4. The surprising truth behind the carrier bag charge

James Piper: Hello, and 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 Stanifol, my far from rubbish friend. Hey, folks, did I say your name right? I think so. I feel like I said Robbie Staniff. Fath. So, Robbie Staniff. Fourth, as in the number four.

Robbie Staniforth: Good start, James. Good start.

James Piper: right, Robbie, how you doing?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, very good, thanks. I'm excited to be recording yet another episode. It seems like we're getting some good traction so far, James.

James Piper: Oh, it's just great. It's so much fun releasing an episode, and we record this on the same day that we released one, which is like, it's just great because we dial in and we go, oh, how many listens have we had? And it's just quite fun. Another thing that happened this week that I thought was really interesting was on Spotify. Someone actually commented on our first episode, and I didn't even know Spotify had a comment feature.

Robbie Staniforth: I don't think I've ever seen a comment on Spotify before.

James Piper: No. So let's add that into, Let's add that into our. Follow, us on, ah, rubbishpodcast. Email us@talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com and comment on Spotify. Yeah, it's good to get those socials and emails in early, just in case we get people drop off at this point. They listen.

Robbie Staniforth: At least they know where to, direct their abuse.

James Piper: Exactly.

Robbie Staniforth: Only nice stuff, guys.

Robbie: We've got a finnish listener now

James Piper: Robbie, I have some really exciting news. Like, so exciting. You know, I said I wanted to talk to a Finn about a bin.

Robbie Staniforth: Come on.

James Piper: It happened.

Robbie Staniforth: We've got a finnish listener.

James Piper: It happened shortly after episode two aired. There he was. Or she. Helsinki. I saw the listener. I was excited.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, my gosh, I should say for GDPR.

James Piper: That's all it tells me. I have no more information. I just know someone in Finland listened to us.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so if you are that finnish person listening, or maybe english person in Finland, that's possible, isn't it? maybe some, expat or something. Please, please write us in, tell us a bit of your backstory and how much you love in the podcast.

James Piper: Oh, that. That is a good. Oh, yeah, that's good. Should we get the socials and email in again at rubbishpodcast or talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com dot? Oh, it's just wonderful. I haven't seen anyone from Serbia yet. But I'm keeping my eye out for you, Robbie. Do you know what was really funny is this week we had a friend over and, we were all having dinner and we had a, Like a calippo. It was really hot. So we just all had a calippo after dinner. And the panic in her eyes when she went to put it in the bin because she was like, this is the recycling guy. It was so funny.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, God, you're putting your guests on edge now, are you?

James Piper: I know, and it has happened for years because, I wrote the book, but it's a bit more obvious now that people are listening to me and they know they're going to get brought up. So, you know, now the klippos we mentioned, people will be really panicking.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so what was your advice on the clippo, then?

James Piper: It's a good question. What would you do?

Robbie Staniforth: I'm not sure about that one. Maybe it's like a coffee cup, where there's just too much plastic lining. I think I'll probably put it in the general waste.

James Piper: Yeah, that's what we recommended, I think.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, well, at least we're on the same page on that one. I must say, it's taking over my life, too. Like, everyone just wants to kind of talk about the pod and have loads of good ideas. Just in conversation with people about misconceptions, things that they don't understand, and they'd like us to tackle. So, shows, we're doing at least some good so far.

James Piper: Yeah.

Robbie: Let's make some corrections to our pizza box episode

Great. And let's just do some corrections. My main correction is actually from my wife, who listened to episode two where I said University of Quebec. And she said, that's not how you say Quebec.

Robbie Staniforth: I noticed that.

James Piper: And I. Well, it's really important. It's, really important for me to have my wife listen to the podcast just to say, thank you, Ellie, for listening to them and checking they're okay and correcting me where I'm wrong. But obviously, I couldn't correct Quebec, so I had to go out like that. And I actually can't say it correctly. I have no. So I actually got her, to record herself saying it to play on the chord. So let me. Let's just play this, see if it works. Quebec. Hopefully you heard that.

Robbie Staniforth: Excellent pronunciation.

James Piper: Quebec que no, I can't do it. Sorry, everyone in Quebec, I can't do it. And, my only other correction is, as I was walking in today, I saw a domino's pizza box out on the, you know, ready for recycling. This isn't really a correction, more an addition. And someone. I mean, I just can't imagine this happening. But someone had left an unopened garlic and herb dip in the box, as in the hole in the box that's ready for it. And I just. I mean, what with the lid still.

