8. Who's really paying for your recycling?

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. In this episode, we will discuss metal recycling, explore how brands pay for our, at home recycling, whether receipts are, rubbish or not. And I have a question from my mother in law. 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: Hello. People won't know this. We've just had a week off, our.

Robbie Staniforth: First week off since we started.

James Piper: I know you went on holiday. Did you go anywhere nice?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, the Costa brava. It was absolutely fantastic.

James Piper: Oh, that sounds great. Well, I was here. I was actually holding the recycling fort down for us, you know.

Robbie Staniforth: There we go.

James Piper: I was lucky enough to be invited onto radio four to talk about tethered.

Robbie Staniforth: Bottle caps because I was fuming about it.

James Piper: Well, that's what happens when you go on holiday. they're still stuck on episode one. Clearly. I need the BBC to move on. We've got lots to talk about.

Did you get any amazing learnings from being abroad

Did you get any amazing learnings from being abroad? Did you see any cool recycling bins? I know when we go away, we're always taking photos of recycling bins.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I know. It's one of those sort of sad, sad things. most interesting one was in a place called cataclys, was, sat at a restaurant. Lovely, beautiful view across the bay, wonderful food. Had some great langoustines. And up, arrives the bin lorry and starts emptying the street bin. You know, where there's recycling on the street. And it pulled out one of these bins where underneath there's that storage unit that like, big, huge storage unit under the road. So a grabber comes out, picks up the bin to tip it, and then below the bin, out comes this absolutely huge sort of cube of recycling and tips it into the bin. And as we were stood there, literally, this was in the view. while we were sat in the restaurant, there were numerous questions from the people I was having lunch with, about why have we got those in the UK, which we don't generally? there might be a few dots around the place, but they're mostly in, mainland Europe. So that was probably the most interesting, thing. Thing I saw. And I got to do about ten minutes of the podcast live at the dinner table.

James Piper: Nice. Well, you'll have to replicate that if you don't. That is, those bins are like the literal rubbish iceberg, aren't they? You can see this tip. Just this tiny recycling element underneath is where it's all going. I love a live podcast. Oh, I've just realised. I have literally just realised that's what my holidays are now going to become. I'm just going to be asked, ah, to comment on binse constantly.

Robbie Staniforth: Actually, this one was quite nice because I was invited to comment rather than just being on broadcast mode and everyone else falling asleep.

Lids accidentally ended up on recycling bins at Highclere Castle

James Piper: okay, well, speaking of bins, I actually went to Highclere Castle at the weekend. I've already checked the pronunciation with Ellie and her family, so I don't have to redo this. So, Highclere castle. and they had bins and I think this was unintentional, but it looked pretty cool. So Highclere Castle was known, probably internationally, actually, as the place that Downton Abbey was filmed. So when you think of that big castle in Downton Abbey, that's Highclere Castle, and they had four bins next to the food, next to the restaurant, two of which were general waste and two of which were recycling. And, what had happened, I think, accidentally, was the lids had ended up on the two recycling bins. And I posted this on socials, because I promised to post bins on social media. And I posted this because that is actually a really effective way of getting clean recycling, because if you put lids on the recycling bins, you cause people to pause before they go and recycle and they're less likely to just chuck something in there. And, I think, I'm sure hubbub did a study on this where they said something like, we take, on average, half a second to make a decision on where to put something. And if we've got a lid on it, then it's going to take a few more seconds to take the lid off and think about it. It's a good way of getting clean stream. Unfortunately, when I went back later that day, which is why I think it was accidental, the lids had been switched, so they were now on the general bin and I think it was to stop the wasps getting in. So I actually think they've probably got quite a lot of contamination in their recycling bins because actually the lids are now on the general bins, not the recycling ones.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, what a shame. And when you opened up the lids when they were on the recycling bins, did it look like, oh, this is mostly recycling in there?

James Piper: It looked pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Definitely. Getting people to pause before they throw things away is always a good and effective technique because then if people are removing a lid and having to think about it, they're really going to know that they're recycling that item. Corrections, additions. This is our, you know, moment to own up to anything we got wrong or anything we want to improve on. I, I don't think I have any corrections this week, but I do

00:05:00

James Piper: have a shout out from my mum, who has continually tried to get a shout out on this podcast and, constantly ringing me with lots of different things and claimed herself to be the banksy of waist the other day because she was taking lots of photos. I'm not sure that's how Banksy works.

Robbie Staniforth: But, you know, he's well known for his photography.

James Piper: But she did genuinely make some really interesting points. So she is getting a shout out. The first one was, she was absolutely panicking that she was the family member that sent me cards with glitter on, I think on one of the episodes, I said, please stop sending me glitter cards. Just to be clear on this podcast, and publicly, my mum did not send me a glittery card.

Robbie Staniforth: come on then, out the person who did.

