5. Interview - Natalie Fée, City to Sea

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 Natalie Fay, my far from rubbish guest. Hi, Natalie. How are you doing?

Natalie Fée: I'm good, thank you. I'm very well.

James Piper: Good. Just before I press record there, we would debate it because I often call you Nat. And so we were just checking in on what you wanted to record, and you went with Natalie Fée. And I think I've been saying Natalie.

Natalie Fée: Fée for you, Natalie Fée. Because if people want to find me online, then typing in Natalie Fée. Fée is how people will find me. But, yes, I added an accent a couple of years ago just to confuse people, really, and mean that my name actually means fairy now, which I think is more fun than meaning financial transaction.

James Piper: Fantastic. Yeah, that sounds like a good evolution.

You've written two books which I have had the pleasure of reading

And speaking of financial transactions, you've written two books which I have had the pleasure of reading. One is called how to save the world for free. Or fray. No.

Natalie Fée: Free. I know. It used to be Natalie phi city to see Natalie femade and Bristol tv, and then I changed the accent and nothing rhymes anymore.

James Piper: Oh, there we go. And your other book, which is your most recent one, is called do good, get paid three books.

Natalie Fée: The first one has a very uncatchy title, and no one ever knows that I've written it, but it's called the everyday alchemist's happiness handbook, so, yeah, that was the first.

James Piper: I already Féel bad about my levels of research. I'm so sorry. It's because I've been looking for that accent in your surname. yeah. And I've really enjoyed reading both these books. Do good, get paid. Your latest one is fascinating, and, you know, we'll come on to your background. That'd be really nice just to quickly introduce people to you. but I have a couple of copies here, and I just wanted to say that hopefully you'll be willing to sign them for us, and we'll give them away on social media. So this is just a quick plug, to follow, us at rubbish podcast, where I will put a post up that you can like and share, and you'll get the opportunity to win both of these books. Maybe we could find the elusive third book. Should we try and throw that in as well?

Natalie Fée: I would definitely include the third book, signed cofFée.

James Piper: Oh, amazing. Okay. That's so good. And, I'll buy one, too, because I read it and I'm sure I could find a copy of the rubbish book sign to throw in there as well. So let's start giving those away. I've got boxes of them. Yeah, that's great. So follow us at rubbish podcast and we'll make sure we post about those books.

City two Sea focuses on stopping plastic pollution at source

So Natalie, do you want to introduce yourself and what you're currently up to?

Natalie Fée: Sure. I am, mostly known as the founder of City two Sea and we're a charity and community interest company that I set up ten years ago to focus on stopping plastic, plastic pollution at source. And initially that was very much focused on, the top ten items, most commonly found items of plastic on uk beaches and rivers. So that's the kind of plastic that we were looking to tackle and we focused on upstream solutions. So rather than beach cleans, of which there are a number of great organisations doing that, we focused on campaigns and legislation that actually helped to slow the tide of plastic pollution that we're seeing entering our rivers and seas each year.

James Piper: Okay, and what were the. It'd be remiss of me not to ask what were the top, pollutants on the beaches that you were finding at the time?

Natalie Fée: Yeah, well, at the time, interestingly, because it Féeds on from, I think your first podcast about tethered bottle caps. The bottle top caps were like the number one item. then I think it was plastic bottles, obviously ghost gear. So the m. You know, the plastic from fishing, related, sort of litter, sewage related debris, which I'm happy to say is a lot lower down the list now. So that was things like, cotton buds, wet wipes, period products, cofFée cup lids, packaging crisps, and cigarette butts, obviously. So those kind of items were always high in the top ten.

James Piper: Yes, and obviously we just a, ah, couple of episodes ago, we talked about carrier bags and we talked about the Marine conservation society report that was saying that plastic bags found on beaches has reduced by 80%. So that is good news. Hopefully we'll see bottle caps now that they're tethered, follow a similar sort of trajectory and then we'll come on to some of those products for instance, cotton buds that you've done a lot of work in. That'd be really nice to talk about.