Robbie Staniforth: On the piece of plastic,

00:05:00

Robbie Staniforth: can,

James Piper: You imagine not eating the garlic and herb dip? But I should have said, don't leave any dips, anything like that, in the box. So that's just a small addition to our pizza box episode.

Robbie Staniforth: A cardboard recycler somewhere is going to be absolutely fuming with that dip.

James Piper: Absolutely. Okay. Onto the rubbish process, Robbie. We're getting good at this. Now, we've done cardboard. We've completed that. we may come back to cardboard at some point, but for now we've completed it.

James: How do you sort glass bottles when it's recycled

So we're moving on to glass. So our question today is, how is glass sorted?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, so glass, you've got to do, It's very different to cardboard, is the first thing to say. And all the materials we go through are going to be quite different. A lot of what you have to do is some early sorting, to get glass so that recycled drinks, bottles, jars, non food bottles, they all start getting separated from one another. There's also a really important thing on glass. And you actually taught me this, James. I, think poor several years ago now. I think even before your research for the book, that there's certain types of glass, non packaging glass, often, that just can't be recycled. With the glass bottles, you get the jar of mayonnaise, the bottle of beer, etcetera, and that's the drinking glasses, like cookware, like, sort of pyrex, and vases. And why was that? It was because something to do with. They have a different, They get recycled differently or something.

James Piper: Yeah, well, they actually would struggle to be recycled. Pyrex was the one that I learned about years ago, and it's basically quite simple. It's got a different melting point to glass bottles. Glass bottles have a melting point. I can't remember what the melting point is, but we'll bring it up when we talk about the recycling next week. But glass bottles have a melting point, as do jars and things like perfume bottles. But, drinking glasses and pyrex glasses are reinforced glass, basically. It's tougher glass. So it's got a higher melting point. So if you were to put it into the recycling process, when you go to melt that material, if you were trying to melt them together, you would create impurities in the recycling you were creating, because if one melts at one temperature and one melts at the other, they're going to have a slightly different consistency. They're going to look different when you actually recycle them.

Robbie Staniforth: So what we're really saying is that in the glass recycling from people's households, they need to just be putting glass packaging items into those, the various bins that you may have at home, rather than also the pyrex jug, the drinking, the wine glass that got smashed. Wine bottle, yes. Wine glass, no, exactly.

James Piper: And the same with things, electrical things like light bulbs. again, electricals will be something we come onto, but, light bulbs would need to go back to dedicated recycling points, some of which could be found in supermarkets or at a local tip.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it just shows how much. How confusing it can be, the different. You say glass and it's like, oh, yeah, that's easy. That's widely recyclable. I know everything about glass, the sorting of glass, how to recycle glass. And suddenly we've pulled out several examples where people might be doing the wrong thing. I think glass has been, recycled for a very long time. Certainly the glass containers I'm talking about here, it's a very old packaging format. And, the use of bottle banks has been around for decades now and in fact, it's still quite widespread. And the beauty of those glass, banks is that, it keeps the colour, separated, as you will remember, and I certainly remember as a child, nothing. So recently, going to sort out the clear from the brown and the green. I remember it being quite a fun activity. Shows what a boring childhood I had. Possibly. There is still those glass banks, but increasingly it's getting collected from the home, isn't it, James?

James Piper: Yeah, that's right. And when it's collected from the home, its next step is to get crushed. And it gets crushed into like, a size of like a 50 pence piece. That's how I think about it. And it's going to have its contaminants removed. So they're going to use magnets and eddy currents. And we'll definitely talk about eddy currents when we talk about aluminium sorting, but they're going to use those to pull out any metal caps, which is why it's good to keep the metal caps on the bottle, because they will get removed and they're going to use hot air to remove any labels and dust that still exists, because obviously when you crush glass, you're going to create quite a lot of glass dust. so hot air is used to remove those. Get it as clean as it possibly can be. So you end up with basically just clean glass in the size of a 50 pence piece. And then they're going to use cameras and jets of, air to sort glass by colour. And I have seen this in action and it is absolutely phenomenal how they do it, as in, you just think that glass is moving way too fast

00:10:00

James Piper: to be sorted. But these cameras are so fast and the jets of error are so precise that literally they're just going, oh, there's that piece and they shoot it off into the brown bucket or they shoot off into the green bucket. And it is just incredible. It's faster than your eye can see. and you're just seeing this bucket fill up with, just certain colours of glass. It's incredible.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, well, certainly the glass sorting is really high tech. We're talking crushing magnets, eddy currents, hot air, removing labels, cameras, jets of air. it sounds like there's quite a lot going on. I think field trip to glass sorting plant, is in order at some point.