James Piper: I can't. I really can't. so that's the glittery cards. I've covered that. She'll be happy to hear that. And also, she is an infection control nurse and so, looks after, making sure infections don't spread, obviously. And obviously, Covid was an interesting time, for the NHS and for her in particular. but she was asking about bags for life because she's often got concerns when she's using a bag for life and she's putting, like, meat in it for any potential contamination from that meat. And I would have said, well, you know, that's extremely unlikely. Trays need to be sealed, they need to contain the gas that's in there. but I have increasingly seen on social media now, people have moved away from the plastic tray, the firm plastic tray, more towards film, where they've moved to kind of this vacuum packed meat. I have seen a lot more on social media about meat leaking and it'll be interesting to know what that does to the bag for life. Now, I think this is probably actually a bit of a trash talk for us to talk about the difference between meat trays, vacuum packed meat. And I'm going to. I have put some feelers out to the retailers already to ask about potential, leakage, what the rules are, what they put in place to stop that happening, because obviously that does have an impact. If you're reusing your bags, I think we'll just save that one for a trash talk. But I just thought she wanted me to talk about the glitter anyway and make sure it wasn't her.

Talking rubbish podcast is about the collection, sorting and recycling of waste

And so I thought I'd also bring up this other one just as a bit of a preview for a future episode.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, I think we're probably going to need to think of a better title than the meat leakage section. So, meat league.

James Piper: It's great, I like it. Trash talk. Meat leak edition. It's nice. So remember to email us. We're getting loads of emails. Email us at, talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com. i did forget it for a second there, channelling my inner Robbie, talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com and follow us on social media, which is rubbishpodcast. And every episode we'll look to answer listener questions, so please take some time to email us if you get a second rubbish process. It's the part of the podcast where we talk about the collection, sorting and recycling of waste. We've been working through different materials. We've done paper and cardboard, glass. We sorted our metals last week and this week we are recycling them. Woohoo. I love it. That's stadium Robbie. We've sorted the steel from the aluminium.

Recycling aluminium cans uses 95% less energy than manufacturing them

It's probably worth us talking just briefly about bales here because that's a key thing for the metals.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, worth a lot of money, those things. Whenever I see them. When, you know, the price of, aluminium, smelted aluminium, those cans, how many do we reckon we got in a bale? Thousands. Hundreds of thousands of, ah, cans in one of those square bales that you probably see? Square cube. That's factually correct, yeah, cube.

James Piper: So you're basically putting a load of cans into a machine that's literally compressing the bottom, the top, the sides and crushing it into a square or into a cube bale, which then keeps it all together to be moved efficiently, easily. and ultimately that then is going to be taken to a recycler who's going to shred it up. So the first thing that happens is they shred up the bales. and they need to remove all the prints. So, you know, when we've got a kind of, Pepsi or Coke or whatever it is, it's blue or reduced, depending on your favourite brand, and they're going to have to remove that colouring, they're going to have to remove the print. So the way they do that is with hot air. Ah. I think it's at about 500 degrees celsius that they remove the printing and the branding with.

Robbie Staniforth: So not hot enough to start smelting the can, but hot enough to melt away the printing on the outside.

James Piper: Exactly. And that's because the can needs to be what temperature to get melted, Robbie?

Robbie Staniforth: 750 degrees c, according to the notes provided by James.

James Piper: Very good. And according to my notes, that's also half the glass melting point, I believe, which we said was about 1500 degrees. So in terms of, like, melting temperatures, we sort of got plastic at the lowest, which we'll talk about next time. And then you've got your metals and then your glass at the highest. So that's kind of the order of temperature that things need to be melted with. The metal is like glass

00:10:00

James Piper: in that if you put recycled content into the process, it reduces that melting point. It's easier to melt. So, similar to glass, that can happen. And actually because of the energy to get metals out of the ground, to get the ore out of the ground and to get them processed, recycling an aluminium can uses 95% less energy than getting the virgin material and turning it into a can. So there's a huge benefit to recycling metal, which is why it's got a very high recycling rate.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So the metals basically, once it's all melted down, it, ah, gets poured out and it's cooled, it comes, out of a smelting chamber and gets poured and it forms into a mould. It gets formed into this huge, enormous ingot and it kind of looks like an obelisk, doesn't it, appearing, huge tower of aluminium. And I remember visiting a, aluminium smelter and they say, don't be tempted to touch it. It's absolutely red hot in the induction and I'm thinking, why am I going to touch a huge smelting piece of metal or whatever? But then you go through and it's like, a fly moving towards the light. It's like, don't touch the molten aluminium. It's strangely tempting to touch this off. It's so smooth and just amazing.

James Piper: Remember last week we talked about how you communicate to a 40 year old and a five year old? I think that's what's happening here. You're like a 40 year old in person, but they look at you and think, he might touch that. We need to put a rope around it. But, yeah, the ink got is massive and it's, they basically form it by putting a hole in the ground, like a well, and pouring the aluminium or steel in, and they can be like 27 tonnes. I think they contain about one and a half million aluminium cans. It's weird that I know that, but not the bale. Like, that's the weird one.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, but it's many bales that would go into it. So I reckon my hundreds of thousands of cans was probably right on the bale.