Robbie and I are both excited for the resource hot 100 this year

So just for those tuning in and thinking, this is weird, where's Robbie? I know we said at the end of the last episode, I just needed a break. and while that is partly true, also we had lots of people message us, when we started our podcast asking whether they could come on. And lots of people have some really insightful things to say that we just thought would be really great for us to talk about. And so Robbie and I decided that every few episodes, we sort of pencilled in every five at the moment, we will do an interview, and you're going to know when we start running out of ideas because the interview frequency

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will increase because it requires me to have less ideas on what an episode should be about.

Natalie Fée: I think I've got my credentials. I think I was number three in, the resource hot 100 a couple of years ago. So, hopefully I'll do Robbie proud.

James Piper: Great. And, yeah, Robbie and I are both excited for the resource hot 100 this year. And, you know, it's a highly contested thing between us, and I think September it'll come out. So they'll definitely be number three.

Natalie Fée: I think I'm probably way down the list if on there at all now, so I Féel like that was a good. That was enough for me.

James Piper: Yeah.

Natalie Fée: Three is on the podium.

James Piper: Three is great. I think Robbie came fourth. I don't know if it was the same year, but I think Robbie came fourth last year. So we were, you know, he wants to be. He's Robbie Stanley fourth. And so we made lots of jokes about that, and I think he'll change his name if he gets, you know, top three. He'll be Robbie Stanley second if he. If he makes it to second. So, I mean, when we thought about doing these interviews, I really don't want them to be, you know, just a standard discussion asking about your career and life. We've sort of covered that with city to see, and you and I work, ah, closer together than we've ever worked because I'm working with you within city two sea, which is great. I'm currently the chair of city to see. so we're doing some really interesting stuff together. so I don't need to ask you about your work life too much. I think it'd be way more interesting to delve into some really interesting topics and kind of talk through maybe our differences, things that we're both interested in, things that we want people to know about. That'd be really fun. So I think it's probably best.

You launched a petition to get cotton buds made out of cardboard

I've sort of, teased it on the cotton buds, but this is probably. I mean, I don't know if you think this is your biggest success, but I think it's huge. So, for me personally, this is the thing that I'm so impressed press that you managed to do and reading about it in the book was so inspiring all over again. So I'd love to just hear what you did to get cotton buds not made of plastic, but made of cardboard.

Natalie Fée: Yeah, it does still Féel like a huge win. and there have been others since, but back in 2016, we'd started, city to sea in 2015 and we'd looked at two different angles of the things through public consultations of what were people most sort of concerned, about when it came to marine plastics, and it was plastic bottles. So that's when we started the refill campaign, improving access to sort of drinking water so more people would get into refill and reuse. And the other thing that people were really passionate about was the plastic cotton buds that you could literally see everywhere on beaches and rivers all around the UK and all around the world. And to me, that felt like a really winnable campaign. I mean, some beach cleans that I was on, we were picking up like 800 cotton buds, on one, like. Like, this is like a half a half a metre, that would. Half a metre, half a kilometre of riverbank. And so obviously that's down to the sewage discharge. So the combined, sewer overflows. So when the, water companies are releasing, sewage, essentially, or. But also runoff, from the roads, when there's the storm drains, and so that's when we see that sewage released into the rivers and seas, which obviously is a hot topic and is thankfully now kind of, you know, being looked at. And some changes are coming. But the thing with cotton buds is they, regardless of whether the sewage overflows were opened or triggered, the cotton buds were still so small that they would pass through the sewage philtres. So people were flushing them in their billions. and for me, it just felt like a total no brainer that they could be made out of cardboard again. They weren't being recycled, so they were like literally going in the waste, bin, And, yeah, it didn't sort of appreciate, affect product viability in use. Although I have since had a few people say to me, oh, it's your fault that my cotton buds are bendy now.

