7. How green is a Taylor Swift concert?

James Piper: Hello. Welcome to talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and one sided stories. I'm James Piper, author of the rubbish book, and I'm joined by Robbie Staniforth, my far from rubbish friend. Hi, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Hi, James.

James Piper: How are you doing today?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, very good. Yeah. Glad to be back. Recording another one after the, away fixtures. I'm calling it last week.

James Piper: It wasn't last week. We've done an episode since then.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, no. That shows just how well I stay up to date with how we're recording. I'm glad we've got you in control of what's going out and when.

James Piper: Yeah, that reuse episode really has, rubbed off on you, Robbie. I've got some good news for you.

Robbie Staniforth: Go on, then.

We've had someone from Serbia listen in to our podcast

James Piper: Okay, so, episode two, we made a joke. I wanted to talk to Afin about a bin. I had a finnish listener. You made a joke? Do you remember that joke?

Robbie Staniforth: was it about Wales?

James Piper: No, the lady from Wales. I'm pretty confident we had a welsh listener from day one.

Robbie Staniforth: I wasn't really shooting for the stars with that one, was I?

James Piper: I think it was sorting at the curb with a Serb.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes. No, I do remember.

James Piper: And, well, we've had someone from Serbia listen in.

Robbie Staniforth: Whoa. Okay. Well, I must confess, I do have a friend in Serbia.

James Piper: What? I did not know this. Is that true?

Robbie Staniforth: That must have been why I thought of Serbia, of all countries.

James Piper: Do you want to say hello to your friend from Serbia?

Robbie Staniforth: Hello to my friend Jack from Serbia. I'm, almost 99% certain that stream was you. Although he's been out of the country for the last couple of months. I think he's been away on holiday in mainland Europe somewhere.

James Piper: it might not be him.

Robbie Staniforth: Might not be him from Serbia. I can cheque that.

James Piper: So if you are the Serbian listening in the, let's get you writing in as well as our finished listener. I was wondering whether it was the transcripts, because apple creates transcripts of the podcast, and I was wondering whether the governments of these respective countries, just, like, monitor the mentions of the country and then listen in to cheque. Nothing bad was said because it's all very suspicious. Straight after Finland, we had the finnish listener. straight after Serbia, we had the serbian listener. So I'm thinking we should just say a random country name, get it in the transcript and see if it appears. And I was trying to work out which country to pick. I wanted the most unusual. We're actually already weirdly, quite big in the Philippines. And I don't know why, but we're always in the charts on the philippine podcast.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, my gosh.

James Piper: We need to go a bit further afield. I was wondering. I'm gonna. Okay, I'm gonna say the Solomon Islands.

Robbie Staniforth: So whoever's listening on the wire. The Solomon Islands?

James Piper: Yeah. That's gonna be in the transcript. I'm pretty confident someone from the government in the Solomon Islands. And then, I mean, I don't want this to become a geography podcast, but I might just name a random country every episode so that we can just get the whole world covered.

Robbie Staniforth: So no longer, are we doing gags about countries? We've already run out of material on that front. We're just. Yeah, we're just saying countries now.

James Piper: Exactly. We're just going to name countries. We'll get to the end of the episode and we'll just say a random country.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, finally, my geography degree might actually come in. I haven't put it into use in the last 20 years, since I graduated, so maybe now's the time.

James Piper: Excellent.

James: I've done some primary research for today's episode

And, I was out at lunch, the other day with someone called Connor, and we were talking about our carrier bag episode, which, is episode four. And he gave me an interesting insight, so I thought, this is a good addition. I haven't got any corrections today, but I do have this one edition, which is. He said that he recognised that his friends had far too many bags for life, in their house. And he went round all of their houses gathering up bags for life that they didn't need. And he went to supermarkets and gave them out to people who had forgotten their bags. So he literally was like, I'm going to go around all my friends houses, get all their bags for life. And then he went to a supermarket, saw anyone who didn't have a bag and gave them a bag.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. Direct action. That's amazing. Gosh.

James Piper: Tells us a lot about Connor because he is, very passionate about the environment. I just thought that was amazing.

Robbie Staniforth: That is amazing. I mean, it puts us to shame, doesn't it?

James Piper: Yeah. I've never done that. I am now thinking about it. I wish I'd sat in Tesco's, just giving out bags. That's, like, much better than just watching people and tallying whether they brought a bag or not.

Robbie Staniforth: That was a vital survey, James, don't put yourself down. We need that primary research, mate.

James Piper: Don't worry. I have done some real primary research for today's episode, so I'm looking forward to it. Okay, great. Let's get on with it.