James Piper: Oh, yeah, maybe we should. We should definitely, you and me should go to a MRF and just do a little video around a MRF. That would be great.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah, that would be really fun.

James Piper: Yeah. Tell them that we just kept calling them Smurfs.

Robbie Staniforth: Not sure. Maybe I should wear one of those hats as well. and so in terms of colour, I know the UK uses a lot more clear glass in our, manufacturing. So the food products that we're making, containers, with clear glass, things like what? Jams, mayonnaise, trying to think of other glass products. Ketchup, the old school ketchup bottle spirits as well.

James Piper: You know, we make more spirits and as opposed to, like, wine. So if you think about, particularly in Scotland where they're making lots of whiskey, they're going to typically use a clear glass.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, fine. And then in terms of importing, we import quite a lot of coloured glass, particularly green glass. there's not too much winemaking. Shout out to the UK winemakers, but there's not too many of them. And so that's coming in from all over the world.

James Piper: Yeah, exactly. So we as consumers will use more green glass. That's what's more likely to end up in our recycling bin. The manufacturers want clear. So what ends up happening in glass, which is different to everything else, is when we do our recycling, we're more likely to export that green glass and keep the clear glass domestic.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And then hopefully that, well, almost certainly that green glass will go abroad, and come back as a glass bottle, at some point, and maybe back to the UK again as the next fine drop of, chateauneuf de pap or other wines are available.

James Piper: Lovely. I like a sancerre.

Is the carrier bag charge actually working? Robbie says headlines don't match reality

Okay, well, here we are at the rubbish topic today. We're asking the question, is the carrier bag charge actually working? And for me, I think this is possibly. I thought coffee pods might be our most controversial topic. And it might be. I did panic a bit before the coffee pod episode went out because I thought, am I too pro coffee pod? But I think, we balanced it nicely at the end. But this one, I think the carrier bag charge is super fascinating because this is the one where the headlines really don't match reality.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And the previous government was really dining out on what a great job they did by introducing the carrier bag charge two. So it was one of those things where they were really proud of, the reduction in carrier bag usage.

James Piper: Yeah. So let's just talk about those headlines. So I did a quick search for carrier bag charge in news, and here we go. Carrier bag charge sees usage plummet by 97%. So I think if I got a load of people in a room and said, do you think the carrier bag charge has been good? in terms of the amount of carrier bags we're all buying and the amount of plastic that's used, I'm pretty sure most of them would say yeah, because most of the headlines are carrier bag charge sees usage plummet by 1995, 97%. Last week there was a Marine conservation society report. Luckily, I knew I was going to record this today. So I am actually wearing my marine conservation society t shirt. I'm a very keen scuba diver, so I like what they do. And they've done lots of reports on plastic on beaches, things like that, and we'll talk about that. But they did a report last week to say that carrier bags found on beaches had dropped by 80%, which, however we look at it, whatever we're about to say is great news. And I believe that stat. I believe that carrier bags on the beaches have dropped by 80%. Unfortunately, I do not agree with the carrier bag charge has seen usage plummet by 97%. So let's talk about that in a bit more detail.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So I suppose it's my job as a self, proclaimed policy guy, to talk about what the charge was. So 5 October 2015, the government announced and it was implemented on this day. I think it was announced a bit before then, so the retailers had time to change that. All large retailers had to charge five p for a single use carrier bag, and that they had to then report the number sold, the money made,

00:15:00

Robbie Staniforth: and use the net proceeds to send, ah, to charity. So a lot of the proceeds ended up going to charity. So that was back in 2015. So it's actually been in place for nearly a decade now when it comes to, the upgrade in 2021. So that was the 21 may, it was raised from five p up to ten p, and it was not just large businesses, but all businesses. So that's when you started to see it coming into, your local shops, smaller, retailers having these charges. And the reporting, though, was only required by large businesses. They didn't want to put a burden, to report how many bags sold for all of those tiny little shops, around the country. And the definition of a single use carrier bag, which is very important, is actually a bag that's less than 70 microns. I probably should have put some research into what is 70 microns, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

James Piper: I, think we just say a thinner, lighter bag.