James Piper: Well, let's not talk about the paper straw because that's a different episode. But, I mean, that is, I think the paper straw. Yes, that gets bendy. I'm not convinced cotton buds get bendy and annoying, basically.

Natalie Fée: They had clearly been wiggling them too hard in their ears, which you're not supposed to do anyway. so, no, so it was really like, And the thing that is, if they were flush, which they shouldn't still be flush. They still shouldn't be flush. But if they were flush they would obviously expand and then they wouldn't pass through the sewage philtres. And if they did end up at the waste treatment plants and they made it through, they would just then be turned into the compost that's used, at the end of life. So that for me was a no brainer. So yeah, it was an incredible campaign and it was our first sort of retailer, ah, petition campaign that we ran at city to see and it was really fast paced and very exciting and.

James Piper: How, I mean, what time period are we talking about here from kind of inception to win, how long did it take?

Natalie Fée: So from conception to like actual win? I think it was just under nine months. We basically, we launched a petition and at that point we hardly had a mailing list because we'd only been going for

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Natalie Fée: a year. We launched our own petition. We got about 2000 signatures. This was back in 2016. Then 38 degrees noticed our communications and our videos and they said, look, this has got loads of potential, why don't you run it on 38 degrees platform? so we did, and back then, you know, we're talking about eight years ago, there were less, fewer petitions going out and plastic was still a very much a hot topic and it got loads of traction and within about a month, I think of putting it on 38 degrees, we had 120,000 signatures and we were calling on the retailers. So I think that was the important piece is we weren't calling on government to ban them because we knew what the government is like about bringing in legislation. It takes, unfortunately, it seems to take decades, or certainly kind of, you know, a good, a good couple of cycles of a government being in power. so we went straight for the retailers because we knew that we then could have a bit of sway in terms of their customer, the customer base. So we called for all nine major retailers to switch the stick, which was the name of the campaign. and it was, yeah, an incredible Féeling when we started seeing them actually agreeing to that.

James Piper: Yeah. And in the book you talk about the last retailer just taking a bit. It's your choice whether you name them or not. I saw there's this running joke, poor Wilco. Yeah, this running joke that I treat this like the BBC, so you're welcome to name, but yeah, Wilco. I mean, obviously they're not going to come after you now. So, yeah, Wilco were the last, unfortunately. So what happened to get them on board.

Natalie Fée: I mean it was definitely thanks to co op for kind of being one of the first retailers to actually share because they had already switched to paper cotton buds. And I went to the, I think it was the National Retailers Consortium. I managed to wangle my way into a meeting and kind of speak to all of the sustainability leads across all of the retailers and I said look, you have to collaborate on this and share, which is starting to happen now more across industry on other packaging. I know you've mentioned that. so yeah, basically one by one really, they started coming on board and then at the end we just had wilcos who weren't, or Wilco weren't coming on board and it was Christmas and we managed to like laser beam like over 100,000 active, sort of campaigners to just target their Christmas campaign all across social media. And like their whole social media channels were absolutely flooded with messages from people, like just basically calling them out and calling them, calling for them to switch the stick. And so they did, they sort of folded, and under the pressure, which was great. So we finished the year like on a high, with all nine major retailers agreeing to do it. And then it took, the following year, it took for them to actually be.

James Piper: On the shelves and they folded. But not like the cotton buds which don't actually fold.

Natalie Fée: That's what we've agreed, yeah.

James Piper: Fantastic. It's an amazing, amazing story and I love reading it.

Natalie Fée: And it was pretty significant too. Like 400, over 400 tonnes of non recyclable single use plastic a year that we've stopped at ah source. So that was definitely a proud moment.