James Piper: Many bales, yes. Once these ingots, are, created, it's then going to get rolled out into sheets, at a rolling mill, which is then what is used to make your actual. So what they're doing is literally taking the ingot that's a giant slab of metal, and then just going to roll that out so it's thinner, and once it's thin enough, they can turn that into new cans or whatever they're turning the metal into. That process is quite quick. A can can be back on a shelf about 60 days after. After you've recycled it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, it's amazingly quick. And I think also we've got to remember that those, that aluminium that's been rolled out can also go off to other processes. We know, kind of famously talked about in the industry that Jaguar Land Rover use a lot of recycled metals, in their, car manufacturing and things. So cans can actually go elsewhere as well as back into a can.

James Piper: Great. And the recycling targets, Robbie, do you want to just go through those?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So aluminum's 60, 9% recycling, targets. And the reason that it's quite low compared to some of the others, steel's up at 87% is because often about capture rates, and that's things like aluminium foils, the deodorant cans, that we've mentioned previously. so really it's about capture rates. Everything, all aluminium can be smelted down and used again to make new products. It's a question of capturing more of it. Yeah.

James Piper: Ah, great. And those export rates as well, they actually have quite high export rates.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. It's a globally traded commodity, though, isn't it? You know, it's metals.

James Piper: Yes, that is true, although what I found really interesting. So aluminium, for example, is exported 64% of the time, and steel 68% according to the latest data. and that will fluctuate. But let's say that aluminium is 64%. That's quite high considering, and particularly the steel one, when you think we've got tartar steel in this country a bit and sell some big steel reprocessors. The reason this is fascinating is it's about the definition of when recycling actually takes place. And I remember when I went to visit Novelis, which is a big aluminium recycler, they would make these ingots and then the ingots go on a train and they actually had trains, like, at their facility. So they have a train track running through the yard and trains turn up and they put the ingots on the train. I mean, if I remember rightly, it gets sent to Germany, where it's then rolled into a, thin sheet. It's been many years since I visited, so apologies to Novellus if I'm getting any of this wrong, but I think it's sent to Germany to be rolled into sheets and then it comes back and I think it comes back maybe on the train or it's shipped back in a different way. The definition of recycling kicks in when that ingot's being turned into a sheet. So technically, the recycling has taken place in Germany, even though actually all the work to melt the cans and turn them into an ingot and, create the cans ultimately was, in this country, it classes

00:15:00

James Piper: as export. So the trouble that the metals have, which other materials don't really have in terms of export versus uk, is that definition of waste and having to send things abroad to be processed, which then come back again.

Trash talk. This is the section where we get to talk about rubbish topics

Trash talk. This is the section where we get to talk about, a big topic. I've realised I have to describe what trash talk is and I end up using rubbish topic, which is the name we've moved away from. But I think that's fine. I think we'll all get used to trash talk. It's going to be good.

Robbie Staniforth: that Spotify poll meant nothing to you, James.

James Piper: It meant loads to me. Democracy. I was very happy with it.

How do brands pay for at home recycling really? This has potential to be boring

Here we are. So, trash talk. And last week we were taken over by Taylor Swift, as so many things are, and we did the how green is the Taylor Swift concert and we had to bump this one, which was, how do brands pay for our recycling? So, how do brands pay for at home recycling, really? This is, as we said last week, this has the potential to be quite a boring topic, but Robbie and I are going to do our very best to make it interesting. And the reason we think it's important to talk about is it's like a fundamental part of waste that brands pay for recycling. And whenever I tell people about it, they don't believe it happens. So it's a really important one for us to talk about.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, agreed. And I will try my very best, James, to make this interesting. sent many a friend to sleep in the pub trying to talk about this. So I've had lots of practise let's let's see how we go.

James Piper: Have we become one of those podcasts that people listen to to get to sleep? Should we, like, advertise ourselves as, like. Yeah, we could go a bit more soothing on our voice and say, brands pay for recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: This is talking rubbish.

James Piper: No, we laugh too much. Right. Anyway, on, with the show, this is, This one is quite personal to us because it's mine and Robbie's day job. So I know often when we've done trash talk, we said, oh, we've been involved with that, we've done that. But this one is actually our day job. More yours than mine, Robbie, nowadays. But certainly for the past 15 years, this is what I've been working in. We both work for a company called Ecosurity, which operates in this space. Robbie, you're their policy director. and I'm a non exec director, having previously been their CEO. and we're the basically a company that works entirely in this space. So this is the area we know absolutely best, which is why we might overrun. So we've got to try and watch our timing. Although we have officially decided we're just a 45 minutes podcast now. We can't cut down our time.

Robbie Staniforth: The problem is, if we decide that, then we'll become an hour podcast, because we'll go over our live time. We have to, like, say we're 35, and then we'll have half a chance of getting 45.

