Ruben Pham. What do you think about the picking up of vapes and discarding them in the right bin? I think that's all right, isn't it? It's great. Why is that to the horror of his friends or their friends?

James Piper 33:28

Let's see what my friends think of me. I think we've set up this podcast where every time anyone comes over to my house, they're terrified as they go to the recycling bin to throw something away. It's like, oh my god, am I going to get this right or wrong? Yeah, you're in the crosshairs. Yeah, I don't care. Don't worry about it. I'll fix it later. You can follow us on social media 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 of those things is in the show notes. Rubbish or not. I was out litpicking the other day. And often when I'm out lit picking, I'm thinking, what's the next rubbish or not? I've got a look, you can see over there, I've got a push-pop. You know those pushpops from that you used to have as a kid? A push pop? I know. I saw one litter picking the other day. I thought, push pop, that's gonna be a great one. But that's not what we're doing today. Today we are doing something I found, a golf ball. Oh, okay. I don't know how it got there. I was nowhere near a golf course. But anyway, I found a golf ball and I thought I've never given that any thought. I wonder what happens to golf pools at the end of their life and whether they are rubbish or not. So, Robbie, first of all, gut feel, rubbish or not.

Robbie Staniforth 34:42

I mean, gut feel is you're not gonna get them recycled from your home. So don't be putting these in your recycling bin. Uh, that's stating the bleedingly obvious. Now let's actually answer the question. Um I would say that someone somewhere must be granulating these things up and recycling them, but it would have to be a very, very specialist scheme. The thing that I would say is, having played golf a bit myself, not now, but as a junior, I played quite a lot, the better quality balls are actually a lot softer and they don't last as long because when you top them or whatever, you actually scar them more quickly because the outer is soft, and they're soft so that when it lands on the green, it kind of stops up more quickly. Okay, and the cheaper balls are much harder and they last a lot longer. And that's me filling in time to think they are quite long-lasting, but I'm gonna say rubbish.

James Piper 35:45

Okay. In America, an estimated 300 million golf balls are lost every year, and over time they have become, as you say, more technical, more expensive, ultimately more durable, contrary to what you just said. Oh, okay. But you you know, you might be right about the more expensive ones. I'm I I personally don't play golf, so I have no idea. Yeah. But um what this means is if they get lost, they tend to sit there for some time. So we have a very multi-layer item. You're correct, it would be very difficult to recycle. But I genuinely, I mean, this is what and I say this completely true, one of my favourite rabbit holes I've ever gone down. Oh, really? Okay. I love this. Why? Absolutely. I thought I went in thinking golf balls is gonna be really quick. It has to be one of the biggest examples of reuse in the world. Why is that? Oh, because there are many, many people who get paid uh quite a lot of money to go and pick golf balls from golf courses and they get washed, graded, and reused.

Robbie Staniforth 36:46

Yeah, I do see it when I've astonished golf courses before.

James Piper 36:49

Yeah, that's a common practice. It is astonishing. So golf has this very helpful Venn diagram that it's played by the rich. That means that when they've got a five dollar golf ball and they lose it, they don't care. That's like a that's the perfect situation where something that you've lost is really, really valuable to somebody, but not you. Yeah, the littering, if you like.

Robbie Staniforth 37:11

Exactly. Sort of accidental littering because you're so bad at golf that you thin it into the bushes and can't find it. But it is sort of littering. Yeah. But it's a very valuable littering, much more valuable than the DRS cans, isn't it?

James Piper 37:23

Exactly. And when I say golf ball reuse is big, I mean really big. Lostgolfballs.com has just announced in June this year that they've just sold one billion reused golf balls or recovered golf balls.

Robbie Staniforth 37:38

Wow, that's it.

James Piper 37:38

And this is not recycling, this is reuse. So what happens is people who want to collect golf balls pay a course and say, I will be your golf ball collector. And they go into the lakes, they're professional divers, they go into the lakes, they collect up the golf balls, and they get paid about 10 cents per golf ball. And on a good day, they can make about $800 per day.

Robbie Staniforth 38:02

Because the bottom of the lake that they go to, they let all the balls go in for a few weeks or whatever, and then they just scoop out hundreds of them in one.