City two c is passionate about reducing plastic and helping people reuse more

James Piper: So I think one of the things, when I was thinking what are we going to talk about? One of the things that I'm really interested in is our differences. Just like I think there's loads of synergies. We're very passionate about packaging be reduced when it can be. but I recognise we're doing this podcast and within this podcast we are basically targeting it at everyone and we're saying we want everyone to get a bit better, we want everyone to get a bit better at recycling, we want everyone to improve, their knowledge and we might be targeting the 95% of people or whatever percentage it is, I don't know, who aren't willing to do these more drastic things that activists and NGO's would want you to do, like cutting flights, meat, all the things that are really important really for carbon emissions, way more important than packaging choices. we're kind of trying to get out to everyone and say, let's just all recycle as well as we can, let's all be better. And I guess from an NGO standpoint or an activist standpoint, your job is really to get those highly engaged, highly passionate people and get them into a movement and grow that movement to as big as you possibly can. And I guess I'm just interested in looking at that and thinking, how do both of those things work? What do you think? Huh? What is your aim within city two c and the organisations you're running? Do you want to see that movement grow significantly? So is there a tipping point where suddenly there's so many people involved that it makes a massive difference? What's your aim here?

Natalie Fée: Yeah, well, I think what you're alluding to is I'm all about reuse and I'm very much about reducing plastic and capping plastic production. and yeah, could quite

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Natalie Fée: easily say sort of anti plastic, really, other than for when it's used in a non single use form or when it's used in for medical uses. You know, I understand that plastic has a place, but in terms of, our mission at city two sea is yet really to help people live with less plastic and to reuse more. And also the work that we do with businesses is very much about helping to ready the market for reusables and a lot of research and insight in terms of, supermarket, projects around sort of refills and pre fills, so making reuse more accessible. So for us, we don't think packaging should be something that you use once and throw away. It should be something that is reused.

James Piper: Yeah, and we're definitely aligned on that, I guess.

Spoiler alert, next week's episode is about refill

Spoiler alert, next week's episode is about refill. I'm so excited. I've just finished, I just finished working through it. and I think it's really interesting. So I don't want to go too much into that because obviously we'll talk about a lot next week, but I do want to explore that with you while I've got you, because if we think about the campaigns that we're going to talk about next week. So loop with Tesco and Asda doing their refill trials. A lot of these trials have been very short term. They've lasted a year, sometimes more, but more often than not they get cancelled. And the Asda trial that has just been cancelled, cited consumer, take up consumers not willing to pay extra for refill. the commercial backdrop, obviously, we've got lots of things going on in the UK like cost of living. So there'll be lots of things in the background, I'm sure.

How difficult is refill and how do we make it work next week

But one of the things I want to talk about next week is how difficult is refill and how do we make it work. And so that's a bit of a preview for next week's episode, but I'd love to get your insight into why are we seeing these trials not work and what do we need to do to get them to work.

Natalie Fée: It's a huge shift, sort of. It's a huge behavioural shift. So a lot more needs to be done around educating, your average shopper around how it works. And there needs to be less of a barrier to entry in terms of the amount of we're paying for each item, paying a deposit on each, item of packaging that can add up to, like, 20 quid in a shop. And I for shoppers to add that much onto their weekly shop, that's not necessarily accessible. But you do have to have these trials to come and sort of see how it works and take the learnings from that. And hopefully on your show you're going to have, maybe Waitrose or someone else on who are just launching, new programmes and unpackaged. I know they've been doing some incredible work, and some of it is working and certainly the pre fills seem to be working better. That's where the item is already filled, so you don't have to refill it yourself. I think it's important to kind of look at where it is working and it is working in different countries as well. so, yeah, but I think the main thing that we're seeing is those kind of barriers to entry and that lack of education around it.

James Piper: Great. And I completely agree. And you'll be pleased to hear that next week's is largely positive. I think we want to explore. We want to explore the challenges, definitely. But certainly Ocado's news about refill, which is kind of what's prompted us to do next week's episode where they are, doing quite large format refill, which I personally think is the answer, rather than we should be looking at pasta, for example, and in Ocados case, they're putting it in a tub that holds five normal portions. That makes loads of sense because we're reducing the consumer need to engage with that scheme by a factor of five. and with ocado, they have this lovely. You're collecting at home, so it makes it easier as well.