This is part of the podcast where we talk about the process of recycling

The rubbish process. This is the part of the podcast where we talk about the process of recycling. We've been working through collection, sorting and recycling, and so far we've done paper and cardboard and glass, and we're onto a new material now. Couldn't decide whether to separate aluminium and steel because they're pretty similar. But I think we've decided just to put the metals

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together and call this. How is metal sorted?

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. Yeah. Okay. We're already going to get people's backs up who are saying there's a big difference between steel and aluminium and other types of metal, but hopefully through this section, we can put, some clarity to that. So, first of all, let's start with the steel then, shall we?

Steel cans are sorted using magnets, whereas aluminium cans use pulleys

So, steel cans. what kind of steel cans are you buying, from the supermarket then, James?

James Piper: Baked beans is my weakness. In fact, this is actually everyone who was following me on my travels because I think I mentioned on one of the episodes my wife and I travelled the world will know that I spent five months looking for baked beans because literally they just didn't have them in South America. And we ended up, going down to Antarctica, which is definitely a story for another episode. But, we ended up going down to Antarctica, and that was where I got baked beans on that boat. And I just thought of all the places after five months with no baked beans, of all the places to find them. Like, sitting there having beans with a penguin was not what I expected.

Robbie Staniforth: Hey, that's a happy end to the story, though, for sure.

James Piper: it was really good. Yeah. So baked beans are my weakness. But obviously you've got soup cans and things like that. Anything where we talk about, like a tin can. A tin can, that's like a tin plated steel can.

Robbie Staniforth: That's all steel. I think my number one is probably the tin tomatoes. You know, they go in everything. Bolognese sauces, passatos, those kind of things. Yeah. So steel, cans, they're magnetic. So basically that's how they are sorted using magnets. Now, there's, a lot more detail than just one big magnet. Do you want to explain some of that for us, James?

James Piper: Yeah. There's basically two types of magnet. M. I mean, there's lots of types of magnet that is used in the recycling, but the one that we kind of talk about most are these two types where you've got what's called an overhead magnet, or, I mean, the catchly named magnetic head pulley. But basically you've got a magnet that's over a conveyor belt, and that's your first one, that's the overhead magnet. And what it's going to do is redirect the steel. So either it's going to. If you imagine rubbish firing off the end of the conveyor belt and then there's a magnet there just pulling that rubbish out so that it's kind of going in a different trajectory into a different bin. So if it's magnetic, it's just going to get put into a different place, it's going to get shot off into a different place. And the alternative one, which is kind of the pulley system, if you imagine, would be a magnet within the conveyor belt itself. So as the material was kind of going around the conveyor belt, if you imagine a conveyor belt, like an escalator going under after it's completed its over the top rotation, the magnetic steel is going to stick to the bottom of that conveyor belt and everything else is going to fall off. So if you had that escalator, and it was magnetic and you had metal on it, obviously it would go underneath and run underneath and then it's going to come off under there, by losing that magnetism.

Robbie Staniforth: So it's not people with handheld magnets grabbing at stuff, then?

James Piper: No.

Robbie Staniforth: Maybe. Once it was, I was more thinking about, like, school science projects. But these are industrial scale things, that are grabbing tonnes and tonnes of it per, hour, out of more, mixed recycling. So it's actually relatively straightforward for steel compared to the others. It's quite an old technology to use magnets to grab hold of, steel, whereas for aluminium, it's probably more new to the average person. So aluminium, which is the other kind of primary metal that's used, for packaging, they're used for cans. So the average beverage can, I think I'm right in saying, James, you can correct me on this, that now there's very few beverage cans that are metal, that are steel. Sorry, anymore, if they're metal, they're mostly aluminium, is that right?

James Piper: Yes, I think so. I think that, if I remember rightly, there was. Was it Bretvik who were in steel back in the day and they've now moved to aluminium? I think that's true, yeah, I think.

Robbie Staniforth: They were one of the last ones. So mostly if you pick up your, average drinks can in the supermarket, and turn it around, you'll probably find that that's aluminium. But there's not just that. There's also aerosols too. Deodorant cans, et cetera. There's also foils and, we've talked a little bit about foils in the past and your classic, make sure it's the size of a tennis ball so it doesn't fall through the trommels from a previous episode. So those are all different types of aluminium packaging that you might find in me trying to sort. These are all sorted through a totally different way. It's through eddy currents, which is basically. I mean, my science is poor here, so I'm going to try my best, guys. It's an electrical field that repels the non ferrous metal. And so ferrous metal is things that have iron in it, so such as the steel can that will be magnetic, non ferrous, are things like aluminium and the current,

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Robbie Staniforth: get my words out. Will alter the trajectory of the metal. So it's basically, this current's going on and it's actually pinging the aluminium in different directions. And it's sort of a little bit like what you see with magnets, where it's like it's magic what's going on, because to the naked eye, you can't actually see. Nothing is grabbing at it or blowing it. It's something that's unseen to the human eye, I'm going to say. Have I absolutely botched that, James, or is that right?

