(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

(GUF) DIGITAL WASTE TRACKING

If we mix UK reality with lessons from France’s EPR roll-outs and South Korea’s Allbaro system, the idea of rolling out Digital Waste Tracking over the next couple of years in the UK is laughable. Infact, not even this decade - the honesty being that cradle to grave coverage is a 2030s project.

With no receiving data until late 2025, any IT project of this size will then need at least 12-18 months of live bedding-in before phase 2 (carriers/brokers) which currently has no date and is subject to funding and review in September 2025. DEFRA has only promised 'a decision' in 2025, not a start date.

The earliest realistic law-making window is around 2027, which means mandatory use couldn’t begin before late 2028 or 2029 and that’s if everything goes flawlessly. Phase 3 (producers and full cradle-to-grave coverage) would still need new secondary legislation and a national behaviour-change campaign, with no formal commitment yet in place.

There are a couple of International benchmarks - France (EPR + TrackDéchets) - pilot work started 2018; hazardous waste tracking went live 2021; full sector coverage is still expanding in 2024–25. It took roughly 6 - 7 years from pilot to broad mandatory coverage.

South Korea (Allbaro) - announced mid-1990s; national hazardous & municipal tracking fully embedded by early 2000s, it took approximately 10 years from concept to near-total cradle-to-grave reporting. Both countries had stronger centralised governance and more consistent funding than the UK typically musters.

The UK has an appalling track record when it comes to implementation of waste and sustainability legislation. Extended Producer Responsibility (packaging) slipped from 2023 → 2025+ (and still not fully operational). The Deposit Return Scheme has bounced through four separate target years. Digital Waste Tracking itself has already moved from 'April 2025' to 'April 2026 service / Oct 2026 mandate'.

A two year delay is practically built into every big environmental IT policy. Plausible UK rollout pathway (realistic, not optimistic).

If everything ran like a German train, maybe 2029. If it runs like a typical UK waste policy (think Simpler Recycling or DRS) expect early 2030s for true  'everyone in the chain' coverage. That’s not pessimism, just pattern recognition - big IT + fragmented industry + shifting governments = slow, stop-start progress. 

So the smart money is on Phase 1 bedding-in through the late 2020s and full cradle-to-grave tracking no earlier than the next Parliament after 2030. More like this (electronic tagging) - link - more like this (Allbaro) - link 

(GUF) EU LEGISLATION

EU environmental law is built like a cathedral; many architects, countless masons, trades and an army of inspectors.

Each new directive draws on 27 member states’ ministries, civil-service teams, scientific committees, the European Environment Agency, Parliament committees, industry bodies, NGOs and public consultations in every language. The result is legislation that’s broad, stress-tested, and difficult to pick apart because it’s been hammered into shape by thousands of contributors.

By contrast, the UK process is currently more like a well-meaning garden shed project: a handful of Whitehall departments and Westminster committees, fewer expert layers and far smaller stakeholder input. It can (in theory) move quicker but the trade off is reach and resilience; policies risk being narrower, easier to lobby, less future-proof or repeatedly kicked down the road.

EU waste, reuse, and circular-economy measures typically arrive more robust, all-encompassing and precisely defined than their UK counterparts. When more minds build the framework, the structure stands stronger and to dismiss that body of work on grounds of geography alone isn’t sovereignty, it’s self-sabotage.

The environment doesn’t stop at Dover and neither should our policy.
Adopting EU waste and circular economy legislation isn’t about waving a blue flag; it’s about cost, access and timing. EU legislation 1 - link - EU legislation 2 - link - more like this - link

(GUF) LITTLE BOTTLES

Well done to South Australia for banning those little plastic soy fish that swim straight from sushi trays into landfill but the EU is going even further.

Across the EU, hotels supply approximately 10 billion single-use hotel mini-toiletries (those 30 ml shampoo and body-wash bottles) annually; in addition, food service supplies around 40 billion single-use condiment sachets (ketchup, mayo, sauce, etc) a year, most unrecyclable multi-layer films and the EU Packaging & Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is finally coming for the industry’s most convenient inconvenience.