Natalie Fée: Exactly, exactly. So, like we've seen with, like, dizzy and Abel and Cole so Dizzy have got the sort of reusable packaging, then they're selling the dried goods at doorstep. So I think that doorstep delivery collection is going to make it a lot easier for customers.

James Piper: 100% agree. Yeah. I didn't know we were going to talk about that. I genuinely don't have that on my notes. What a nice preview to next week's episode. There we go. It's going to get everyone tuning in again, I'm sure.

You mentioned there that you'd quite like to reduce plastic, um, eliminate plastic

James Piper: You mentioned there that you'd quite like to reduce plastic, eliminate plastic in lots of examples, probably, where it's not used in refill and it's used in a single use environment. I'd really like to talk a bit about how that would actually work in practise. So in your book you talk about, billiard balls. I think being. I think I did the same research. I don't think it was in my book, but it was in yours about billiard balls sort of being the first plastic and that actually being quite a positive thing because it, stopped people making them out of ivory. So if we think about kind of that evolution of plastic in its early phases, it was kind of there in a positive way and over time that's obviously changed significantly.

Natalie Fée: And the irony that it was created to solve an environmental problem of biodiversity.

James Piper: Loss, it is crazy, isn't it, when we look back at the history of it and I guess I'm trying to imagine a world without plastic. and obviously that is complicated in lots of

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James Piper: ways. If we come outside of packaging, obviously we've got wires that are insulated with plastic, we've got lots of medical equipment that uses plastic, we've got cars that have plastic. And so I'm trying to imagine a world without plastic packaging and what that would look like and what materials you envisage replacing plastic and how they would scale.

Natalie Fée: So I think there's two things to look at. I think it's a world in which, packaging is reused. So that certainly, you know, and that may be that plastic, makes up that packaging, but it's reusable. But I think the other thing to consider is that plastic as we use it now is mostly still 99% made of fossil fuels. Whereas actually if we are still, there's always going to be a need for single use in some foodstuffs, the way that we consume food these days, obviously still in medical use, and as you say, in non single use items like cars. But it's around what that plastic is made from. And I think there are some exciting developments, certainly in terms of seaweed, algae, mushrooms, sort of the kind of bio based plastics that don't require vast amounts of land and fresh water and GM crops to grow, but that are actually, and pesticides and all those sort of things, but that are actually like, you know, grown in saltwater, you know, that are actually sequestering carbon, that are actually providing a habitat at the same time as creating a renewable sort of packaging source or a renewable product in terms of bioplastics. So I think for those items that we can't shift to reusable or that we can't just not have and have a non plastic reusable alternative. then I think there is that case for innovating away from fossil fuel based plastics because that's the concern. And I know that there's very much a place for recycling, but as you know, and you've talked about the problem with plastics is it can't keep being recycled into its original form. It's always being downcycled. and what we're seeing as the world is trying to move away from fossil fuels as the oil and gas industry are seeing that we're using less oil and gas now for our cars, less oil and gas for our homes, they're actually ramping up plastics production. and plastics production is expected. It currently uses around 8% of global oil use. And if plastic production continues to increase at current rates, it's estimated to take up around 30% of global oil use by 2050. That's absolutely huge. And at a time when we're all focused on looking over here on CO2 emissions and the oil and gas industry, they're kind of going through the back door, as it were, into plastics production, massively ramping up plastics production. So that's the problem that we foresee, that's also predicted to double or triple in some cases or some studies, plastic pollution in our oceans.

James Piper: It's a really important point, that kind of, of growth of plastic and avoiding that and finding these alternative materials, to prevent some of these problems.