Robbie Staniforth: A thinner, lighter bag. Okay. Yeah, 70. So 71 microns suddenly becomes, a multi use carrier bag, the bag for life. and in that time, according to the statistics, the government statistics, the bags have dropped from 2.12 billion to 406 million. So it's really. It's down to a quarter of what it was before, if my maths is correct. So that's a huge drop over less than a decade.

James Piper: So let me just stop you there, Robbie. This is where we have to put a bit of reality into a story. So you're talking about a drop of 2.12 billion to 406 million of carrier bags. I just don't believe it.

Robbie Staniforth: What do you mean?

James Piper: Well, I was looking at the stats, and according to Defra, this would mean Tesco and Waitrose have not sold any bags between 2022 and 2023.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm almost certain that I've seen people buying bags in a Tesco near me.

James Piper: So the big issue here, or the big topic, is that the government have only asked for people to report data, on single use bags.

Robbie Staniforth: so that's 70 microns or less.

James Piper: So the government said when they set up this legislation, we're going to put in a single use bag charge and we're going to charge five p and in future, ten p, and you only have to report to us the single use bags that you sell and every retailer over that time has swapped single use bags for bags for life, and that data is not reported to the government. And so when we look at the drop from 2.12 billion to 406 million, that is just of single use bags, which none of us buy anymore anyway.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And, I mean, it's shocking, really, that they didn't think about what the consequences of introducing the reporting would be and that retailers would just do. They're doing the right thing in a way, aren't they? They're moving away from the thin single use carrier bag, but that's not necessarily decreasing the amount of plastic out there and leading to better outcomes.

James Piper: Yeah. So I think we can say for certain that the carrier bag charge has reduced the number of bags that people are buying. Definitely has reduced the number of bags just by count. Just by count. The problem is, a bag for life weighs a lot more than a single use carrier bag. So when you look at the amount of plastic being used, I think we have a different answer.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And then when you look at, the co op supermarket, did the, bag to rights report, and that had a lot of very interesting information contained within it. And it basically said that the weight of a single use bag at, six grammes and a bag for life is at 29 grammes. So considerably heavier, as you would think, because it's back to those microns again, it's got to be much thicker to stand up over time. And so the co op in that report estimated that plastic use was up by 440% compared to before the charge. And so that plastic use had actually gone up, which is far different to the drop, of 90% that was reported at the time.

James Piper: So, as people will know, who've listened to this podcast for a few episodes now, we don't like to take anyone's word for it. That report is a few years old. and habits will change, people will change in terms of. And people, I suspect more people remember their bags than did when this report was written.

We did our own research into whether people buy bags or not

So we wanted to do our own research. And that research entails me just sat in a Tesco watching whether people buy bags or not.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm really flattered that you say we.

James Piper: In that sentence, James, you were not there.

Robbie Staniforth: Once again, just like the coffee pods. I left the research to James.

James Piper: Yeah. And I suspect this will be a recurring theme. I have probably a bit more time to sit in Tesco's and watch people. and the reason I did this research, actually, is because my family do not believe this. Like, I have told my family many times, that co op estimate that people buy 57 bags a year on average, which is the number that co op have reported, and they just genuinely don't believe it. They remember their bags every time they go to a supermarket and they can't understand why everyone isn't like them.

Robbie Staniforth: So that's the bubble, isn't it? The bubble one lives in the.

James Piper: Yeah. And people listening to this podcast might not believe it.

There are two Tesco's in the UK: big and small

So let's think about, or let's look at what I discovered when I went and sat in Tesco's.

Robbie Staniforth: I can't wait to see this. I can't believe you actually sat in a Tesco's and counted these.

James Piper: Yeah, I did. A, big Tesco's and a small Tesco. So let's start with the small Tesco's, which, if you're not in the UK, we call a Tesco express. So this is like a tiny little,

Robbie Staniforth: It's like a convenience store, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, exactly. And I actually sat there around lunchtime, which I think is quite misleading because Tesco is quite famous in this country for its lunch meal deal. And if, you're buying a meal deal, you're buying three items, you probably don't need a bag. So I found a lot of people buying the meal deal. I was there between about half eleven and half twelve, and for both of these, I sat for an hour and looked. And so in the small tescos, 37 people didn't get a bag at all. They just carried their meal deal out or whatever they were buying. Interestingly, the exact same number brought their own bag, 37. So it was 37 who didn't buy a bag at all. 37 who had their own bag with them. Actually, that was mostly a rucksack, interestingly. and five people bought a new carrier bag, so very small numbers, really. 37. 37, what are we talking about there? 74. and only five people buying a bag.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. That's quite a low percentage, I'd say.