James Piper: No, that's basically it. You sort of switch between, like, explaining it to a five year old and a 40 year old. I quite enjoyed that.

Robbie Staniforth: It was like, that's my life. That's my life. Those are the only two types of people I ever speak to.

James Piper: You've given the game away. Yeah, I quite enjoyed it. It was like this, you know, heady currents are like an electrical field which repels, and then it looks like magic.

Almost a quarter of aluminium recycling comes from incinerator bottom ash

Robbie Staniforth: So almost a quarter of aluminium recycling actually comes from incinerator bottom ash. So now I'm not sure whether to explain it to a five year old or a 40 year old, but incinerator bottom ash is literally the ash at the end that's been left after burning waste to generate energy. So, in an incinerator. So this ash at the bottom is kind of the residual waste that's left after generating the power, burning the waste better than landfill, but, not obviously direct recycling, however, because, there is such high traces of many m metals actually in the incinerator bottom ash, particularly aluminium, they can actually recover it. So what they do is they basically sweep it out and this incinerator bottom ash gets included in the recycling figures in the UK, the pieces are only a few millimetres. You know, it's literally like ash. But what happens is it goes through a very similar process where magnets are again used to extract the steel and there's not too much often left in terms of the steel. But then all the non ferrous metals, of which aluminium is the highest volume eddy currents, are used again to ping it off into different directions and to get nice, neat little piles of metal. So you'll get aluminium from that and you'll see mostly aluminium, because that's the most widely used packaging, format for non ferrous metals. But there's also zinc, brass, copper. There's a few different types of metals that are also sorted out from this incinerator bottom ash using eddy currents. And so when you're seeing recycling figures, you're not just seeing drinks, cans, aluminium drinks, cans being smelted back into, these huge ingots. And we'll come onto the recycling process, next time. But you're also seeing this literally. it's ash and metals being extracted from it.

James Piper: Yeah. And the reason it's really relevant to us is because incinerator bottom ash, or IBA, as it's known, was included in the recycling figures in 2015. And before that, they were using protocols to kind of guess how much recycled aluminium might be in when you recycle, like a computer or a car or whatever metal thing you're recycling. They would say, oh, some of that was packaging and they would work that out in the recycling figures. In 2015, they changed that so that IBA replaced any guesswork and protocols. And so that made our recycling figure much more accurate, and actually much more useful for us. So that was a big change.

Next section of Trash Talk is about Taylor Swift's concert experiences

I'm pleased to announce the start of our next section, which is called Trash talk.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah. I can see in your eyes, James, you're very excited about this section. I can feel it.

James Piper: I am excited. I'm very excited. I'm also glad that it's called trash talk. We did the poll last week and, you know, that was the winner. So that's what we're going with. Trash talk.

Robbie Staniforth: Lovely. So those two votes counted, I do not know how many people voted. I don't go on social media. I've got no idea. People.

James Piper: Thank you. Thank you to both our fans and, this, every week we seem to be doing this where we say we had a plan. We've scrapped the plan, but this one is most obvious scrappage of plan ever, because everyone who's following us on Instagram will know that I scrapped this plan. Originally, we were going to talk about how brands pay for our, recycling. And, God, it's boring even thinking about it now. But we will come on to that in the future.

Robbie Staniforth: We'll make it exciting, James. It's going to be good. But anyway, that's not for today.

James Piper: Yeah, I am just back from London. Anyone who's watching on social media will see I've got my Taylor Swift t shirt on. I went to the Taylor Swift concert. I'm literally just back. And as I was there, I thought, there's so

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James Piper: many examples here of things we could talk about with recycling, particularly recycling at events. So I was texting Robbie, frantically going, should we just scrap our plan and do how green is a Taylor Swift concert? And I thought, I'll put it on Instagram for a vote. And 71% of people voted for the Taylor Swift, which is quite interesting. I can't believe 29% of people wanted, how do brands pay for recycling? So, you know, that'll be exciting next week for those 29% of people.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, well, at least we've got some people interested in it. And it shows how much I knew about Taylor Swift. Because when I walked in this morning and I said, oh, yeah, it's the eros tour, isn't it? Thinking the greek God of love. James very quickly corrected me and said, no, Robbie, it's the eras tour.

James Piper: Like, oh, you may have answered my question. Anyway, Instagram has spoken. So, guys, look what you've made me do here. So, Robbie, are you ready for it?

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, I've got no idea. Done no research. Not sure how this is going to go, but yes, my research was literally.