James Piper 38:11

Exactly. I was talking, I was listening to an interview from a guy, I think he had 10 golf courses that he was their picker. And so he will just rotate which one he's going to on a given day, let it build up, go and get them all. I thought honestly, as a diver with my own diving, this is the job for me. $800 a day. Maybe I can take up golfing. This is the job for me. And then this interview, this guy was like, Yeah, so people are always getting attacked by alligators and snakes. And I was like, No, okay, this isn't the job for me. I don't think actually this is that well paid for the risk that comes with it. Yeah, I don't think you want to be doing that in southern USA. One of the guys I saw interviewed said he carries a paintball gun round to shoot the alligators with and it helps keep them away. I was like, this is crazy. That's wild. Could you shoot a paintball gun under the water? Does it suddenly like when pink appears on the surface, you're like, oh no, he's met an alligator. Is that how it works? I mean, maybe. Is that genuinely dangerous work? It was like then we're talking about the fact that they basically have a net to keep all the golf pools in because they don't want to come up to the surface, they just want to keep collecting golf pools. And that neck like is tied around their neck, and as it gets hot, like they collect more balls, it gets more dangerous, and then you've got alligators and snakes. And I was just like, wow, this is something I've never thought about. It sounds horrific.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Okay.

James Piper 39:25

But they can honestly earn so much money, you know, as I say, $800 a day. I found so many companies doing this, particularly in America. So Sunshine Golf, Arizona said they were bringing in 10 million balls a year. Basically, the way it works, they get counted, they get washed, dried, sorted, and then graded by brand and quality of the ball. Um, and typically they're sold for half price. So you've got $5 balls, they'll sell them for $2.50. And that ball has probably been hit once or twice. Yeah, amazing value. And the lady who was running Sunshine Golf said, um, she was great. She said uh that we get some people who don't want to buy reused balls. Sure. She's like, you know, it's quite snobby, is golf. And uh she said, um, every ball's used after the first T. And I just thought that's great. It's like just remember, the second you've hit it, it's used. Who cares if you're then the second person hitting it with a third? It just doesn't matter. Um, there were people in the UK doing it, so Lake Golf Balls were based in Kent, um, and they get them from lakes, as you would imagine. I think they actually get a lot of theirs from America. I think lots of people are shipping in balls from America.

Robbie Staniforth 40:30

Okay, so that doesn't feel very rubbish, does it, if there's this whole reuse thing going on?

James Piper 40:37

Yeah, and I've got loads of them here, because I got some for the uh for the wall. I got uh and these are all leg balls. You can actually see. Okay. Sorry, uh there's some ASMR again, you know, something. But you can see here, look, this one's got markings on it. Okay. But is as good as new, effectively. I use a strixen myself, actually.

Robbie Staniforth 40:53

But you can have these. Very cool. Okay, so the re the highly reusable and recoverable and redistributable golf balls.

James Piper 41:02

I did find one Australian business, and there'll be others, that shreds old golf balls into an aggregate that then can replace concrete. Um, and they actually used old golf balls to make pathways at a golf course in Melbourne. So golf balls lost at a golf course can eventually end up as part of the golf course just underneath your feet. Rubbish news. We spent our trash talk talking about EPR, but there has been some news on the PRN front. This is gonna get really complicated really fast because we've now got to explain what PRNs are. But EPR hopefully is clear. That's money coming from brands that goes to local authorities. There is another bill that brands have to pay, which they are equally annoyed about because it's very expensive at the moment, which is PRNs. And this is money that goes to the recyclers and helps fund recycling. I was gonna mention it in the trash talk, but honestly, I knew we were gonna get bogged down in EPR. Um, but what has happened here is that the four UK regulators released what is called a regulatory position statement on PRNs. Now, this is very rare and quite interesting for us to discuss because uh basically the way the PRN system operates, it's a supply and demand thing. More recycling happens, cheaper PRNs, less recycling happens, more expensive PRNs. The trouble is the UK, when they set their recycling targets, uh set them quite high, but at the same time introduced a lot of things to reduce fraud. So lots of extra paperwork, some timing issues. And while I am extremely grateful for those measures being brought in because ultimately we want to see less fraud, it creates a system where because people are getting used to the new paperwork and new reporting, we are not recycling as much as we usually do. But the targets have been kept high as if we were recycling that much. But it has led to a situation where basically it's fairly obvious there's not enough evidence. There's not enough PRNs in the UK for brands and retailers to buy. So on Let's Recycle, it's reported that last month plastic hit £725 a ton. Just to put that in perspective, I was coincidentally watching a video yesterday that you and I produced Robbie on the PRN system back in 2016. Oh, yeah. Where we were complaining about volatility and I went, it's gone from £25 to £75, which at the time was really stressful. I mean, imagine £725. It's very, very stressful. And so I'm very grateful that the regulators have come in and said, look, we're going to lower the targets, we're going to reduce how much evidence you have to buy, because that eases the pressure off the system, brings the prices down. And we've seen some corrections already. At the time we're recording this, it's about £425 for plastic down from £725. So what they did was they said instead of buying 100% of your evidence, plastic's been set at 83%, steel at 92%, and wood at 90%. You've got legally established recycling. And the regulators are effectively saying those were the wrong targets.