Increasing recycling costs normally mean higher prices at the till

James Piper: Okay, so welcome to our 35 Minutes podcast, which might look like 45 minutes. Yeah, perfect. This is one of those topics that's a bit dry and quite business to business, but really important to us as consumers to understand, because increasing recycling costs normally mean higher prices at the till. So as costs go up, it normally means we're going to pay a bit more. And if it's time of cost of living, when everything's really tricky, we need to know that this is coming down the track so that we know that costs are going to go up. So I think, first of all, it's probably worth us just spending a few minutes on the system as it has existed up till today, because you kind of need that background. So we'll split this in two. We'll do the system as it's existed up till now, and then how it may change from next year. And I'll be leaning on you, Robbie, to kind of go through that in detail, because obviously, a lot of this is quite policy led.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, I'm under a lot of pressure here because this is literally what I'm going to Westminster to talk about on a weekly basis. So in terms of what is producer responsibility? There's kind of three major types in the UK. So this is how these brands pay, for the recycling of stuff. There's packaging, there's waste electricals and there's batteries. But today we're going to focus mostly on packaging. There is also the end of life vehicles directive, and regulation. So that's what you do with cars at the end of their lives and other vehicles too. but we haven't really had much experience in that particular one. But just looking at packaging, the legislation came in, in the UK in 1997 and the reason that the UK implemented something was because we were members of the EU at the time and there was a directive in 1994 that said by 97 all of the EU states had to implement a law that meant producers of packaging had to finance the recycling of packaging. And so the UK system that we created was a very market driven system compared to the rest of the EU nations. And what it did was it split the costs across the whole supply chain. So all the way through. So if you imagine the plastic bottle, that's

00:20:00

Robbie Staniforth: made by Pepsi, let's go for and sold by Sainsbury's, you have someone who puts the pellet makes the bottle, will pay some of it, someone who blows the bottle will take some of the cost of it. The actor who puts the Pepsi into the bottle will take some of the cost. And then finally the retailer sainsburys who sell the Pepsi bottle will be the ones. I said Pepsi a lot there, the ones who will pay their share. So the whole idea was that everyone in the supply chain all had a responsibility of varying magnitudes to pay for the fact that that bottle is eventually going to end up as rubbish, hopefully recycled. but way back in 1997, not that much of it was being recycled.

James Piper: Yeah, so I like to go into like a, whenever im in a shop with a friend, ill say, did you know this bottle has its recycling partly paid for? And then you go through that chain, you know its the person filling it, the person selling it. Everyone in that supply chain has a little bit to pay. So the amount they pay varies. It's basically a commodity and at the moment it doesn't cover the complete cost of recycling, it's just a commodity. So we split the, what people have to pay for across different materials. So cardboard, glass, aluminium, steel, plastic and wood. And everyone in those supply chains pays a little bit. So if you had a plastic bottle like Robbie's describing, you would buy some evidence that plastic recycling has taken place. So every time a recycler is recycling something, they generate a product, they generate income from that product. They also generate a certificate that says, I recycled a tonne of plastic. And that certificate is what brands and retailers have to buy to cover this obligation now, because it's a commodity and it changes in price. It changes in price based on the amount of recycling that's taken place. So if lots of recycling has taken place, then a brand or retailer will pay less. And if not much recycling has taken place, then a brand or retailer will pay more. What has really affected brands and retailers over the last few years is the cost of that commodity, because what's happened is the government have increased recycling targets significantly and so people have had to buy more of this evidence and there has been less of the evidence available because at the same time, the government has been stricter at, making sure that what people say they're recycling is what they're actually recycling. So we've kind of got this increasing in targets and also it's more difficult to generate the certificate. And that has led to the cost of the system going from around 30 million, a few years ago, like 2015, I think the overall scheme cost something like 30 million, maybe 2014, actually, up to 600 million last year. So if you think about it from a brand's perspective, this was a very small part of your business. You were paying your share of a 30 million UK wide cost and that has increased to 600 million to comply with this piece of legislation.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So those, evidence notes, that recycling has taken place, they're called, or were called, actually a packaging recovery note, much like the Smurf, definition, it's changed from recovery to recycling now in the acronym, but it's a packaging recycling note. So p RN. So that word is used all the time for these tradable commodities. Evidence that recycling has taken place. And it's, we hear all the time, how much are prns in 2020, 2023? It costs 600 million for all of the prns across the whole of the UK.

