(GUF) COUNCILS LOVE LITTER

Richmond upon Thames - A woman fined £150 for pouring leftover coffee down a drain. The fine was later cancelled when the council admitted her appeal would “likely have succeeded.” The Guardian - link

Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council - Accused of “unjustified” fly-tipping fines after outsourcing enforcement to a private firm. Residents were fined for trivial or accidental acts. The Guardian - link

Hertfordshire - A man fined £500 for fly-tipping when an envelope blew out of his bin. Reduced to £100 on appeal. The Guardian - link

Manchester City Council - A non-smoker fined £433 for dropping a cigarette butt he never dropped and wasn’t even there. Conviction later overturned. The Guardian - link

Aberdeen City Council - Hired a private firm whose wardens were accused of “ambushing” residents and issuing on-the-spot fines for things like dropped receipts or wind-blown litter. The Scottish Sun - link

Medway Council - Publicly criticised after multiple prosecutions for minor waste incidents, with fines of up to £1,000 and “cost-neutral” enforcement partnerships. BBC - link

Reading Borough Council - Rolled out seven-day environmental enforcement patrols run by a private contractor, funded through fines — up to £500 for litter, £1,000 for fly-tipping. Reading.gov.uk - link - Reading Borough Council incorrectly fines - link

Bedford Borough Council - Issued heavy penalties for small-scale waste incidents, including residents fined when items were stolen from their bins and dumped elsewhere. Bedford.gov.uk - link

In UK law and government guidance, local authorities are not permitted to use enforcement powers (like fines or penalty notices) as a means of generating income.

Statutory framework

The Environmental Protection Act 1990, Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 and Environmental Offences (Fixed Penalties) (England) Regulations 2017 give councils the power to issue fixed penalty notices (FPNs) for littering, fly-tipping and similar offences but those same frameworks along with statutory guidance from DEFRA are explicit that penalties are intended as deterrents, not as revenue sources.

DEFRA’s 'Fixed Penalty Notices: Guidance on the Use of Penalty Receipts (England)' states: 'The purpose of fixed penalty notices is to offer an offender the opportunity to discharge liability for an offence, not to raise revenue' and 'Local authorities must not set fixed penalties at levels that are designed to raise income or to fill funding gaps.' (DEFRA Guidance, 2018 update – sections 3.3 and 3.6).

If councils do receive money from fines, the law only allows that income to be used for litter and environmental enforcement functions, or supporting related services (street cleansing, waste management, environmental education, etc.). It cannot be diverted into general funds or used as a revenue target.

The problem is that many councils outsource enforcement to private contractors who take a commission or payment per fine issued which indirectly creates a financial incentive to issue more fines even though councils themselves aren’t supposed to do so for revenue. This practice has been heavily criticised by The Manifesto Club, The Local Government Ombudsman, and MPs during the 2022 Public Accounts Committee review of enforcement contracts.

Private enforcement contracts on fine-based funding models leads to overreach, error and erosion of trust. When environmental enforcement becomes a revenue stream, justice becomes collateral. litter - link - more like this (rubbish) - link

(GUF) RICHMOND UPON KAFKA

When in Richmond upon Thames, if you ever find yourself with a coffee, tea or any drink you just can’t finish the council advises you to pour it into a litter bin where it will mix nicely with dry material ensuring that nothing in that bin can be recycled because nothing says 'environmental enforcement' quite like creating contamination on purpose.

This followed a £150.00 fine issued to Ms Yesilyurt for tipping the remains of her coffee into a roadside drain; a fine the Council has since cancelled, admitting her appeal would 'likely have succeeded'. 

Behind this absurdity lies something darker. Many councils now outsource 'environmental policing' to private enforcement firms whose success and payment often depend on the number and value of fines issued so it’s little wonder we’re seeing scattergun enforcement using legislation written to target industrial polluters being used against people with takeaway cups.

When profit becomes the driver of compliance, common sense tends to be the first casualty.

This overextension of environmental law is becoming all too common: legislation written to tackle commercial pollution (illegal deposit of waste on land not licensed to accept it) is now being used to police everyday behaviour. It’s not enforcement; it’s embarrassment and the councils perpetuating this culture of surveillance and overreach deserve to be named, challenged, and held to account. Link - Kafka - link - more like this (litter) - link - more like this (legislation) - link

GUF) DAILY DIETARY CARBON ALLOWANCE

There's a photograph of a sandwich doing the rounds on 'x' showing a sandwich with a label - “Eating this uses 8.1% of your daily dietary carbon allowance” .

It’s a subtle shift from informing to influencing wrapped in eco-language. That label isn’t about data, it’s about behavioural steering. It implies you have a daily carbon quota (which you don’t) and eating this sandwich is using up part of it (like sinning in grams). You should therefore feel something - guilt, virtue, restraint.

It’s not aimed at people tracking their emissions; it’s aimed at the already eco-conscious, the ones who might pause at the counter and think twice. It works by moral association, not mathematical precision and that’s the worrying bit. Food is already moralised enough through calories, fat, sugar and now this adds a new layer of worthiness. “Eat less carbon” quickly turns into “feel bad for lunch.”

Useful awareness tool? Maybe, but creeping behavioural conditioning - that's a definite. The best option for you, the planet, and Raynor's is, don't buy it, don't eat it, get a guilt ridden cheeseburger and enjoy - link - More like this - link - More like this - link - More like this (carbon) - link

(GUF) SAF - MYTHICAL AVIATION

For years, Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) has been pitched as the saviour of air travel’s climate footprint. Politicians point to it, airlines market it and investors circle it. But scratch the surface and the maths, physics and logistics tell a different story - SAF will never scale to the percentages that really matter - never ever.