Episode four of the podcast explores reusable cofFée pods and its environmental impact

And I think you've I think you've listened to the first couple of episodes of the podcast. I'd be interested to know what you're thinking of it so far. And particularly, you know, if you've just listened to the cofFée pot episode, I guess that's a that's a tricky episode. So let's be honest and let's talk about it. What did you think? You know, having listened to it, I.

Natalie Fée: Felt a little bit cross after listening to it, like, because it Féels like it's viewed through that CO2 lens. And so you're obviously, you've ended it with like, yes, reusable cofFée pods all the way, which is great. And I get that.

James Piper: But let's be honest, that was two minutes of 20 minutes. And I was conscious of that as I was uploading it. I think I said, well, now I say, in episode three or episode four, I looked back and I thought, God, was that too positive about cofFée pods? And I just had that moment of doubt because you're looking at one lens.

Natalie Fée: Yeah, you're viewing it through the CO2 lens and yes, it's using less cofFée. So overall it has that impact. But you're not talking about the impact of creating these machines. The factory emissions around creating the machines that take the cofFée pods. There's all the precious metals that are used in that. There's the aluminium extraction process and the bauxite and everything used. Like, where is that aluminium coming from in the first place? And really, what percentage of that 600,000 tonnes of waste or whatever that's created each year from cofFée pods is currently being recycled?

James Piper: Yeah, and, those are really good points, I guess, from the machine point because we're comparing it to, like, philtre, which would also have a machine. You know, you end up with this, okay, we're opening a massive cannabis. But you are right, you know, instant cofFée, if you're just using a kettle, or if you're listening to us in America using a saucepan or whatever you use in America that isn't a kettle. You know, the reality is, I think that's true. You know, we didn't talk about the machines, we only talked about the pods. So that's

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James Piper: really interesting and really, like.

Natalie Fée: You know, is the ultimate kind of. Yeah. Like, a cafeteria where you've gone down to your local zero waste shop and you've bought your organic cofFée, you know, in. With zero packaging, and you've walked to your zero waste shop. You know, there's probably, there's probably something in there, around, around that.

One of the things I really want to know about is the recycling rate

What I loved, I loved the learning my mind blow moment from listening to, one of your episodes was keeping the lids on glass jars in recycling. Like, really. I mean, I know, keeping the plastic lids on the bottles now, but keeping the aluminium lids or steel lids on a glass jar, that was mind blowing for me.

James Piper: Great, that's good. I was slightly worried you might be our first one star review there for a second. So you know, I think we redeemed.

Natalie Fée: It with some learnings.

James Piper: Glass jars came along. But I love it. I love it and I love a challenge and I love to talk about it. And so that's robust. I think. for me, as someone who has never thrown away a cofFée potential, I have only ever recycled my cofFée pods. I've never put one in my general bin as far as I know. Someone's got to dig through my rubbish now and find one, but I don't think I have. and who uses the schemes that are available and recycles very regularly and uses aluminium so it's 100% recyclable. And I see that happen, I guess for me, even doing my own podcast, I'm like, no, I'm going to move to refillable pods because it's a no brainer for me. Then I don't have to walk to, oh, sorry. I don't have to order new pods online. Have to, because unfortunately they've closed the shop in Bristol. So, you know, it's definitely going to be better for me to move into that refill model. So, you know, it's funny, even doing my own podcast, I'm evolving my my thinking.

Natalie Fée: Yeah, that's good. And the podcast, the pod back. The podcast, the podcast is great, but the pod back scheme is also great. you know, so that like I just love, I'd love to see like in a future episode, come back and tell us about how we know how we can get more people using those schemes and what the stats are around. because I know you did share some stats from a scheme there, but I'd love to know globally, like, how many of those pods are being recycled.

James Piper: Well, I think we're going to get, Rick, who runs pod, back onto the podcast.

Natalie Fée: Can't you get George Clooney?