James Piper: Yeah, that's pretty good and probably what you would expect from a small shop. And maybe this news is more positive because we know that people are doing more small shops now rather than the big weekly shop. So maybe that does lead to less bags or fewer bags.

Robbie Smith: What we haven't seen is a decrease in plastic

But it's a slightly different story when we get to the big Tesco, which is, I believe it's called Tesco extra, where I sat, I apologise to everyone I sat watching. I just literally had my phone out doing a tally and I felt really weird about it and I thought, no, no, I have to do this for the podcast. But I am surprised security didn't come up to me and say why are you watching everyone? But hey, here we are. So in terms of the big Tesco, 50, five people didn't have a bag at all. So again, this was over an hour period. I was quite surprised by that.

Robbie Staniforth: People carrying out the shopping in their hands, just a couple of items and. Is that what you're talking about?

James Piper: Yeah, I was quite surprised by that, because you'd think if you're going to a big shop, you're going to buy more, but there were quite a few people buying just very few items. So 55 people didn't have a bag at all. 117 people brought their own bag, which is great. Unfortunately, in this instance, 40 people bought a new bag, or more than one new bag. I'm just counting people, not number of bags. I think that'd be too much if I was thinking everyone's trolley, trying to work out how many bags. and interestingly, in this one we've got a new category where people brought their own bags, but then realised they hadn't brought enough, so they had to buy some new ones because they bought more stuff than they'd anticipated. And there were 17 people in that category. So approximately 57 people who had to buy a bag of some description, 117 who brought their own, and 55 who brought no bag. So in principle that all sounds really good. If we take your weights, Robbie, of six grammes for a single use bag. So before the carrier bag charge came in, we would all have bought a single use bag at six grammes, and we compare it to the bag for life at 29 grammes. And we assume that before the carrier bag charge came in, all of those people who brought their own bag, bought a single use bag. So we just pretend they didn't bring any bag and we compare it to the 40 who bought a bag for life. Now at ah, 29 grammes. Actually what we see is a 75% increase in plastic weight. So the weight before the charge would have been close to a kilo, like 942 grammes of plastic if everyone just bought one bag. So just assuming everyone bought one bag and that now after the charge will have gone up to 1.65 grammes, sorry, 1.65 kilos. So even though we're buying much fewer bags because they weigh more,

00:25:00

James Piper: actually the overall weight is a 75% increase in plastic. So let's just summarise that because there's lots of data there. The government is saying it's gone down from 2 billion to 406 million. The news and the media are then somehow reporting that as a 97% drop. And actually what's happening is more plastic is getting out there. And interestingly, we'd already prepared this and I actually saw, an interesting article from California yesterday. California, actually has banned single use bags. They said, no more single use bags, we're banning them. This was. And what this article said is, in 2014, California threw away 157,000 tonnes of plastic bag waste into the rubbish. And in 2022, that had increased from 150,000 tonnes to 230,000 tonnes, which is a 50% increase. And again, that's because they banned single use bags and all the retailers went for thicker plastic and it's increased by 50%. So we're seeing similar things in other parts of the world. And I'm pretty confident, well, I'm very confident that actually we haven't seen a decrease in plastic. What we've seen is a decrease in bag quantity. So I guess it's just worth reflecting on that marine conservation society report where they talked about, which is literally last week, it's just come out saying that there's been an 80% drop in carrier bags found on beaches. And I 100% believe that. and there's two reasons why I believe that. Ah, there's definitely fewer bags out there. So we all agree with that. Compared to single use bags, the carrier bag charge has led to a reduction in the number of bags that are out there. it's just led to an increase in the weight of plastic, which really is what we should be measuring, not the quantity. So it's likely that there are less out there, which means you're going to find less on the beach, and also they're just way more valuable. Now, I went to wh Smith's the other day in, Bristol Temple Meads. I was just out on the train and I just popped in because I needed a drink and I spotted that their carrier bags are 70 p. And I just thought, if you're paying 70 p for a bag, you're not going to leave it on a beach. That's so valuable. So there is definitely value in having a carrier bag charge. It definitely creates more value in the product itself, in the bag itself, and so we'll reduce littering and we'll reduce all those things, but we should also recognise the truth that more plastic is out there as a result of this charge.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, agreed. And we've also seen a trend towards paper bags. So there was a study on this from the environment agency that said you needed to use a paper bag three times more than a single use plastic bag to match the environmental credentials, and a bag for life, the one that most people are using four times. So the problem is, paper doesn't last that long. they always say, hold it from the bottom, otherwise it will rip. I'm sure most people will have been caught short in the rain with a paper bag before, and experienced that. But also that you need to use a cotton bag 33 times more than the sort of standard plastic bag for life. And that's because of, all of the, water uses, et cetera, carbon intensity of, farming cotton.