James Piper: And, every time I hear PRN, I think of the story between you and me, Robbie, which I'm just going to have to own up to entail, because we were at a conference many years ago, I can't even think when it was many years ago, six years ago or something like that, and the prices had started significantly increasing. They'd gone from about 30 million to 150 billion, something like that. It was all anyone ever talked about. And they asked me to come to this conference to talk about perns, to talk about prns. And, while I was sat waiting to go up, thought of a joke that I thought would be really funny. But it's fair to say the waste industry is not particularly risque. I mean, I'm sure they are at an operator level, but in our world, in the compliance scheme and legislative, world, everyone's quite serious. I think that's fair to say. M so I didn't know whether to tell this joke that I thought was quite funny, but involved me using a word that you just wouldn't hear in a waste industry conference. So I was texting Robbie while I waited to go up, going, can I tell this joke? And Robbie sat at the back thinking, yeah, you should tell it. So he's messaging me going, m, tell the joke. So I stood up and I said, it's really nice that perns, prns have gone up in value, because now when I search in Google for PRN, it doesn't say, did you mean porn? And I got a good reaction, didn't I? Everyone laughed.

Robbie Staniforth: You got a good reaction. You were laughed at it.

James Piper: And we talked about it. And so a week later, I was doing a similar conference,

00:25:00

James Piper: very, you know, different location, but a similar conference, and I thought that joke went down so well, I'll tell it again. And the room just went completely silent. Nobody laughed. It was awful.

Robbie Staniforth: I remember you messaging me afterwards, and I think maybe it was because I was in the audience and instigated the laughter and broke the tension, maybe. And then everyone was laughing the first time around because I wasn't there that second.

Government says brands should pick up cost of at home recycling

James Piper: And you might have just done that on this podcast because, like, everyone could have been sat at home not laughing.

Robbie Staniforth: Exactly.

James Piper: And then you just started laughing then when you heard it again. And I reckon everyone at home just went, oh, actually, that is funny. He is funny.

Robbie Staniforth: The laughter instigator. I thought I was going to be the policy guy. I'm actually just the laughter instigator here. Yeah.

James Piper: it was actually a true story. Like, genuinely, Google did not like the words prn. I'm not sure why the government came up with that acronym. Anyway. So that's the system as it's existed to date, Robbie, we've got this system that everyone has contributed to, everyone in the supply chain, and the value of it has gone from, like, 30 million to 600 million, over quite a short period of time. And so all the brands and retailers sort of have sat up and gone. What is this thing? What is a PRM? What do I need to do? The system is changing into extended producer responsibilities. So the system we've been talking about is called produce responsibility and it's changing to extended produce responsibility. And whenever the government put the word extended in a piece of legislation, it just means you're all going to pay a lot more.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's exactly right. So they're predicting that it's going to be up to potentially a couple of billion, 2 billion pounds from what's currently costing the producers or UK manufacturers and sellers of packaging. 600 million, as we mentioned. So the brands effectively now will be a single point payment. So instead of having this shared responsibility that shares it amongst all of those filling the bottles of Pepsi, selling the bottles of Pepsi, manufacturing the bottles, it will actually just be the brand that's on it. So in that example we gave earlier, it will be whoever owns the Pepsi brand, that will pay. The reason for that is that it makes them wholly responsible for the packaging that they're sourcing. So hopefully they'll go and speak to their supply chains to say we need to make this more recyclable, we need to make this lighter, we need to change the material so that it's more infinitely recyclable, for example. so the hope there is that pinning it on one actor will mean that they have a bigger responsibility to change things. But at the same time there will still be this PRN system that we talked about because you still need to pay the recyclers for doing their bit of the recycling.

James Piper: And when you say brands, Robbie, you also mean like the brands in a supermarket. So where Sainsburys or Tesco have an own brand product, they would be the brand owner in that regard.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, thats right. So its not like the retailers get off scot free, its just that the branded products, Marmite, Pepsi, Heinz, those will be taken by those brands. And then the taste, the difference finest, in the Sainsbury's and Tesco's example, they will be responsible for financing, the collection of that material.

James Piper: Raoul, you talk about the system being 2 billion pounds. So that's a big shift, up from 600 million. And really the reason this is happening is because the government is saying that brands should pick up the cost of all of our at home collections, right? So every time we put a bin out every week it's my bin day, as you know, because that's when we record. Every week we put our bin. People started wishing me happy. Bin day, by the way. you know, I said it like episode two. I said, it's my bin day. And then people now message me on socials going, happy bin day. So thanks, everyone, I really like it. but we put our bins out every week and that obviously has a cost of a council. The government have added all of that up and gone. We think that's about 2 billion pounds. So we're going to ask the brands to pay that 2 billion, is that right?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's exactly right. And so trying to work out how to share that cost, for all of the collections, because the brands are kind of agnostic about where does it get picked up and where does it go, whether it's in the southeast or the northwest or in Scotland or in Wales, it's a uk wide system, so it will have to finance all of those councils picking up, importantly, just packaging. Remember, we have other things picked up, like news and pamphlets and newspapers, magazines, etcetera. Those won't be included in the costs, but mostly, as people will know, it's packaging that we're getting picked up from home and the brands will, from 2025, start to pick up those costs.