Article 22 & Annex V targets single-use packaging for consumables used in the hospitality and food service sectors that can be reasonably replaced by reusable or refillable systems. Reuse systems (wall dispensers, pump bottles, refill stations) are documented to reduce waste by up to 90% per guest. It’s a clear signal that design-for-reuse is no longer optional.

With the ban taking effect gradually from 2030 (final Parliament text currently points to a 2030 full prohibition with some earlier targets for reuse roll-out), exemptions exist only if no hygiene-safe refill or reusable system exists.

The ban covers hotels, cruise lines, airlines, hostels, fast food, takeaways, event caterers, all brand owners & importers supplying the EU market (even UK exporters). Even if the UK diverges post-Brexit, exporters to the EU will need PPWR-compliant refill formats.

A big pat on the back for the EU is due (could be sooner) and a big wake up call to the UK is needed - there is no UK law exactly like the PPWR’s ban on mini toiletries & sachets ready (as far as I'm aware). PPWR - link - more like this - link

(GUF) BAEKELAND'S FOLLY

Outside of PET bottles and the odd bit of HDPE, recycling is smoke, mirrors and a big fat lucrative oil pipeline. Geneva proved just how divided things are; the EU, several African states and a Latin American coalition pushed for binding caps on virgin polymer whilst the US, China and petro-states cling to the stupid fantasy that recycling alone will save us.

When your flagship recyclers across the globe are openly admitting 'this isn’t viable at scale', you’d expect urgency to swing towards cutting output; instead, negotiators are being fed an escape hatch: 'if mechanical doesn’t work, maybe chemical recycling will save the day' - (spoiler alert) that's not a plan, that’s a stalling tactic.

Every tonne that isn’t recycled is a guaranteed sale of virgin resin and as long as oil stays cheap, petrochemical majors are laughing. They wrap it up in noble PR terms 'essential plastics' for health, food security, medicine etc while their social media pimps pump out sermons on the life-saving wonders of single-use. The hard truth is that 70–80% of plastics are functionally unrecyclable and when the treaty finally accepts that, maybe urgency could finally shift toward upstream measures; caps on virgin polymer, bans on design-for-waste formats and phase-outs of the worst offenders because if it dodges again, expect another decade of voluntary pledges 🥱 glossy PowerPoints and deeper fossil lock-in.

The oil industry hasn’t 'won' yet, but they’re playing the long game and every year of delay is another victory. The treaty could still matter hugely but only when the negotiators admit that they're treating lung cancer with cough syrup.

Designing and manufacturing a material with no end-of-life solution isn’t innovation, it’s selfish, cynical, and irresponsible. If companies are going to profit from plastics, they need to do one of two things - restrict production to polymers with a proven recycling route or pay directly for their destruction through incineration not by hiding behind some wreck of a convoluted EPR scheme.

Kicking the can down the road has kept producers comfortable since Leo Baekeland came up with Bakelite in 1907 but it’s buried the real cost in everyone else’s lap. If “circular economy” is to mean anything, it has to start with stopping the flow of materials that never had a chance of being circular in the first place. More like this (plastics) - link - they knew it was lies - link

(GUF) YOU MAKE IT, YOU UNMAKE IT

If you make it, you must unmake it.

We produce approximately 460 million tonnes of plastics a year, most with no credible exit strategy. It's time for a polymer antidote rule - every polymer must ship with a proven, scalable end-of-life “antidote” - a disassembly route, a safe chemical breakdown or a guaranteed reuse loop.

No antidote means no market access. Performance bonds, modulated EPR, Digital Product Passports, audited recovery at real-world scale. It's time the plastics industry stopped designing problems and started designing the solutions. (Science Direct) - link - more like this (plastics) - link - more like this (random) - link

(GUF) THE GENEVA PLASTICS THEATRE

The UN’s plastics summit in Geneva collapsed. The headlines say “failure,” but was there ever really a chance?