James Piper: Yeah. And I think, that paper bag thing's really interesting because it is technically more environmentally friendly. You have to use it three times more than a single use plastic bag, compared to four times for the bag for life. But if you were using that single use bag ten times, let's say, before it ripped. So your old school single use bag, then you actually have to use the paper bag 30 times and the bag for life 40 times. And the reality is that paper bag won't last 30 times, but the bag for life might last 40. And so what we're talking about here is, can we meet the environmental credentials? Obviously, there's loads of questions around paper versus plastic, and we will continue to talk about those things, in the future. But I definitely think it's just worth reflecting on how many times can you use a bag? And that's really the measure of how environmentally friendly is it? And the co op wrote this bag to rights report that we talked about at the start, because they were moving all their bags to compostable bags and, to compostable bags that could be used as a food waste liner. And I know for me personally, this is what I do. If I, am out shopping and I've forgotten a bag, I will go to co op, naturally, because I want to get another bin liner. and I think this is genius, I really do. And I spoke to the guy who actually set this up because we know them quite well and just checked in on this. But they basically said, any council that collects food waste, we will switch our carrier bags to these compostable bags. And now that is universal, it's in every co op because we're moving towards universal food waste collections as part of the future legislation. And really, this was a bit of a no brainer because councils sometimes provide

00:30:00

James Piper: food waste caddy liners for free. But that's obviously costing us through our council tax. And if you were to buy food waste caddy liners, as a product, you'd be spending about 25 p per bag. And actually in co op, I can buy them for ten p a bag. So when I know I've got to put. We do food waste every week, when I know I've got to line the caddy, the bin, I will make sure that I have a bag and I've used that as my carrier bag to get my stuff home. So typically we will remember carrier bags for large shops and we will reuse our carrier bags for large shops. And obviously that's what we advocate and that's what everyone should be doing, remembering their bags because then we can reduce the amount of plastic that's out there. And if we're doing a small shop, we will look to try and get a compostable bag as our carrier so that it can have a second use when we've got home.

Robbie Staniforth: so that's the answer to the question of what do we do if we're caught short and we just have forgotten our carrier bag or we've gone a few items over. We were expecting to be able to carry our shopping in our hands, but it's gotten two items too many and you've got to take a bag, hope that you're somewhere that does these compostable bags because you can make the journey home with the, with your shopping and also then use it as a food waste liner. Rather than having to buy that big.

The reality is we've got enough bags for life at home

You're talking about the big roll of green bags, aren't you, that you would be buying as a product?

James Piper: Yeah, and I would encourage all retailers to do that because the reality is we've all got enough bags for life at, home. So the only time we need to buy one is because we've forgotten it. So you might as well be buying something that can have a second use. There's no point just buying another bag for life that then just sits in all the other bags for life and doesn't ever get used.

Robbie Staniforth: So you're talking about in the convenience location. It would be good to have these compostable bags that you then use as the food waste liner. And you can still buy bags for life if you need one, but you don't have them in the, in the quick grab locations because that's just increasing plastic use. You would probably make the customer go and find an actual bag for life, if you see what I mean. I think that's good advice.

James Piper: Yeah, that's exactly it.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. I can't believe we spent that long talking about carrier bags. We are, on it.

James Piper: I honestly thought it would take us hours. So I'm just impressed with impressed. We put it into some logical order. Hopefully that all made sense. And we know that's quite a, So, as always, it's quite a complex topic, but one that I, think is really interesting for us to, discuss. And again, when you see those news headlines that say 97% drop in carrier bag use, while that may be true for single use bags, it's definitely not true for the amount of plastic.