Government announces modulated fee system for different material types for recycling

James Piper: Ok. And we're talking about this. But the reason we thought, actually, we should put this on our agenda quite soon, other than it being just important legislation for us all to understand, is that the base fees have just been announced, so this system is running on this kind of modulated fee system and

00:30:00

James Piper: the government have just announced how that 2 billion is going to get split up by the different material types.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And so in the first iteration, what they're doing is saying that if you sell aluminium cans, this is how much you're going to pay versus a glass bottle, and they're trying to recoup the money based on what material you sell. And in the future, and it hasn't quite been decided yet, but it will be more granular than simply what material was it? It will be what material was it, and was it a recyclable version of that material? Some plastics are easily recyclable and some are not. but that will come in future years, in 2026. 2027.

James Piper: So I noted in the base fees, they talked about high, medium and low. What does that mean then?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, so at the moment, they're still doing modelling, getting the costs from the local authorities. So the government don't actually know the exact cost for running the collections in the UK waste management system. And the more data that they get from local authorities, the more accurate they can be about exactly how much you'll pay for each material. So it's going to be updated, ah, again in the next month or two. And what we'll see is that range of costs, the low, medium and high, will narrow down until the brands can get a very clear cost of how much it's going to, cost them in 2025.

James Piper: Interesting. Okay, so when I read it, I thought that low, medium and high was the modulated fee. So it's just actually that the government don't know how much the system's going to cost.

Robbie Staniforth: That's right, yeah.

James Piper: Great. Okay, so that modulated fee thing is really important that we all understand. So the idea is if you have a, as you've explained, I'll just summarise again. if you have a plastic tray that's like made of clear plastic and one made of black plastic, the black plastic is harder to recycle. That's going to be a trash talk for us in the future. Black plastic is harder to recycle than clear. So, in theory, the government will charge more to the black plastic than the clear plastic. Is that right? It's done on like colour material type recyclability.

Robbie Staniforth: Basically they haven't made the final decision on the exact characteristics. But you mentioned recyclability. That is the factor that it will be defined on. So if it's very easily and readily and widely recycled, it will have a lower fee and therefore there will be an incentive for the brands to use those kinds of packaging. whereas if it is very hard to recycle, stroke impossible to recycle, maybe lots of complicated paper and plastic and aluminium materials all smushed together in one packaging item, then it's likely that will attract a higher fee and be a, disincentivization for using that. And hopefully brands will start to move out of those types of packaging formats.

James Piper: What I find interesting about this is when Europe have talked about extended produce responsibility in the past, because this is something that's coming across all of Europe. The idea was that we as consumers would experience a different price. So if we were in the supermarket and we were choosing between two products and one was in a harder to recycle packaging and one was in easier, those should be priced differently, and then that would mean that we're more likely to pick the item that has better packaging. That's how in theory it should work. But of course that's the same as like the sugar tax. If I think back to when the sugar tax was introduced, it was meant to be that when you bought a full fat or high sugar, drink, you would pay more than if you bought a diet one. And the reality is the companies have just sort of spread that cost and very few places now would you pay a premium for something that isn't diet? So we're not experiencing that sugar tax. That sugar tax has just been picked up by the companies. Do you think that's what's going to happen here? The companies are just going to swallow the cost and we're just not even going to notice that it's been implemented?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, they might spread it so thinly across everything that you don't notice the really unrecyclable packaging items getting a lot more expensive than their recyclable equivalents. So it's likely they will embed the cost, because remember these big, bad brands who we say, you're putting unrecyclable packaging onto the market, aren't you a terrible company? We as, citizens in the UK are buying those products. So it's not as simple as saying it's all of the brand's fault, it's actually, if people buy those products, it's all of our problem. And it's very oversimplified to say, the brands should be doing all of the hard work. They can do better, for sure, but it's not all up to them. it's also us voting with our feet, if you like, and choosing better source products, with better packaging.

EPR extended produce responsibility is the new system for waste management

James Piper: So let me ask the question that every listener or most listeners would be thinking, Robbie, am I about to get a saving on my council tax? Because suddenly my council isn't having to pay for waste management?

Robbie Staniforth: One word, two letter answer? No.

James Piper: Yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: No, it's very unlikely.

James Piper: really.

Robbie Staniforth: This is shifting the cost burden across from just general taxation into, brands, and then it will be passed on through the goods and services that we buy, which is good, ultimately, because it's a sort of pay as you go mechanism. If you use lots of packaging, for example, have lots of Amazon parcels delivered to your home, the costs for all of those parcels are going to be embedded and you're going to have a more full bin than your next door neighbour, who theoretically is going to be not picking up that cost that's embedded into all of those cardboard boxes. Raoul?