Robbie Staniforth 44:04

And I think a big well done to the government for responding to a big issue. Quite often they're not responsive on these kinds of things. Great to see. My rubbish news this week comes because the recent passing of International E-Waste Day, which was on the 14th of October 2026. So it's organized by Wii Forum, which is a group of uh producer responsibility organizations who manage e-waste around the world. And it's deliberately timed for Black Friday, Christmas sales coming. And they commissioned some new research by Bellegard Scientific Consulting, and that said 90% of European consumers own fast tech. And I immediately thought about my daughter's mini fan that she bought during the heat wave, much to my chagrin. So there's definitely fast tech in my household, but also not just 90% of people own fast tech. The one that really surprised me is 78% of people bought some fast tech in the last year. So it's not just that you've got these things lying around and habits are changing. Actually, people are regularly buying these electronic devices as electronics and batteries become cheaper and we're putting batteries in everything. We won't mention a certain retailer's packaging in this section, but we're starting to see electronics in too many things. So it was brilliant to see on International e-Waste Day them shining a light on don't buy this stuff that you don't need.

James Piper 45:38

That is a really good point that that retailer has been complaining about their EPR bill. While putting packaging on the market that is red in the wrap. Right, good point. Should have raised it in the trash talk. If you don't want to pay 40 million an EPR, start putting lights in biscuit tins. Rubbish question. And Lauren was asking, how will the DRS system be able to tell the containers that are pre-DRS and post-DRS? And she was saying, sh, will people, she was actually saying should she, hold and store her containers for a payout later?

Robbie Staniforth 46:23

Whoa, okay. Big money in these aluminium cans and PT bottles. Well, the deposit's going to be attached to a label that currently aren't present on the cans. So it's not going to have the label that shows it's part of the system. So if you're stockpiling now, hoping to take them to a count center or a reverse vending machine or even manual take back to a shop, they're just going to take one look at it and say, this was from before the mark came in and the system started. So unfortunately, that's not going to be a big money spinner.

James Piper 46:56

Exchange for Change are going to hold a scheme article list. So whenever you put a drink on the market, you actually have to tell Exchange for Change about that drink. And you have to give them the product name, what the container looks like, what the deposit is going to be, which is 20p, and then what the barcode is. And obviously it's the barcode that they're linking the deposit to because that's what's going to get read in the reverse vending machine. That article list is updated every day and it's sent to the reverse vending machines via API. So all of the reverse vending machines in the country will be networked to receive that list every day. Yeah. It's something you don't really think about, right? A drinks company going, oh, we've introduced a new drink. Well, how do you tell the reverse vending machines that that drink's coming to market? Well, you have to send it to them every day. And this means that for an InScope drinks container, all barcodes will change. You know, if you had a barcode for a Coca-Cola bottle, you will have a new barcode for DRS. They will not be the same barcode pre-DRS and post-DRS. Now, the more interesting question is not: can I give my bottle today in the future and get 20p back? The more interesting question is what happens on the 1st of October 2027 to the unsold stock? Because on day one, we're going to suddenly have DRS stock.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

Yeah.

James Piper 48:12

What happens to a stuff that was put on the market on the 29th of September? And Exchange for Change have been working on a transition period, and what they've said is that existing stock, they would like it to be sold by April 2028. However, this is not a regulatory requirement requirement, but that is their expectation. And that does mean from October 2027, you might be in the shop and there might be a Pepsi or Coke bottle that's got a 20p deposit, and there might be one that doesn't have a deposit.

Robbie Staniforth 48:44

Okay, and you just won't pay the deposit and therefore won't get it back. So some will have, some aluminium cans will have and some won't as they work through the stock. I mean it's a short-term problem, but it's a very interesting dynamic as the consumer, isn't it? I do think we're gonna have a couple of months of that being really confusing.