On one side, poorer 'politically unimportant' nations, many with little manufacturing, demanding caps on plastic production and curbs on toxic chemicals. On the other, the oil states and petrochemical giants such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, South Korea and the US whose profits are plastics.

That’s not a negotiation; that’s an attempted mugging in broad daylight, and the mugger has the lawyers, the lobbyists, and the money. We shouldn’t be surprised it failed, it was always going to. Asking oil-rich nations to sign away their own profit streams is like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. Instead, they offered the usual distraction: “Don’t worry about production, let’s talk about recycling.”

Meanwhile, global plastic output exceeds 470 million tonnes a year - of which approx. 428 million tonnes end up incinerated, landfilled, dumped, or leaked into the environment. Of the 9% allegedly recycled, much is “downcycled” into lower-grade products (hardly circular) -

So while poorer countries choke on the waste, richer oil states bank the cash and the “solution” is to have another round of talks, sometime, somewhere, maybe, yawn.

Unless there’s a mechanism that actually costs the petrochemical powers money when they keep the tap open, this treaty will be talked to death and while we wait, plastic will keep pouring into rivers, oceans, food chains, lungs, and bloodstreams.

This isn’t a treaty on plastics. It’s a treaty on power and until we call it that, we’re kidding ourselves. Flying thousands of delegates around the globe to “negotiate” an outcome that was never politically possible is theatre, not progress. Reappraisal is overdue because as long as we keep pretending these talks are about plastics, the real crisis; production, waste, health, climate, keeps accelerating, unchecked. Who makes plastic - link - plastic recycling - link - more like this (treaty) - link

(GUF) rPET

There simply isn’t enough recycled plastic to match the sky-high marketing claims flooding supermarket shelves. For rPET to be more than a PR badge, it needs to be available, affordable, and allocated strategically- not just to tick ESG boxes, but to serve genuine operational needs.

That means facing an uncomfortable truth: rPET needs more help. The market can’t meet current demand without intervention. If we’re serious about circularity, we need national or international systems to guarantee supply, stabilise prices, and direct rPET where it has the most impact. That may require subsidies, incentives or greater procurement mandates that give recycling infrastructure a fighting chance and make this green promise less of a mirage.

Right now, we’re pretending there’s a river of recycled plastic when it’s closer to a slow trickle and everyone’s fighting to bottle it. Even the most “green” multinationals, from P&G to Unilever, still operate on a volume-driven, high-turnover model that inherently conflicts with sustainability. The maths doesn’t lie: if every brand wants 50% rPET in their packaging, but there’s only enough for 15%, someone is left holding the virgin plastic.

If that means rPET must be artificially cheapened to keep both green credentials and operating budgets intact, so be it. A truly circular economy will never materialise if recycled materials are treated as a boutique option for marketing campaigns rather than a baseline feedstock for global supply chains - more like this (rPET) - link

(GUF) CIRCULARITY

(Inspiration - Leonora Carrington - link)

We’ve been talking about the Circular Economy for over a decade, yet in the UK, more than 55% of household waste still ends up in landfill or incineration. It’s in every strategy document, every conference keynote, every corporate ESG report but we’re still stuck in a linear system just with a new green halo - link

A real circular economy means products designed to be dismantled and reused; mandatory recycled content in all key materials (not just PET); repair and remanufacturing as the default, not the niche and 'waste' becoming feedstock, not landfill or ash.

Until it’s more expensive and inconvenient not to be circular, we’re just spinning plates - the same old plates - while our collection vehicles get pricier (now electric @ £420'000 each so we can feel good about the same journey) and yet we're still do nothing fundamentally different with the waste - link

This isn’t good enough - not for the UK, not for the planet, and not for the people working every day to fix a broken system.

Where are the mandatory take-back schemes - the regulated design-for-disassembly standards - the real-time digital tracking of waste flows - the repairability indexes on products that break the minute you glance at them and the procurement policies that ban buying the unfixable, the unrecyclable, the wilfully wasteful?

In the UK (globally) we need systems, rules, return paths and actual consequences for products that are designed to fail the planet.