James Piper: Yeah, I do think that's fairer, that obviously councils are going to save money here, which I guess is a good thing, and they'll redistribute that into other areas. But I think it's just, let's not shy away from that, that is an important part of it. So just to summarise then, EPR extended produce responsibility is the new system. It sort of started now, hasn't it? We're doing the data work for it, but payments start next year. So produce responsibility has been this kind of supply chain system where the cost has been spread across the supply chain, very fluctuating in price, as I said, 30 million to 600 million. We are moving to a system that is far more expensive, up to like 2 billion pounds in the UK. Moving to a system that is far more expensive and focus solely on the brand. So suddenly the brand's bills are going to go up significantly and then they will be driving for better packaging because the cost that they pay is dependent on how recyclable their packaging is.

Robbie Staniforth: That's exactly it.

James Piper: Is that a summary of how it all works?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, great summary. And that's just one part of the, suite of packaging legislation that the government's bringing forward. There's also a plastic packaging tax, which I'm sure we'll talk about at, some other time. So that is a genuine tax. There's talk of a deposit return scheme by 2027. So that's on beverage containers. So just like when you go to mainland Europe, Germany is a classic example that gets used. You pay a deposit when you buy a drink and then you get it back when you return the bottle or can. And, also the final piece of legislation, the fourth one, is simpler recycling. And what that's going to do, and we'll talk about it in future episodes, is it's going to standardise the things that can be collected from our homes. And importantly, James, that means your mother in law is not going to keep bringing you waste that we're going to be talking about in the next session. I think, because she will be able to collect exactly the same stuff, wherever it is that she lives, as you will be able to in Bristol.

James Piper: Amazing. That will be good. So I think we'll talk about each. We're going to kind of spread out the legislation episodes because while I'm sure we're making them interesting, and I hope you found the section interesting, the reality is they're not as interesting as a Taylor Swift concert. So I think we'll just spread out the legislation episodes. But it is really a important to us to understand, for us to understand how waste management works. So hopefully this is a useful starter for that rubbish. Or not.

Robbie Staniforth: I've been thinking about this one, James.

James Piper: Oh, have you? Oh, well, this is helpful.

Robbie Staniforth: No, just the title, actually, not the subject matter. do you listen to the off menu podcast very frequently? Yeah. So it's Ed Gamble and the other guy is James a caster.

James Piper: Pop it on bread. Robbie, I've always wanted to say exactly.

Robbie Staniforth: What I've been thinking. Oh, I'm glad you've been thinking that too. Rubbish or not.

James Piper: Oh, it's nice. Rubbish or not. Rubbish or not. Why? Just shouted at you?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, just shout it at me.

James Piper: Yeah, I m feel like we, you know, we might get in trouble. Oh, this is actually quite funny. This is genuinely live. I'm just watching our CEO through the window there. Okay, surety CEO, who's just literally put some receipts on the floor and is photographing them, I assumed, for his expenses. And, this, rubbish or not this week, is receipts. That was so funny. I looked around and there they were. Receipts just all over the floor. So, good. He's doing expenses. He'll be listening to this. well done. well, we use 11.2 billion receipts each year in the UK, which I find mad. Like, the trouble is I always say no to having one, but they print it anyway. And I just wish there was a way of saying, you know, I like the self serve checkouts where you say no and then it doesn't get printed, but often it just gets printed whether I want it or not.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. it's like one of those things where sometimes you get asked, do you need your receipt? And that isn't the printing thing, that's putting it in the bin or giving it to you in your hand so that you can leave a few seconds earlier. And it's like something doesn't quite feel right about that.

James Piper: Yeah. And in a study by businesswaste dot co dot UK comma, 95% of people thought they were recyclable, which in a little bit of a callback, is the exact same amount of energy that saved from recycling an aluminium can. That's nice, isn't it?

Robbie Staniforth: 95% is sprinkled throughout the

00:40:00

Robbie Staniforth: episode.

James Piper: Yeah. So 95% of people, unfortunately, were wrong. Receipts are, ah, rubbish and not recyclable.

Robbie Staniforth: And, ah, the reason that they're not recyclable is because they're printed on thermal paper. so basically the printer is actually inkless. They use heat to, print on the receipt and these chemicals that are used in the paper and to make, that heat based mark make the whole thing not recyclable.

James Piper: There are actually a few places that print on normal paper now. And, you can tell because, thermal paper is quite shiny. You can imagine it's quite thin and shiny.

Top tip for working out whether a receipt is thermal m or not

Although we did have someone write in this week to say, we were talking about corks, weren't we, in a previous episode? And she was saying, I can't tell the difference between a normal and a synthetic cork. And, I've got a feeling that receipts are, a little bit more complicated in terms of working out whether it's thermal m or not. So, here's my top tip, which I checked on a John Lewis receipt this morning to cheque. This works. you can scratch your fingernail on the receipt and if black ink appears as you're doing that, then it is thermal paper. So I tested this morning, I scratched my fingernail on a receipt and black lines appeared and I was like, okay, that's thermal paper. So this one's actually easier than cork to work out.

Robbie Staniforth: Whoa. Great test. Very good. And was that the heat of your nail? You really got to go fast, correct?