James Piper: That would be nice, but no, we're not quite there yet. I am going to suggest that maybe Rick comes on, but I'm only really, one of the things I really want to know about is the recycling rate. Am going to find out whether he would come on and tell us that. And if he wouldn't, I m might only ask him on once he's told us that. so yeah, I think it's a really important part. You can't really have a discussion about these schemes unless you're being completely honest about the recycling rates. Great, I'm glad we covered that. That wasn't in my notes either, but I was like, I just knew you'd listen to it. And I thought, Natalie's going to pull me up on something, so let's talk about it. Let's not leave it as the elephant in the room. so I guess finally before we. So I've got an end question. So every interview we do is going to be completely different. We're not going to ask standard questions, we're going to tailor it to whoever we're interviewing. But I am going to have one question at the end that I'm going to ask everyone the same, just to keep some level of consistency. Before we get onto that.

In the book, uh, you mentioned export. Plastic is currently running at about 50%

In the book, you mentioned export. There's just this really nice paragraph where you talk about plastic being exported and the impact that can have on the communities that it's exported to. And I guess on this podcast we've been talking about cardboard recycling. So far we haven't quite come onto plastic yet, but for example, we've talked about the fact that cardboard in the latest stats is exported about 70% of the time. Plastic is currently running at about 50% and what we're seeing with plastic is it's export recycling rate is decreasing year on year. Now, whether that remains to be seen in the economic, you know, the current climate we're in, the economics of it all. I'm not sure we will keep reporting on those things and we will keep digging into the data. but right now it looks like domestic plastic recycling is increasing. And I guess one of the questions I had for you is because that is a big part of what makes plastic a high risk material. There's lots of other things like it's petrochemical and all these things. But one of the things is our ah, vision of how it's exported and how it's handled differently and badly. If all plastic was recycled domestically and cardboard wasn't or aluminium wasn't, because a lot of that is exported, would m that make it a material that you could kind of see has a role within packaging or would you say, no, actually it's not about the export, it's about the material itself.

Natalie Fée: I think it's probably a mix of m both. I mean the study that came out either earlier this year or last year from everyday plastic and Greenpeace when they did the big plastic count was really very accurate, very relevant,

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Natalie Fée: and recent data showing that we're still exporting around 50% of our plastic waste. we're only recycling about 17% of our plastic waste collected in the UK. the 58% is being incinerated. So the thing is, yes, it says, all right, we're processing more of it domestically, but we've built more waste to energy plants. So we're actually lot, in some councils, the plastic that people are actually sorting for recycling is actually going to waste to energy, so it's actually being burnt, so it's not being, repurposed, it's not being recycled. So for me, that's not a long term solution. and they actually, those energy plants are quite hungry for plastics because obviously they're a fossil fuel, so they've got lots of hydrocarbons in them, so they create lots of energy. So I think that's slightly, those figures are slightly skewed. So I think, we need to be careful about that. And really I think it's about always. I'm going to come back to our shifting to more reuse. At city two sea, we're calling for mandatory refill and reuse targets. Currently, only 1.2% of packaging is refillable or reusable in the UK. We would like to see that get to, ah, the heady heights of around 30%. so that's what we're calling for, those legal targets. and that's also what will mean that the trials like that you're going to be talking about on the next podcast, like Loop and, Asda. And those, those trials will have to work because it'll be mandatory. And so actually you'll see a lot more collaboration, a lot more investment in those reusable, packaging solutions.

James Piper: I love the big plastic count. So I might have to reach out to Daniel Webb, isn't it, who runs that, and I haven't spoken to him in a few years. That'd be quite nice to get him on as well and get his views. this will be a spoiler for a future episode as well, but I have no idea which episode. But that energy from waste peace is fascinating. And there was a really interesting study that has kind of been debunked, but it's been debunked by the incinerators, so we can assume there's some truth behind it, which is that they burnt the truth, James.

Natalie Fée: They burnt it.