Aviation burns approximately 350 million tonnes of jet fuel every year. To make 30% of that SAF would mean producing somewhere between 100 - 110 million tonnes annually. Putting that in perspective, today, SAF contributes less than 1% of jet fuel demand.

HEFA (Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids) made from used cooking oil, tallow and vegetable oils is today’s dominant SAF pathway. It’s by far the easiest to commercialise but utterly capped by feedstock. Jet cut from HEFA equates to approximately 15 - 35% of product, so to supply 30% SAF, we’d need 300 - 700 million tonnes of waste lipids every year.

When you run HEFA through a refinery process, you don’t get 100% jet fuel out the other end. You get a slate of products including renewable diesel (HVO) (the majority product) naphtha (lighter hydrocarbons). Jet fuel range (SAF) is only a slice of the barrel, so if you put in 100 tonnes of used cooking oil, you might get 15 - 25 tonnes jet fuel (the “jet cut”). For this reason, HEFA is a side-stream supplier of SAF, not a dominant source. Even if you maxed out all global used cooking oil and fats, most of it comes out as road diesel, not jet.

Global used cooking oil supply is currently around 30 million tonnes. Add in animal fats and you still miss the target by a factor of 10.

Another source of SAF is the gasification/Fischer Tropsch route which promises jet fuel from crop residues, forestry offcuts and municipal waste. On paper it works (in practice) although the yield is around 0.1 tonne jet per tonne of dry biomass, so to hit 30% SAF you'd need around 1 billion tonnes of biomass every year; biomass that's also needed in power generation, heating, soil health and has multiple material uses.

Even if technically viable, mobilising and processing that volume sustainably is closer to fantasy than policy.

Lastly, there's the Power-to-Liquid (PtL) and the energy maths bites hard; SAF needs 23–28 kWh per litre of jet so a meaningful 30% SAF (120–130 billion litres) would need approximately 2,700 - 3,500 TWh per year which equates to about 10% of total global electricity generation in 2023.

In addition, there's the 400 million tonnes of CO₂ (estimated) to be captured and processed which ultimately means that building that scale of renewables, electrolysers, CO₂ capture and PtL plants is not a policy ambition, it’s a civilisational undertaking.

Even the EU’s bold ReFuelEU regulation only mandates 6% SAF by 2030. Current build-outs globally don’t get close to double digits. 30% is not on the map. Not in the 2030s, not in the 2040s. More like this (flying) - link - more like this (SAF) - link

(GUF) BRITAIN'S PLASTIC INDUSTRY NEEDS PPWR

Right now, the UK’s Plastic Packaging Tax (PPT) puts a flat £210.82 per tonne (2025 rate) on plastic packaging with <30% recycled content which sounds good on paper but in practice it’s a very blunt tool.

It raises revenue but doesn’t scale supply of recycled feedstock. It punishes brands even when food contact regulations make 30% recycled impossible and it's led to paperwork gymnastics rather than packaging redesign. 

Meanwhile, the EU’s Packaging & Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is pushing for mandatory recycled content targets by polymer & format (PET, HDPE, PP, flexibles etc.). Eco-design rules include recyclability, disassemblability, colour restrictions and label guidance and is harmonised EPR with modulated fees to reward good design.

The UK simply doesn't need a plastic tax that punishes failure. We need a plastic framework that guarantees success and should dump PPT and adopt PPWR before we see the rest of our plastic recycling industry infrastructure close down for good.

If the UK swapped its Plastic Packaging Tax for a PPWR-style 30% recycled content mandate, the impact would be transformative. Recycled HDPE use would triple to nearly 400,000* tonnes a year; LDPE would quadruple to around 350,000* tonnes and PP would explode six-fold, also to nearly 400,000* tonnes per annum. (*estimated).

PET is already close to target, but the others show the prize is not just revenue for the Treasury but real markets, real investment, and real circularity.

PPT is a stick with no carrot; it raises money but doesn’t fix the system. PPWR is system change; It aligns design, recycling capacity and recycled content demand - it creates a market. PPWR - link - More like this (PPWR) - link - more like this (EU) - link

(GUF) TOOTHPASTE TUBE RECYCLING

I’m a cynic, my default position is “I don’t believe that" and I don’t think I’m alone. Most people, when it comes to recycling assume: “They don’t really recycle it, do they? It all just goes in the same hole in the ground.” 

Now, WRAP, the toothpaste brands and the usual recycling cheerleaders are all celebrating; toothpaste tubes are “now recyclable.” - the OPRL logos are on the packs, the adverts are running, the PR machine is humming.

But let’s not take them at their word; if toothpaste tubes are truly recyclable alongside HDPE milk and detergent bottles, then surely there’s a UK reprocessor already accepting them - which plants are actually sorting, stripping, washing and pelletising them into new plastic; where’s the video showing toothpaste tubes running down the line and coming out as useful feedstock because that’s the missing piece in this story.

The circular economy doesn’t end with a logo on the pack, it ends when those packs become new products and until we can name names and point to facilities, all we’re applauding is potential, not practice, and in recycling, potential doesn’t pay the bills or close the loop.

So show us the tubes; show us the process; show us the proof; then, and only then, we’ll celebrate with you because if no one can show evidence it’s happening, the risk is people stop believing and that’s a credibility gap our industry can’t afford. Talking Rubbish - link - more like this (recycling) - link