Look at the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) - mandated by the EU (e.g. product passports, repairability, take-back) - whilst the UK has consulted... again and again - link

Design-for-disassembly - look at France’s AGEC law or Japan’s EPR for electronics - how circularity starts at the screwdriver - link

Right to Repair - which products actually come with parts, manuals, and affordable fixes? not many. The EU’s Right to Repair rules (adopted 2023) directly target premature obsolescence by requiring spare parts, repair information, and design-for-repair in certain products.

Procurement power - if institutions only bought circular, half the products on our company's 'Client Procurement Blacklist' would disappear overnight.

Take-back Schemes - voluntary schemes still dominate in the UK - the incinerators and landfills are very grateful for the steady business.

EPR with teeth - “Modulated fees” and “eco-design incentives” are still all talk without enforcement.

Until the UK stops circling the drain of voluntary pledges and catches up with the enforceable standards already rolling out in the EU, we’re not building a circular economy - we’re just polishing the linear one and pretending it’s round.

The last government/s kicked the cans down the road (a few feet). Several frameworks and reforms exist but without real-world enforcement - they delivered consultations over action, strategy over systems and voluntary flourishes over mandatory change - it time for action - now - the clock is ticking - more like this - link

(GUF) PLASTIC FANTASTIC

In 2023, EU mechanical plastics recycling volumes fell for the first time since 2018.

Major players such as ExxonMobil, Sabic, LyondellBasell, Versalis are reviewing or closing facilities because the market is being distorted by a wave of cheap imported virgin plastics, especially from Asia.

Recycled plastic: even when it’s higher quality and lower carbon is being priced out.

In early 2024, France proposed a ban on counting imported low-grade recyclate towards EU packaging targets. That’s not just policy fine-tuning; that’s the alarm bell ringing.

French recyclers call the influx an “existential threat” to Europe’s circular economy. Plastics Recyclers Europe says over 20% of all polymers used in the EU are now imported, virgin or recycled. Domestic recyclers are seeing volumes drop 5% under pricing pressure and dwindling competitiveness.

The truth is - until recycled content is mandated and cheap virgin imports are taxed back to reality, investing in polymer recycling is like betting on a horse that’s been strapped to the starting gate.

If Europe is serious, we need:

* Mandated recycled content across all polymers, not a PPT
* Plastic Packaging Tax reform – higher rates, wider scope
* Anti-dumping tariffs on under-priced virgin imports
* PRN system overhaul – stop rewarding exports over domestic reprocessing
* Real infrastructure investment tied to guaranteed offtake

Be warned - a petrochemical giant can collapse a foreign recycling market simply by flooding it with ultra-cheap virgin polymer. Sadly, this isn’t a hypothetical - the warning lights are already flashing in neon - plastic fantastic - link - news - link - more like this (plastic) - link

USED VAUXHALL - EDEN MOTOR GROUP - DON’T BOTHER

In 2023, we bought a 2019 Vauxhall from Eden Motor Group in Reading. I wish we hadn't.

□ Low mileage – just 14,000
□ Excellent condition
□ Good deal... or so we thought

Two weeks ago, after filling up with petrol, it leaked straight out all over the petrol station forecourt. A major safety hazard. The cause? A failed fuel tank – something you can’t see, can’t touch, and certainly wouldn’t expect to fail on a six-year-old car.

The part isn’t classified as a 'wear and tear' item – it’s structural and should last the lifetime of the vehicle.

Vauxhall’s response? - £1,665.00 to replace it.

▪︎ No apology - (it's out of warranty)
▪︎ No goodwill - (it's out of warranty)
▪︎ No responsibility - (it's out of warranty)

So if you’re considering a used Vauxhall, especially through Eden Motor Group and Spoticar, ask yourself this:

□ What happens when something goes wrong?
□ Is a manufacturer that shrugs off major faults really worth your money?

In our experience, Vauxhall’s customer care ends the moment your payment clears - this is a recurring fault - link - you'll need this link - where I'm at with this - link