James Piper: Well, we'll have to level out that. But one of the interesting things they said, Washington. sorry, one of the interesting things that this report said was that as the grid decarbonizes. Decarbonizes? Yeah, as the grid decarbonises. That's the phrase, isn't it? and we move to more renewables, actually getting our energy from energy from waste. So incinerating stuff to get energy is not the best way of getting energy. And the more plastic that you have in that incinerator plant, the worse it is in terms of carbon and carbon emission. And if you're then looking at that energy being provided back to the grid and you're comparing it with solar, wind, whatever, it's actually significantly worse to incinerate that waste. And the more plastic that's in there, the worse that is. So we're going to come onto that as a separate topic because it's a massive point, but it is a really interesting call out to say, look, if plastic is incinerated, actually that energy that it creates could be significantly worse than a renewable grid or a decarbonized grid. And that is a high risk. Obviously, that wouldn't be included in the plastic recycling figures that we're talking about, so it wouldn't be included in those export domestic figures. But it is important to call out if plastics going into incineration because that is what's going to make that a more carbon intensive energy production.

If you could have any superpower to help the environment, what would it be

Okay, so final question, the question I'm going to ask everyone, Natalie, and I'm going really excited to, hear your answer to this. If you could have any superpower to help the environment, and you can be as imaginative as you want to here, what would it be and how would you use it?

Natalie Fée: well, as you know, I'm currently sitting under a tree, the same oak tree every day for a year. I'm, not going on any holidays. I'm about nine months through the project at the moment and so I climb a hill behind my house and every day I sit under the oak tree for about half an hour. And I've been writing poems about my journey. And so my superpower to help us, connect more with the environment would be to awaken every heart on the planet to the incredible consciousness and healing power of nature and for us all to remember we are a part of it.

James Piper: That's great. I am so impressed by your commitment to that. And I am really excited to kind of get a download from you after twelve months of it, of how it Féels, what it's meant for you, whether you'd ever do it again. yeah, it's really, really interesting. That's a great superpower. Thank you.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to leave a review

okay, so that brings us to the

00:35:00

end of, my chat with Natalie Fay from city to sea. Just as a reminder, we're going to say Natalie's going to sign a copy of each fair books and I'll chuck in a rubbish book. And we'll do a competition online to give those away to someone who's following us and liked our post. So we will put that up on our socials, which areubishpodcast. I Féel like, Natalie, you didn't quite meet the brief because, you didn't talk rubbish. You actually were very insightful. And all we ask here is rubbish talk. So, you know, I appreciate you coming on and we've been talking a lot.

Natalie Fée: Of rubbish for the last ten years. That's true.

James Piper: I really appreciate you coming on and giving us your time. It's been extremely valuable, and I'm sure everyone listening has learned a huge amount, from your time. And I really like that we've been able to discuss differences and that you've listened to the podcast and you've given us a view on that that's exposing us a bit more to, things that we need to think about and talk about, which is exactly what this is about. Just building knowledge. If you've enjoyed this chat and if you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to leave us a review. It really helps us. So if you're listening into this on Spotify or Apple, just chuck us a review. That would be brilliant.

Natalie says where can people find city two sea on LinkedIn and Instagram

And just before we go, Natalie, what have you got coming up? Where can people find you and what interesting projects are you working on?

Natalie Fée: So if people want to find out more about us at city two sea and our current campaigns and support, our, government asks, then obviously you can find city two sea over on LinkedIn or on Instagram. and if people want to connect in with me and my tree project, or talk rubbish with me as well, or reuse, I've also got some music coming out, which I'm really excited to share with the world, sort of under this, voice for nature, sort of work that I'm doing across all of my work. So, yeah, come find me on Instagram. have a listen. I think my first single drops, I think that's what they say, is out in September.

James Piper: Oh, that's very exciting. Oh, I'm looking forward to listening to that. And people can just find your handle. Is your name presumably?

Natalie Fée: Yes, it's at.

James Piper: Okay. Thank you so much, Natalie, and see you next week, everyone.

Natalie Fée: Thanks for having me on.

James Piper: Bye.

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