104. Why flexible plastic might never be recycled
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Hello, welcome to Talking Rubbish, our 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 the delay to flexible plastic collections. Are paper coffee cups rubbish or not? I have a question about items covered by EPR and how will instant coffee be packaged in our dream shop? I'm James Piper and I'm joined by Robbie Staniforth, my Far From Rubbish friend. Good morning, Robbie. Hey, James. How are you today? Very good. Many happy returns for a recent birthday. Yes, it was yesterday. It was very good. We went to the cinema. Oh, yes, to see. Toy Story 5. Ah, very good. Now, you might think we took our young son with us, but no, we dropped him at nursery and it was just me and Ellie having a lovely time.
Great. And, yeah, the cinema was empty. It was just us.
What is the government’s new deadline for flexible‑plastic kerbside collections and why does it matter?
Hot day. We got away with it. It was great. It was like a private showing. Amazing. Yeah. What a treat for your birthday. The only annoying thing was I ordered a coffee. Of course. They had to bring it free because the coffee machine, because no one had turned up to the cinema yet. They hadn't turned on the coffee machine. Oh, they had to let it warm up for like 20 minutes. And we were running quite late. So I said, well, look, I've got to go in. Are you okay to bring the coffee? Or I can come out and get it. He said, look, I'll bring the coffee.
Wow. What a service. Cinema to yourself. Coffee brought to your chair.
I know. They serve the coffee, but the coffee was served in paper cups. Ooh. As you know. I mean, we're both really into reusable packaging, but I've long felt cinemas should never serve single use. Yeah, it's not going anywhere. It's completely pointless. So I was actually mildly miffed, but the film was very good. I had a lovely time. It was a good birthday. Oh, great. Okay. Only mildly spoiled by the single use cup. Trash Talk. Our Trash Talk today asks the question, which is quite a depressing question, why might we never recycle flexible plastic at scale? We're asking this question because on Friday, Defra announced that they would be delaying the rollout of mandatory collections of flexible plastic from the planned 2027 all the way to 2030.
Yeah, I know. It's not just like, oh, we're not quite ready yet. I'll give you an extra six months, a year.
It's like three years. Three years. It's a long time. And it's a decision that has hit the Talking Rubbish co-hosts surprisingly hard, I think.
Very hard, yeah. I actually happened to be in Vienna when the news dropped.
Oh, yes.
And so I was at an open-air opera when the text message came in.
Very nice.
A tear shed in my eye. Not because of the opera, but because of the news that I got from a colleague saying, literally, it's just gone into the news media. They've pushed it back to 2030. And I was just head in hands. Couldn't concentrate on the opera, actually. Just absolutely disconsolate. I couldn't believe it.
We have, ooh, first use of disconsolate on this podcast, very nice. Yeah, and it is worth noting, I mean, look, it's frustrating.
Yeah.
And we're going to go through it today.
How does the 2027‑to‑2030 delay create a chicken‑and‑egg problem for recycling infrastructure?
And just to address kind of the elephant in the room that we've been working on for a long time, so we are very biased towards feeling like this should happen. I think it is worth just saying that we are not financially biased towards this. I actually think... Our company and our work will continue more by a delay. So actually, financially, we're probably better off from a delay. But emotionally, we are not better off from a delay. We feel very strongly that launching flexible plastic collections was the right thing to do. But I do just want to make sure people understand, it's not like we've got any skin in the game.
Yeah, it's not that we've set up and built a recycler or anything and we're now sitting on the plant like they are in Australia thinking, you've got to feed the plant, you've got to make sure that there's more material to be recycled. But as you say, emotionally, we've talked for many years, the two of us, long before the podcast, about the fact that...
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:50
2
What is the government’s new deadline for flexible‑plastic kerbside collections and why does it matter?
0:50–3:10
3
How does the 2027‑to‑2030 delay create a chicken‑and‑egg problem for recycling infrastructure?
3:10–9:55
4
Why can’t recyclers build large‑scale flexible‑plastic plants without a guaranteed feedstock?
9:55–20:01
5
What are the financial implications of recycling flexible plastic versus burning or landfilling it?
20:01–27:32
6
Is a Starbucks paper coffee cup recyclable or should it be treated as waste?
27:32–35:32
7
Are nitrous‑oxide canisters considered packaging under the UK EPR rules?
35:32–41:39
8
How could instant‑coffee be packaged in a future “dream shop” to maximise recyclability?
41:39–59:40
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Talking Rubbish - The Recycling Podcast
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106. Why your fridge is making you waste food
105. The free food app rescuing millions of meals, with Tessa Clarke from Olio
103. PFAS - what you need to know about forever chemicals
102. Greenwashing exposed - what Adidas, Uniqlo and Calvin Klein got wrong
101. PPWR - why packaging will never be the same