James Piper

speaker

7,697 appearances 12 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 13 Aug

James Piper’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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Talking Rubbish - The Recycling Podcast · 106. Why your fridge is making you waste food · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

Yes, she was one.

Therese Coffey.

Rubbish question.

Someone on YouTube commented on our flexible plastic episode to say, is it time to accept that some materials aren't viable to recycle despite best endeavors and that we need a fundamental packaging shift?

Surely the cartons example that we gave shows that even by providing the feedstock, it doesn't guarantee an end market.

If materials had value, the market would have invested and created a viable market slash end product since the announcement of simpler recycling almost 10 years ago.

A really good question, basically saying, why do we use flexible plastic?

Even if we collect it, it's not viable to recycle it.

And I agree with that.

As we said in the episode, it is not economical to recycle flexible plastic.

It never will be.

It's so expensive.

Yeah.

The challenge is if you say, look, we're going to ban flexible plastic, there's two ways that can go.

Either you're going to create packaging that is very recyclable.

So more aluminium, more glass, heavier packaging.

The whole reason we use pouches is because they're lightweight, super efficient, really quite effective pieces of packaging.

But there's that paradox of the heavier and more difficult something is to create, the more likely it is to be recycled.

Because why would you spend loads of money getting it out of the ground if you can just melt it over here?

You've invested a lot up front or whatever, so you want to recoup it.

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