James Piper 49:01

Yeah, yeah. I think you will have members of the public who don't realise that they've bought a non-deposit bottle or can who are trying to return it, who are getting very annoyed. Greengrocer. Today's greengrocer. I actually forgot our G thing. I said it was all G. We had governments, what was it? Governments, grapes, and glitter.

Robbie Staniforth 49:27

Yeah, how do we package grapes? Doesn't matter whether they're red or green, or the half and half box, which is the favourite in my household. But there's lots of different options. Shipping over the black grape. Just red and green to you.

James Piper 49:42

There's a black grape as well.

Robbie Staniforth 49:43

There's a black grape too. Yeah, we don't have the black grape very often. Of course there's the black grape. Delicious. It's the red and the greens that we have in our household. Very sweet. Seed, I'm a seedless man. But what do you think? How are we going to package it?

James Piper 49:58

Well, I think there's uh three options. I spent a long time on three options. Okay. Um cardboard box or tray, uh plastic tub with a film lid or clamshell with the film that uh with the lid that folds over, or a plastic bag. I did start looking at other countries because in Asia they use bamboo baskets. Oh, very nice. And I was thinking that'd be quite good. But then I found some websites that said that wasn't great for transporting them because you're essentially stacking them and it does end up with them getting crushed. There is waste of it. So that didn't seem very good. Um, this is definitely a product. The reason I like grapes as a as a greengrocer is because it is a product where the packaging is performing a real protection function. Grapes squash very easily.

Robbie Staniforth 50:40

Yeah.

James Piper 50:41

And there's going to be carbon associated with food waste, and we're always wanting to reduce the amount of wasted product. So we are not just talking about the carbon of the packaging, but how much the product has been protected.

Robbie Staniforth 50:52

Absolutely. If I want to buy my grapes crushed, I go for a nice bottle of Shabley.

James Piper 50:57

Yes. Yes, very good. And there's two, it's not just the crushed as well, there's a moisture loss aspect. So this is why bags and the tubs that you might buy with grapes, they always have holes in. And that's because they're trying to get the moisture out. So grapes will naturally release moisture and gases, as all fruit does. Um, and what they don't want is that to then sit in the packaging because that's what creates a breeding ground for mould. So you have those holes to vent out of moisture. Um, so what does that mean? How does the box help with that? Well, so this is what it was quite interesting because I found a study. Um, so uh I found I mean my internet history right now is so eclectic, it's unreal. I found a study called Performance of Multipackaging for Table Grapes based on airflow cooling rates and fruit quality. What a fun, exciting life you lead. My targeting advertising has got so confused. It's like, who is this guy? Anyway, the study looked at how different grape packaging systems performed during storage. And after 35 days, it was actually bags that had lost less moisture than uh tubs. Okay. The grapes lost 1% of weight in a bag and 2 to 3% if they were in puddings.

Robbie Staniforth 52:13

Like the sort of open plastic bag type one.

James Piper 52:16

Is that what you're doing? Yeah, so if we were focused only on moisture loss, yeah, bag's the way to go. Okay. But we're not, because we're focused on protecting it. Um, and this is where you might want a rigid plastic. And the rigid tubs typically are PET, so we've discussed that on this podcast before. Pretty recyclable. And so we end up in our position we always end up with picking between film and rigid. And I found another study that actually explicitly said switching from PET punits to polyethylene films was a way to reduce carbon.

SPEAKER_02 52:48

Yeah.

James Piper 52:48

So we know that. Less material and the study that says it. But I personally think that bashed up grapes and the amount of food waste you'll get if you just transport things in bags means I am going to support a rigid in this example. So I think I'm tempted to go on the PET tub.

Robbie Staniforth 53:04

So if we go down the PET tub, and I'm happy to back you on this one. I genuinely don't want crushed grapes. Um I think the film, I just can't back the film lid then. Okay, you're going for the clamshell. I think it has to be that rigid top, you know, the the the clamshell design. Yes, it is going to use more material, but that's going to be a highly recyclable packaging format and something that the local authorities are going to be so unbelievably grateful for, given that they're going to be losing all of these clean PET bottles. That's the kind of stuff that's going to be economically viable for local authorities to collect and for the EPR fees that are being paid. So I think when it comes to grapes, it's got to be the clamshell.