James Piper: On the train home, so I am almost as blind as you are. but, I know you like your music. I've seen you play guitar many times. I'm sure we can turn you into a swifty by the end of this. And I guess we should just put some parameters around this. We don't really want to get into the whole private jet debate. We know Taylor's a bit of an antihero in that regard, and I could definitely spend 22 minutes on that topic alone. So we're way more interested in the consumer experience, I think, and what I experienced as a, ah, concert goer to this kind of massive event. and also, I don't think we're going to do much if we talk about private jets because I think it's probably quite unlikely that Taylor's listening. we can always hope it's not impossible, is it? So, hi, Taylor, and hope you enjoy rubbish or not this week.

Robbie says bin at Boxpark had sign saying general waste recycling

But I guess before we even get to the concert, Robbie, before we get there, I went to box park, for lunch, and I know people on Instagram will have seen this because I put it on our stories. Remember rubbish podcast. If you want to follow us, you get things like that, pictures of bins from me, and the bin had written on it, general waste recycling. And I really want to know, Robbie, what do you think? What do you put in there? That was the only bin. It wasn't like there were multiple bins. It just said general waste recycling. What does that mean?

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, that's just so unbelievably unhelpful. You know, when people have got losing some belief and faith in the recycling system and the fact that a lot of our, waste has to be exported to be recycled, to actually have a sign saying general waste recycling is really unhelpful. I personally think this is done with good intentions, isn't it? It's not done to kind of confuse people or hoodwink. I think what happens is all of that waste probably goes into the smurf, and, some of the recycling gets picked out of it, and m loads of it just gets burnt and doesn't get picked out for recycling.

James Piper: I think the whole thing is going to get incinerated. I mean, I've experienced this. Yeah, I've experienced this all too well. When you go to, like, service stations, they often, have. And I will do an episode on this because I wanted to. But you go to service stations, they often have those bins that say nothing. Zero to landfill. Zero waste to landfill. And then you look in it and you just think, there's so much food contamination in here, this I don't think could get through a murph. so the reality is they're saying zero is to landfill because they're just incinerating everything. And I suspect I have reached out to Boxpark. So if they give us an answer, we'll update this, we'll tell them that we mentioned them on the podcast. But I, think with the food contamination that was in there, I'd be very surprised if any of it was being recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, maybe I'm just looking on the bright side.

James Piper: Yeah, they did put a little recycling logo next to word recycling, so certainly we can all pretend.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, shame, man. Yeah, not quite there. Box park must do better.

James Piper: No?

Concerts and festivals are perfect places for reuse, Robbie says

Well, unfortunately, I think this is going to be recurring theme for this episode. Because we're about to go into the Taylor Swift concert, which I don't think was any better. So let's start, Robbie, by saying, look, first of all, concerts, festivals, sporting events, they are the perfect place for reuse. And if we go back to last week, how important reuse is compared to recycling. We really would urge, venues to be absolutely fearless when it comes to setting up these events. And I am always so disappointed when they don't maximise it. Like, what an opportunity for reuse. Like, if any of you have good examples where you've gone to an event, you thought that was amazing, everything was really well planned, everything was reused. Please write in because we'd love to talk about it. I mean, Robbie, do you have anything that, any kind of stories that you've had in your past where you've had a good event?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, good festival, on two accounts in terms of waste. One was, fire in the mountain. You got a cup on arrival. You had the cup for the whole weekend, pound deposit. You got five pounds back at the end. And you literally just walked around with the same cup, the whole weekend. Or

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Robbie Staniforth: if, you know, it's getting dirty, you're having different types of drinks. You hand the cup in, they give you a different cup from behind the bar. But eventually, at the end of the weekend, you give the cup back and you don't take it as a memento, creating more waste. They store them and then use it the following year, also, same festival. So shout out, again for fire in the mountain. This was a few years ago now, maybe five years ago, when I went, they also, you paid a ten pound deposit and got given a bag, like a recycling bag and a rubbish bag. so general waste, you could get your deposit back when you went in at the end of the festival and handed the bag in. And also they had set up a disco where you take your recycling, bag and you put the recycling into, different slots or whatever, and you're dancing while you do it. So they made a thing of the recycling disco. And I just thought, wow, you know, so simple. It's probably about 2000 people. So it's not an absolutely huge festival, but it really engendered a community spirit and meant that there was a huge, must have been a huge reduction in waste.

James Piper: That is amazing. I'm clearly not going to enough festivals or enough quirky festivals. So that just sounds so good. I think there's loads we can talk about here. We could get into tents. Like, people leave tents behind. And what. What are festivals doing to stop that. I think probably we should do festivals in detail, maybe in festival season next year, like June to August. That would be good, I think, when the festivals are really on. And it would be a great opportunity for us to talk about those closed systems and compostables. So for now, let's stick with, Taylor Swift's concert and what I experienced. So thank you for that, Robbie.