James Carville talks about birthday cards on our rubbish podcast

Okay, so on to our rubbish. Or not. Is this item rubbish or is it recycling? And I actually had a different item to this originally, but as, in my original notes. And then I went to my niece's birthday at the weekend. It was her third birthday, and she's been listening to our podcast, and she, every time she gets in, Makanow asked to hear Uncle James on the radio. So sweet. And it was her birthday, and my sister said, if she got a shout out on the podcast, she would be very excited. So shout out to Pippa, whose third birthday it was at the weekend. And obviously she received lots of birthday cards. So I thought, hey, let's, like, do a nice segue into our rubbish or not, and talk about birthday cards.

Glitter and non paper stuff are a problem for recycling

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so we sort of touched on this a little bit previously in the paper and cardboard episodes, and that's that the glitter and the non paper stuff are a problem for recycling. Talked, about it a little bit earlier with the dominoes, and the plastic tub, of dip. You want paper separate from everything else.

James Piper: Yeah. And anything that isn't paper, basically. So if it's glitter, you're ripping that off, as in rip that section off the card. Just get that in the normal bin. So we're ripping off anything that's glitter. And of course, some cards now have sound chips, and they play music as you open them. So it's really important to remove any batteries and electrical parts before those are recycled. Batteries can go back to any store that sells batteries. Talk about that when we get to the recycling of batteries. and electrical parts really should go back to your, civic immunity site, your tip. Or if your council accepts electrical items, you could put it out with the recycling there. But batteries and electrical items really shouldn't go in the general wasteland, so best to get those recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: So is this another you gotta rip little bits off scenario? James, one of my friends commented, who's this James guy who's ripping up his pizza box to get rid of the grease? Is he really expecting people to do that?

James Piper: Yeah. And always eating his garlic

00:35:00

James Piper: and herb dip. No way. No way would that end up in the box. And I should say, on glitter, on birthday cards, I've written a book on this. I've got a whole section or a whole page on the. Don't use glitter on birthday cards. You know, don't. Why buy them? Like, if you buy them, we just encourage it. So just don't buy cards with Glitter. And I've just had my birthday, and Ellie and I have just had our anniversary, and without fail, someone will send me a card with glitter on it, and it doesn't matter. So this podcast is like a cry for help to my family. I love your cards, I love your sentiment, but please don't send me glitter. It's the only reason I've done this podcast. Just to, like, casually adjust everyone's behaviour.

Robbie Staniforth: Nice. Yeah. The indirect way to, solve a problem.

Antonia asked whether cardboard beds are better than reusable alternatives

James Piper: Okay, so now we come on to the rubbish question, and we had a question in from Antonia, who listened to episode three, which was our Olympics episode. and she actually had a question about the infamous cardboard beds at the Olympics, and she was asking whether they're better than reusable, like wooden or metal beds.

Robbie Staniforth: I, must confess, I didn't read this question in advance. Are we talking beds that the athletes sleep on, or are we talking flower beds to decorate the Olympic village?

James Piper: No, we are talking about the beds that the athletes sleep on. These are. I can't believe you haven't heard about these beds. They're very famous, the cardboard beds. We're trying to keep this pg, this, and not tick the explicit language box when we upload our podcast. So I'll just say that, the news has been quite interested in these cardboard beds. but not for any recycling reasons, just because they thought it might stop the athletes doing something. I think I'll just leave it at that.

Robbie Staniforth: Moving swiftly on.

James Piper: So these beds are, cardboard. They were introduced in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. And Paris have said they've done it for sustainability reasons, as did Tokyo. They've announced the beds are going to get recycled after the game. So the cardboard beds will just get recycled, like, cardboard is like we talked about last week. I found a stat that the Olympics uses 1.3 million pieces of furniture and unbelievably, over 20,000 beds, which I guess maybe that's how many athletes. So maybe that's not unbelievable, but it sounded like a lot to me. And I think before the cardboard beds came along, I couldn't quite find out what they were made of, but some of the pictures I saw seemed to suggest they were metal. And one of the things that was really interesting about these metal beds and all the furniture from the Olympics, actually, was that it was auctioned off after the Olympics. And again, I couldn't find who was buying them. They were talking about things like hotels and stuff. So I suspect these beds had another life after the Olympics. Seeing, as we said last week, that reuse is better than recycling, I think there is a very strong argument that the cardboard beds are not as good as auctioned off beds. That could have a much longer life.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. I mean, how long is the Olympics? It's like a month or so or something. And so these beds have basically barely been used and they're going to go off to be recycled. These cardboard beds, presumably, rather than have. What's the average lifespan of a bed? 10, 15, 20 plus years, for a metal or wooden bed, they've only been used for a month at the Olympics. They've got a long and happy life ahead of them.