James Piper 53:53

Okay. There is a third option. Let me just throw this at you. Because I did wonder why we don't use cardboard in the UK. We don't really use it. In other countries, you get like cardboard trays of grapes. Um, and then I found a story actually in 2019, Waitros announced it was replacing the plastic grape punnets with cardboard. Um, I went on their website the other day and they have definitely backtracked on this and do not sell grapes in cardboard anymore. Um, but they did suggest this was a good way of packaging up grapes. Now, I think I'm with you though, because the cardboard had like a plastic wrap on the outside to stop the grapes leaving the cardboard. You know, you've got to put something around it, right? So I really want to know what happened to that waitress trial, why it wasn't viable, did the cardboard not protect the grapes? Was it too expensive? Did they have problems with moisture? Was it just actually nobody seems to care about plastic anymore? That was a you know flash in the pan, so now we're going back to plastic, which does seem to have happened on a few of these sustainability initiatives. Um, so I think I'm gonna go with you on the clamshell, pending some further investigation into whether the weight trace trial was actually any good and whether putting them in cardboard might be better. Residual rubbish. Come on to the final G of the day. Glitter, the thing this podcast hates more than buzzpalls. Absolutely, yeah. That's a that's a pet peeve of both of ours. Yes. So I'm basically having some building work done. And the building work required me to empty some rooms in my house. Okay. And I think in order to make the glitter room.

Robbie Staniforth 55:28

No.

James Piper 55:28

In order to pull the glitter ball up. Yes. Yes. In order to make the glitter room, which is what's happened, but let's not spoil the punchline. So upstairs in our house where we'd get a lot of this work done, we had a cupboard that had all our Christmas decorations in. Sure. And I think I've mentioned before that my son, his nursery, loved glitter. It's driving me mad. Trying to stop it, failing miserably. And last year he made a snow globe. Um, you know, he's one year old. He didn't make a snow globe, but somebody made a snow globe. So I had a little picture of him in it, plastic tub, and then water and glitter. Okay. So I'm emptying a lot of cupboards here. I'm pretty tired, it's late at night. So of course I stack things too high. And I'm coming down the stairs, but they're quite open. Um and basically they come down essentially into the living room. Um, and so the stairs are quite open, and I managed to sort of wobble a little bit, and this snow globe fell off the top.

unknown 56:27

Oh no.

James Piper 56:27

And it's plastic, but it did like break up. So it wasn't like glass went everywhere, it broke up. Water and glitter just spread on this wooden floor. And we have basically like we've recently varnished this floor, so it's fine. Oh, your parquet floored. Is it on your parquet floor? Yeah, I need to come and show you. Oh no! Next time you come around, I'll show you. But the water dried because I mopped all the water up, and the glitter is now part of the parquet floor. If you walk into my house, it sparkles, you know, like here's a very niche reference, like Edward from Twilight. It sparkles so much, this parquet flooring, and it is quite devastating. So I think I'm gonna need to get a like one of those uh waxer things to redo it all because I I cannot get this glitter up. And it is all over the floor.

Robbie Staniforth 57:18

And are you gonna sue the nursery for costs, for damages? Stop using glitter with my son.

James Piper 57:24

Violations against glitter. So um, so yeah, right now my house is very sparkly and very glittery. Oh, that's off-brand.

Robbie Staniforth 57:32

Very off-brand. Sorry to hear that. My residual rubbish from this week, in terms of emotion, is definitely head in hands. I'm gonna go for the I can't look type emoji because one of my friends uh works in a place that has a cafe uh with some colleagues who are a little bit younger, and they are saying at the moment, it's too much hard work to wash the China cups. We should just have single-use paper cups for all servings of coffee within this cafe, which is attached to a sports club. And he told me about this just this morning and was like, Robbie, please, please, please get me some statistics that show the carbon impact of a single-use paper cup versus the reusable, well, in this case, just China mug that goes into a dishwasher. So I was head in hands. I hope by this evening, once I've had time to do the research, I will be big smiley face and star eyes when I'm sending the message with the report that shows do not switch from China Cups to paper cups. It got me so riled. And it got him riled too, which I was very glad to hear. He was like, give me the ammunition, Robbie. I'll make sure this doesn't happen. So I'm I'm now praying uh that I get him some compelling info.

James Piper 59:06

And as evidence that I can remember all of our episode numbers, just send him episode 34 of Talking Rubbish, which is all about paper cups. Very good. I genuinely think I could reel off all our episodes. They're just locked in a part of my brain that I and if you can you just go episode 88 is this, episode 72 is this. As always, thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We love getting the opportunity to do this podcast each week. 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 in our link tree. Details to all of those things can be found in the show notes. There is nothing left for me to say other than see you next bin day. Bye. Bye.