Cutler says single use plastic bottles make it difficult to reuse drinks

And let's start with arrival. We got there, we'd left Box park bitterly disappointed, hoping for the best. We got there and Ellie had been very diligent in terms of working out what she was allowed to bring in. So she'd brought with her a water bottle. They'd said you could bring a 500 mil or less water bottle and it had to be made of. I'm not going to call it flexible plastic, because that's what we call crisp packets. I'll just call it like, delicate plastic. So it has to be pet. So not a reusable, not like a hard plastic bottle could, not bring a reusable bottle in. So Elliot brought with her a clear, you know, normal plastic bottle that was filled with water. First thing that happened is they said you couldn't bring it in with water in. Okay? So we had to empty it, shake it off, you know, it's just ridiculous. We had to, really remove all of the liquid from it. And then they took the lid. So they said, sorry, you're not allowed lids. Now. I'm assuming this is because they don't want you throwing them around, throwing them at the artiste. Sort of. Fair enough. You have immediately made that a hundred times more difficult to reuse. the second youve taken the lid off, how are you going to reuse it? I thought that would be very discouraging for everyone. But actually, when we got in, we found a refill point and the queue for the refill point was only surpassed by the queue for the ladies toilet. it was really, really long. And I think the reality is there's two reasons for that. I could only see one refill point, so everyone might have been queuing for that single refill point, although I suspect there were probably more around the venue. We're at Wembley Stadium, by the way, so this is a huge, huge venue, and I think the queue for the refill point might have been long because a bottle of water in the venue cost three pounds, 20 pence.

Robbie Staniforth: That's scandalous.

James Piper: Yeah. And now you've got a bottle with no lid, so you're very unlikely to take it home. You're very unlikely to reuse it then when you're buying a drink. So I bought, some cider. It comes in cans and they empty the can into a cup and it's a new cup every time. So I'm seeing people buy multiple cups. you know, just as they're handing it over to me, you can just see the look is like, oh, just don't blame me for this. You know, I'm really sorry that we're using these single use cups. You can see everyone's annoyed about it, but that's the reality. So each time I'm buying a drink, they're pouring it from packaging from a can or bottle that doesn't have a lid on, so is likely to be littered as much as the cup is, and they're pouring it into a new cup. So we've got double packaging going on.

Robbie Staniforth: absolutely shocking. I mean, I can imagine the outrage and these poor servers behind the counter, like, going, don't shoot the messenger.

James Piper: Yeah, I've got lots of opinions on it. But anyway, I think this is fairly typical of an event like this. You've got 100,000 people in a venue, you've got to serve them really quickly. You don't think about refill. So, okay, we'll park that. We're going to just do each of these in bits. So that's the cups, that's what we received as our drinks and our bottles take the lids, make it really hard to reuse them. Give us a plastic cup every time and pour it out of a container. That could have been fine instead of the plastic cup in terms of the food, because we needed some food. When we arrived, it was all served in cardboard. All the sauces were sachets. so they didn't have any bottles of sauces, which is obviously our preferred route. You know, multiple servings in one piece of packaging is so much better than sachets. Cutlery was disposable and wooden. We are going to come on to kind of packaging that's been banned. And one of those things is plastic cutlery. So lots

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James Piper: lots of places have moved to wooden cutlery and I'm not sure how good that is because that's very unlikely to be recycled. So I've got cups going on everywhere. I've got food in cardboard sachet sauces. I've got cutlery that's wooden. I mean, I've just got such a mix of materials and then the kind of bit that then makes it really difficult is there's no recycling bins. So everywhere you go, you've just got plastic bags, clear plastic bags for, obviously, for security. So they don't have any recycling bins, any way for me to go, well, at least I can get this cup collected, which I just think in a closed loop environment where you literally can control all the bins and all the packaging, because no one's really leaving with their waste. It's such a shame. And obviously, when you've got food contamination in with those cups, the reality is it's like box park. I suspect most of it will be incinerated. I just don't think. Even in my wildest dreams, I don't think any of that's going to get recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, well, that's one of those things where you're like, this was Wembley, was it?

James Piper: Yeah. Wembley Stadium, yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: So I wonder, you know, how many events are they putting on where it's that exact same model, week in, week out? And this was what, a midweek night. So, you know, they're having these concerts a couple of times a week, and every single time, if there's no recycling, you're generating a huge amount of waste. Where the solution is so clear, like, we've all been to, concerts and festivals, where it can be done, it's just investing the time into the system. that needs to happen.

James Piper: Yeah, I completely agree. So that's packaging at the end, we'll just do a quick summary of what we would advise to do. But that's what this is just my experience so far.