James Piper: No, you don't have to go fast, but it is the heat of your hands. But yeah, you don't have to go fast. It just, just, just put a bit of pressure on and you'll see it change colour.

Robbie Staniforth: Top tip. Unfortunately, I was in the 95% of people, so I'm supposed to be an expert on this.

James Piper: Oh, dear. Now you know, the more you know.

Robbie takes your rubbish question on trash talk each week

Okay, onto our rubbish question. So each week we get a question from a listener and we have had loads of people write in asking about why cucumbers are wrapped in plastic Robbie. That's like a. Ah, it's all. People always talk about cucumbers, but we have had quite a few emails about that, so I think we're going to cover that on trash talk. Might. I'd not. I'm reluctant to promise anything because I keep changing the order of things. But maybe we'll cover that next week unless something else comes up.

Weve has a question from mother in law about plastic recycling

In the meantime, I do have a question from my mother in law. so, hi. Mary and I saw her at the weekend. She joined us at Highclere Castle and did give me a bag of plastic. She was very excited, having listened to episode one. Got the shout out. She was thrilled to give me another bag of plastic, which has gone out in today's bin day. Obviously, she's giving me her plastic, her rigid plastic, because they don't take it. They take bottles, I think, in Winchester and, certain types of plastic, but there's a lot they don't take. And she's giving me pots, tubs and trays basically. so they obviously take very specific type of plastic, which is a bit frustrating. I think if you can take a pet bottle, you should, in theory, be able to take the rest of the plastic, which really is her question. Her view is that, based on what Weve said on the podcast, a smurf should be able to handle that plastic. So should she just ignore her council advice and just put the plastic in the bin?

Robbie Staniforth: yeah, I think that would be a bad idea. There is a reason that the councils have set up the service in the way that they have, and so she could potentially be contaminating other types of plastic, making other things less recyclable. So for now, I would advise her to follow the council's advice. call back to what we mentioned earlier about simpler recycling. Soon all councils will be collecting the exact same plethora of materials, and we'll talk about that in a future episode. And so this problem is going to go away in the next, sort of five years, I would say. It will become more standardised across the country, England, but also across all the Eudez, the UK nations. so I think that at the moment, she probably should still be separating them and giving them to her dutiful son in law.

James Piper: I will let her know. and I'll look forward to simpler recycling.

Are you allowed to move waste between councils as a business

It did provoke a very interesting conversation between you and me, though, Robbie, because obviously she's bringing me waste. We actually don't know the answer to this question, so we'll just summarise it and then we're going to ask our listeners, because we know we've got people listening who will know the answer to this. Can someone write in with the answer so that we can talk about it? Because I cant find anything online. So are you allowed to move waste between councils to transport waste as a business, you need a waste carriers licence, which we were joking. Maybe she should register as a waste carrier. And she almost went through the process of doing that because it is free if its your own waste. But I dont think she should do that because thats for business. So I dont think she needs to get a waste carrier's licence. So I think you can move waste around yourself as a person, like. Because if I want to take my rubbish to my local tip, obviously I just do that and I don't think about that. So we definitely don't need a waste carrier's licence, but I pay a council tax in Bristol for my waste. And if everyone moved their waste around the country to different councils, then the council is picking up an unfair burden based on the council tax that they're receiving and the amount

00:45:00

of waste I can possibly get through. So if like 20 people were doing what my mother in law does and bringing me loads of plastic, then obviously that's going to have a significant detriment to Bristol council or positive if it's worth lots of money. But ultimately someone's losing out, someone's going to have to spend more money sorting it. And you wouldn't be allowed to turn up to a random tip in a different city. You'd have to bring id, you have to book in a slot, particularly in Bristol. You have to live in Bristol, and that's because our council tax funds it. So I just have this question. Are you allowed to move waste between councils? Are people allowed to bring me waste from a different council when they're not paying council tax in that district? I can't find anything online that says you can't. But it just feels to me like if this was happening on mass, which it won't, but it might after this podcast. But if it was happening on mast, what would that actually mean? So we're calling out to our listeners, if you can help us with that, that would be amazing because we just don't know the answer. So, as always, if you have a rubbish or not or a question for us, just write in our email address is talkingrubbish. Oh, my God, yes. No, James got the address wrong.

Robbie Staniforth: This is a great day.

James Piper: I got it wrong at the start of the episode. Robbie, I'm going to hand over to you for the details.

Robbie Staniforth: The email that you can use is talkingrubbishpodcastmail.com. or you can contact us on our socialsubbishpodcast.

James Piper: I can tell you, all I wish is that Gmail still had available either talkingrubbishmail or rubbishpodcast at Gmail because the fact that they're different is causing me this world of problems. But anyway, there we are. Thank you, Robbie. Well done. Thank you for helping me out there. Thank you all for listening, as always. We really, really, really appreciate it. Remember to leave us a review if you can, if you're listening to this on a platform that is reviewable. And we will see you next week.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, hopefully we can get more than 95% correct next week. Bye.

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