James Piper: Yeah. And I actually found some manufacturers of cardboard beds. There's a couple out there. I'm not acting like the BBC, I just can't remember what they're called. If I could remember, I'd tell you. And they were, saying that the expected life of a cobbled bed is about ten years. So I don't really understand why the Olympics can't give them away afterwards, why their plan is to recycle them. They could just give them to people who need a bed and that would be a really good opportunity, to reuse that. But they've chosen not to. They've said they're going to recycle them. Now, the reason they've done this, I think, is because when they calculate the carbon footprint of the Olympics, which we talked about last week, they're going to look at the embodied carbon, so they're going to look at all the things they bought and say, this is how much carbon each of these things had, and a carbon bed will have a lot less, embodied carbon than a, ah, metal bed. So when they do their calculation, they can go, oh, look how much we saved. We bought 20,000 beds made of cardboard, not metal. And that is the flaw with all these calculations, because the Olympics is not then saying, and then what happens to that product and what happens in its life cycle? And is that better for the planet, or worse. They're not looking at that, they're just looking at the embodied carbon of what they're buying. And I would say this is a form of greenwashing. We will talk about greenwashing and what that means and how it works, but essentially it's very misleading because what they're saying is, hey, these are really sustainable compared to these metal beds. And they're not saying, but we were reusing the metal beds and their ten year life. Actually, we should look at that carbon footprint

00:40:00

James Piper: over a period of ten years, and instead we've got cardboard beds that are going to last a month that could be reused, but they're choosing not to. So I'm nothing convinced that this is particularly sustainable.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it seems like one of those things that's a headline grabber. it's certainly, from what you say, it sounds like those metal or wooden beds that last for a very, very long time are a better option.

James Piper: I think so, yeah. So that's a great question. Thank you, Antonio. I really appreciate it. I actually enjoyed researching, that one. It was something I hadn't really considered. So please remember to send in your rubbish or not, or questions to us. Robbie, do you want to give the details?

Robbie Staniforth: yeah, you can get us on socialsalkingrobbishen. is that correct?

James Piper: No, guys, honestly, I don't know who owns the socials at talking rubbish, but if they now get a spiking followers, I'm going to be furious.

Robbie Staniforth: As I was saying, catch us on our socials. Orubishpodcast. or email us. not at. Email us on talkingrubbishpodcastmail. Uh.com dot.

James Piper: You know, sometimes you listen to a podcast, you think, they can't just be getting this wrong every week. That must be scripted. We are not scripting any of this, which I think is why Robbie gets it wrong, but like, hilarious. So please don't follow. Please followubbishpodcast.

Next week, we will have a guest with us, possibly just me

Okay, Robbie, that's the end of our show. That was. I loved this week. That was great. I think we've decided that next week might be a little bit different. so we have had a lot of people write in asking whether they could be on the podcast. As I said earlier on, and we originally had said we weren't going to do interviews, but actually, I've decided that it might be a really good opportunity for us to get some other expertise from the industry, maybe people who have actually done research, get a break from Robbie. No, I love working with Robbie, but, you know, it'd be a great opportunity for us to interview some people m and understand what they're doing, so we and what they're up to in the world of waste. And I don't want this to be just like other interview podcasts where we just ask loads of questions. I want this to be a real chat and debate. So we're going to have a guest next week. We're going to do some questions, and we're thinking maybe every five episodes or so, we'll do an interview. So hopefully, that's something to look forward to. Next week, we will have a guest with us, possibly just me, possibly just Robbie, possibly both of us. We haven't really decided yet, but we'll have a guest with us and we'll have a bit of a chat, and hopefully that will add some more context to the world of waste.

Robbie Staniforth: So what you're politely saying, james, is it's taken four episodes for me to get the sack.

James Piper: bye.

00:42:54