Taylor Swift's electronic bracelets raise concerns about waste and sustainability

Now then, the bit that is, like, I don't want to come across as a party pooper. I absolutely love this visually and from a kind, of concept perspective. I can completely understand why artists do it, but let's just talk about the waste and sustainability aspect of it. As we arrived, we're all given electronic bracelets. they had a nice style. They're basically like a watch with, like, a blank space where the watch face would be. And then two leds built in, and I ripped it apart last night because I wanted to weigh it and see what was in it. Do my own research, as usual.

Robbie Staniforth: Great. Primary research. Love it.

James Piper: Yeah, of course. I mean, this whole concept was primary research. Right. so in this led bracelet with two button cell batteries, which I was quite surprised about, actually, because, you know, just the batteries alone were like, well, three pounds if I was to buy them. I suspect Taylor's getting a bulk discount. so I weighed all the electronics. I finally had another use for the coffee scales. They're starting to pay for themselves now. And the weight of my M bracelet was 18.2 grammes in total, of which 5.8 grammes was the battery, 2.5 grammes was the electronics, and 6.6 grammes was plastic. And finally there was a 3.2 gramme strap, which I think was also plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: And that 6.6 plastic, that's like the casing stuff, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, the casing, yes. But I mean, let's just stick to 18 grammes. So 18 grammes of electronics on my wrist. last night, there were 100,000 people in that venue. I'm rounding up, it was 92,000, but, like, let's say 100,000. And Taylor said she'd done 131 dates so far. Now, I make that two tonnes of bracelets a night, electronic bracelets, which makes it about 260 tonnes across all the shows so far.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow, that is an awful lot being generated.

James Piper: Yeah. And when I ripped it apart, I found the brand name. It's called Pixmob that makes these. And I, love this because they had a sustainability page and in their sustainability page it started with the line sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. And I just thought your entire business model is making single use products that last, like, 2 hours are made of plastic, have electronics and two batteries in. I think it's possibly a stretch to imagine that sustainability is at the heart of everything you do.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Oh, missed the mark there as well.

James Piper: Well, what are they going to say, like, we make single use plastic for a two hour event? I don't think you can say that.

Robbie Staniforth: That's a real hard sell.

James Piper: So the reality is, again, I don't want to come across in a bad way because I absolutely loved the visual effect of all these lights. You know, they're in sync. It's all glowing. The whole event's glowing. It is beautiful, but it's extremely frustrating in terms of a waste and sustainability perspective. now, underneath, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. They did talk about the product being made from recycled plastic, so recycled bottles, which is good, but again, we'll come on to this in the future. I would prefer bottles to be turned back into bottles. You know, I don't like this kind of. Oh, we made them out of recycled bottles. Aren't we amazing? It's like, well, no, because bottles should be made into bottles and we shouldn't be taking valuable pt and putting it into other products. That's another issue. They claimed the battery

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James Piper: life was 7 hours. But I must admit, on the train home, there were loads of Taylor Swift fans, and loads of them were still glowing as in the train the next day, the train battery.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, wow. Okay.

James Piper: So I think the reality is the battery lasts probably about a week with a couple of button cells.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: now, what was really interesting is I tried to look up how much these bracelets are and they estimated. Now, this is not the Taylor Swift discount price, but there was an estimate online that per person, it would cost five dollars to ten dollars to have these bracelets. Now, that's for the bracelet and then also all the kit you need to make them work, and the technicians you need to make them work. But per person, I estimate the concept was investing about. I mean, let's assume there's a big discount there. They were certainly putting a few pounds into each individual to have these bracelets and get them working. And I think this is a bit of a theme. So we're seeing this across the board in events. About a fortnight ago, I saw a video from a Coldplay concert where they were giving away 3d. They weren't 3d. They were like, look like 3d glasses. You know, cardboard glasses where you could look at the fireworks and it turned the fireworks into hearts, you know? And it's like, this is just a bit of a theme that artists are trying to include the audience more in their event, but all of these things are creating essentially single use items.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, sure. Just kind of unnecessary, kitschy little things that are quite cool in the moment, but sort of useless an hour later.

James Piper: Yeah, basically. And as we left, I did notice they had recycling points for these electronic bracelets. Ellie didn't notice them, interestingly. So I just checked whether she noticed them and she didn't. and the train home was just full of people with flashing wrists, so I don't think anyone was using them. The bags looked empty to me. the reality is people want the souvenirous, so I don't think it was being recycled. I don't think they were being reused. and on their website, they talk about deploying people to collect them up and going up to people and saying, can we have your bracelet back, please? And that was definitely not true on the concert. There was nobody trying to encourage you to recycle them. and beneath that line on their website, they said, we've turned single use products into renewable awesomeness, which I just think I'd love to know the return rate of those bracelets.

Just mastermind it so that the cup is included in the price

Let's just summarise. We've covered two things there. This kind of electronic wristband and the things that go with that in lots of concerts that are happening around the world right now and what that could look like. And we've also covered packaging and how that could work. So let's just give some advice. The reality is you can't do, if we think about reusables last week, you can't do a deposit scheme in an event this biggest, you can't have 100,000 people at the end queue up to give their cut back to get a couple of quid for like 150 pound ticket or whatever these tickets cost. For Taylor Swift, I think that was about right. Just mastermind it so that the cup is included in the price. Just say, look, we'll give you a cup on arrival like you did the electronic bracelet, which has cost $5, by the way. So a cup is way cheaper than that. Just give everyone a branded cup. Put recycling points at the end like you did with the recycling bracelet, and suddenly we don't need everyone using five cups in the night and not recycling them. So. And then they're going to reuse them. They're going to have them if they're branded. I just feel like there was a missed opportunity not to just include a cup as part of the ticket price and then just get rid of all the plastic cups that they're giving.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, those cups. I mean, it's a pretty simple system. I think you're right that the last thing you want is cups absolutely everywhere across the venue. But if it's baked into the price, which these watches must be, mustn't they? They must be like part of, you know, if they've got some overheads to buy all these watches, you can have exactly the same overheads for a much more worthwhile item, which is a cut.

Taylor: I would be looking at putting more refill points in events

James Piper: And actually, Ian, our, friend Ian from the cop wrote in again with a review of episode three, which was the Olympics episode, and he sort of exists in the shadows like a recycling Batmandeh. And, I was thinking maybe he'll be our interview for, like, episode 100. We just keep his identity like a secret, and then at the end, we reveal him at episode 100. but he'd been at the Olympics and he was telling us that, or telling me that, they provided the drinks in polypropylene beakers. So that's a hard plastic. They carried a deposit. So they managed to do that at the Olympics, had these reusable cups that had a deposit, but he felt not many were returned because the reality is they were really nice souvenir, which is a nice call back to last week's episode, actually, where Laura had said, reusable packaging needs to be functionally ugly so that people give it back. And the reality is when you go to an event and it's a nice souvenir, you're unlikely to give it back. So Olympics managed to do this. I really feel concerts can too. And I think in, the main, I would be looking at putting more refill points as well. The refill point we saw had a huge queue, so I would definitely put more refill points in.

00:35:00

Robbie Staniforth: You're just talking about water refills there, just like a,

James Piper: Exactly.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, yeah. Like water fountains.

James Piper: Yeah. And then the thing that I think is putting people off and certainly put us off is this taking of the lids. And again, people have different entrances depending on where they're sitting. So I think if you're standing towards the front, take the lid off. That makes loads of sense if you're coming in that entrance, but if you're coming in an entrance where you're going to be sat at the back, you don't need to take the lid off. It's not going to get thrown at, Taylor, it's impossible. So I just think there's an opportunity to utilise the kind of entrances and seating plan to be like, okay, this group could keep their lids on and that will encourage them to reuse their bottles.

Robbie Staniforth: It really does feel like just, a little bit more common sense needs to be deployed. Is that unfair?

James Piper: No, I think that's completely fair. And I also think people do care about this, but I think when they go to an event, because it's like a one off and not something people do very frequently. People tend not to mind about the setup. There won't be anyone complaining about the cups except me. Well, maybe there will be some people, but the reality is we're so excited by the event that we sort of like, forget all of the sustainability stuff. That would anger us in normal life.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it becomes incidental, doesn't it? Because packaging often is incidental. It's not the thing that you're doing or the thing that you're consuming or whatever. So people. It's quite easy to just forget about it.

James Piper: Yes.

Robbie: I think I got 15 Taylor Swift song titles at gig

So, Robbie, did you notice anything about that section?

Robbie Staniforth: I noticed that you go to a gig very differently to the average person. I also noticed one song title, which makes me think, I don't know that many Taylor Swift songs, which makes me think you got a couple of song titles into that.

James Piper: How many Taylor Swift song titles that were performed at the gig. Do you reckon I got into that section?

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, I.

James Piper: Which one did you notice?

Robbie Staniforth: Shake it off?

James Piper: Yeah, I knew that would be a bit too obvious. Shaking water off a bottle, who does that?

Robbie Staniforth: But honestly, I didn't get any others. So there could have been five, there could have been ten. I wouldn't have known higher.

James Piper: I think I managed to get 15 Taylor Swift long titles.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, my word. Oh, that's a good effort.

James Piper: So the question is, did anyone listening get them all? We're going to really increase our listener numbers this week because everyone's now going to go back and listen to that section again with double our listener numbers. if you think you got them all, feel free to write it. And later this week, I will try and cut together a video of all 15 and put that on our socials. So again, if you want to see that, follow us rubbishpodcast on TikTok, Instagram X or Facebook, and I will just cut together all 15 song titles that I think I got in there. Maybe. I mean, she does occasionally just do song titles that like one word and I'm not a massive Taylor Swift fan, so maybe I got more and I just don't know it.

Robbie Staniforth: well, let's get people to write in and we'll see.

James Piper: Rubbish or not.

This is our section where we talk about whether something can be recycled or not

This is our section where we talk about whether something can be recycled or whether it's rubbish. And today I was writing this episode, as you can tell, on the train home from Taylor Swift. and Ellie had managed to get some fruit from her office, for the day. And I noticed she'd wrapped it in kitchen paper. So I thought kitchen paper will be a really good one for us. Robbie, do you think that can be recycled or not?

Robbie Staniforth: Kitchen paper? Like kitchen roll? The kind of.

James Piper: Yeah, like kitchen roll. Yeah, that's it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Bounty is the one that springs to mind. I don't know if Bounty want to sponsor the podcast, but I've said it twice now. I think. No, I don't think it can because once you use it, it's sort of covered in stuff, isn't it?

James Piper: Yes. I think the reality is you get quite a lot of food contamination on kitchen roll. So I agree. I think it should be put in the general waste bin. I think there are some local authorities that would allow small amounts of it in the food waste bin, interestingly, because it will break down. So, I think if you're. It's worth going to your local authority website and checking whether they'll allow you to put a little bit in the food waste bin. There are definitely some out there that do that, but in the main, I think it should go in the normal rubbish bin.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I suppose it depends what it's useful. If you've actually wiped up stuff and it's drenched and soaked or whatever, then it's. It's not going to be able to be recycled as paper or if it's got you wiping up grease with it or whatever. So I would say it was rubbish rather than. Or not.

James Piper: I agree. And I think part of that as well. It's not just the grease and contamination, it's also just the fibre length. It's a lower quality paper, so it's unlikely to be successfully recycled.

We actually have a backlog of questions; please keep sending them in

Okay, onto our rubbish question, which was asked this week by Roger. thank you, Roger, for this question. Roger was linking back to the tethered caps, which is like episode one. We actually have a backlog of questions. I still have about five, I think, from steampunk samurai. So, the reality is we have this long backlog of questions, but please keep sending them in because we really would like them about some of the later episodes as well. So keep writing in questions. Roger recognised that the brands had changed their caps even though they didn't need to because of the EU.

Robbie says the EU will make more changes to packaging and environmental laws

So, Robbie, the question really is to you, I guess, as policy, are there any other packaging changes that are coming through that we might see because of the EU, not because of UK law?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, well, there's one that immediately springs to mind and that change is maybe not necessarily a physical change to the packaging, but it's actually some marking that you see on packaging now. So there's this single, use plastics directive in the Eudez that basically makes certain items. So wet wipes, sanitary items, tobacco products, cups for beverages. It makes the producers of them market with, ah, a little logo and it says plastic in product. You might have seen it if you, turn over a tobacco product or something. and very interesting little symbols, quite emotive. There's a little turtle, in blue, showing that this could end up in the waterways. So it's trying to get the consumer to think about whether they need it or not. And then in red, there's also a do not do sort of thing, for instance, flush down toilet for wet wipes and things like that. So that's another example of a bit of EU legislation in this instance on marking. And I think ultimately, to answer the question directly, yes, we will see the EU making more laws, environmental laws, that will affect packaging and other products. And, because we are such near neighbours, it's very likely, that they will come into the market. I don't think we've got time to list all the ones that I think will come, but that's just another example for you, Roger.

James Piper: Great, thanks, Robbie. And I've seen that on coffee cups. Actually, I hadn't realised that was from an EU directive, so that's really good to understand because I have seen that symbol myself and I didn't realise where it come from.

Robbie: I think we did okay, considering the planning

Well, that's the end of our, our episode. I think we did okay, considering the planning was like, literally on the train home. And I've just dashed here to record. So I think it was okay. And I, you know, particularly enjoyed talking about a concert I've literally just been to. So thanks for. Thank you everyone on Instagram, for giving me the, direction to do that.

Robbie Staniforth: And, speaking of Instagram, I've prepared this week. James, I'm ready. You can catch us on our socialsubbishpodcast or you can email in to talkingrubbishen podcastmail.com.

James Piper: Woohoo.

Robbie Staniforth: I got it.

James Piper: I'm so happy. I'm really happy. I'm happy for people listening that they know where to go. I'm also really happy for you that you've saved yourself the embarrassment and getting.

Robbie Staniforth: It wrong again just for one week. I got it right.

James Piper: Congratulations, Robbie. Okay, thank you, everyone, for listening. We really appreciate it. Thank you for your time, Robbie. Bye.

00:42:45