<text date="02/08/2021" audio_length="1:27:26" focus_group_ID="FG5" no_participants="8" participant_source="CTS/FB" WTR_threshold="N/A" co-facilitator_present="no">

<Facilitator: Thank you everybody for coming. As you know, this is part of a project which looks to try and reduce reliance on single-use plastics. So the aim of the project is to try and develop reusable packaging systems. And my job, in particular, I'm a linguist so I'm basically seeking your views, what you think about plastics, what you think about reuse generally and there's no prior knowledge that's assumed about any of these, it's purely, you know, what you experience, you know, on a day-to-day basis and what you think about those things. So I thought just to begin with, just to maybe learn a little bit about each other, we could each just give our names, nickname, anything you like. And then I have a little question for you as well, which is: if you could have a lifetime supply of anything from the supermarket, what would it be? And then if you could nominate the next person to go. So I'll go first. Hi, I'm [facilitator], as you know. If I could have a lifetime supply of anything from the supermarket, I think it would have to be coffee because my life depends on it, apparently. And to go next... [F14].>

F14: Hi I'm [F14], I run [anti-plastic group name]. Erm, lifetime supply of... oh, God, that's hard... probably chocolate. I love chocolate. Tony's chocolate [inaudible] plastic-free, but yes. (laughs) I nominate, ooh, eeny, meeny, miny, moe, let's go [M8].

M8: Hello (laughs) my name is [M8], erm, and, well, I say-- erm, if I had to, ooh, if I could buy a lifetime supply of something from the supermarket, I'd want world peace (laughs) not asking for much (laughs) right, I'm gonna nominate, I'm gonna go with... [F15].

F15: Hi, I'm [F15], erm, I didn't know we were allowed to have things you can't actually buy in the supermarket. So er, if we're doing that then... it's a more sustainable, anything, anything sustainable. And if it's actually something I have to buy from the supermarket, erm, ooh I don't know... Hmm. It's a difficult one, that one. Probably, er, baking ingredients [inaudible] baking.

<Facilitator: Very good. I'm just going to say hi to [F18] and [M9] who just joined. Hiya. We're just going around giving our names and what we would have if we could have a lifetime supply of anything from the supermarket so, er, thank you, [F15].>

F15: Should I nominate someone? I nominate [F16].

F16: Hi, I'm [F16], I run [anti-plastic group name] in Staffordshire. And, for me, it's crisps. Unfortunately, I do generate a lot of, I do, I do use TerraCycle, which I know it's not the best, but yeah, mine's crisps, unfortunately. Erm, I nominate [F17]. 

F17: Hello, I'm [F17]. I'm a recent transplant to the UK. If I could have a lifetime supply of anything I think it'd be mushrooms, because we eat a lot of mushrooms. Can never have enough in this house. Can I nominate [F18]?

F18: You can indeed! Erm, I didn't catch the question but on the basis of what I've heard you answer, I think my answer's going to be chocolate. Sorry. Er, so who's missing, I think, is [M9] the only one missing?

<Facilitator: Er, [M9], and [F19]. [F19] is on the phone.>

F18: Ah, [F19] is on the phone. Okay, erm, [M9]? You're on mute at the moment.

M9: Oh, sorry. Erm. Yes, I think my favourite... so is the, the question is, what is our, what was the, what would we have a lifetime, lifetime supply of, is that...

<Facilitator: Yeah. That's it.>

M9: Okay. Erm, I'm not sure actually. I think I would have a lifetime supply of, maybe, mangoes, yeah.

<Facilitator: Nice. And, so I think it's [F19], is [F19] the last person left? Okay, so [F19], you go then.>

F19: Yeah. I would either have a lifetime supply of chocolate or since someone else already said I'll say tea. [inaudible] that all day every day.

<Facilitator: Great. I can't argue with that. So thank you, everybody. Yeah, it's really great to have you all here. It's nice to put a face to a name, and thank you so much for coming along. So, there are two main topics that I'd like us to talk about today. The first is plastics, generally. And second is reuse, so you know reusable packaging and things like that. You don't need to raise your hand or anything like that if you don't want to, it's okay, but if you're not speaking, I'm just going to ask, could you put your mute on, and then just unmute when you do speak, just in case there's some echo or reverb or anything like that. So yeah, I have, I guess, one really big question for you to kick things off, and that is: what does plastic mean to you? So, when you hear the word 'plastic', what comes to mind? Anybody.>

F18: Well I, I would say waste, 'cause whenever I see plastic I just think, you know, "how am I going to get rid of that in a good way?" That's what always bothers me. 

M8: I see waste and I also see raw material, actually, as well, which I'll talk about another time. But also the other thing for me is that plastics aren't just the typical petrol plastics that we know of. Erm, things like starch-based plastics and plastics from kind of biomass of other stuff, so for example crop waste, etc., that would otherwise be burned can also be turned into plastic. But I think our relationship with it over the decades has been completely wrong, because we've got, we've kind of got this attachment to petrol plastics but that's just been the way things are, and we're talking about waste as well, not just the actual plastics themselves, how much oil goes into making them. So typically four kilogrammes of oil is used to make about one kilogramme of plastic on average. The rest of it just gets cracked into other stuff and you're like "oh, yeah, okay". So yeah it's, it's there's quite a lot to plastics, I find, but also there's the question of the embodied carbon associated with as well, so you kind of make your plastic somewhere else, it's often made in China or other countries, somewhere in the far east, and it's shipped all the way to here. That's your 90% of the carbon footprint associated with that is actually on the transit and the manufacturer, not just the plastics itself. There's a whole industry with carbon impacts across all of that in fact, so that's my, my understanding of plastics.

F14: Often, often I just think, you see it, and you think, "why, why has it been used in that instance?" For instance, I eat gluten-free food, and the waste that comes with specialist diet products is phenomenal. And it doesn't always feel like it needs to be there, it's not there to protect it from contamination. Erm, but there's lots of other things like there are bits of plastic in clothing and you think, "does it really need to be there?", so there's that, yeah, quite often when I see it, I'm sort of trying to process why, why it's been used.

F16: I don't know if I'd use the word 'anxiety' but I think when I really became into be more sustainable, about 18 months ago, I walked into Home Bargains, and I actually felt quite... over, like... just consumed by it, consumed by the consumerism, really basically. But yeah, so for me, and also just, I went to Llandudno, Llandudno last week, and I'm conscious of litter, I think we all, you know, we're all probably on here conscious of litter. But it took me 30 seconds to pick up so many spades, buckets, er... The amount of litter, and Llandudno is a very small area of, of beach. Yeah. So I think it can, I do see the positive aspects of medicine and everything, I'm not, you know, we can't be totally critical of it but yeah, it's just everywhere. You can't get away from it.

F15: I just think that's, that's 99% of my rubbish, it seems to be plastic. When I look in my bin that I'm going to put in the rubbish, not recycling, it's mostly plastic and it drives me nuts. (laughs) And that's me trying to avoid it, you know (laughs) so it's just so hard to avoid. It's ubiquitous isn't it, it's just everywhere and you can't get, can't avoid it. So that annoys me.

F19: Yeah, no I'd go with, I'd go with a lot of those same thoughts really, er. I associate it with waste, with guilt, if I do buy it, having a big family. You know, you do the little bits that you can to reduce plastic waste, but, erm, you still end up having to buy it for certain things but when I do I feel guilty so er, yeah just negative, mainly negative association. 

<Facilitator: Thank you. Yeah, any, anybody else, any more thoughts on plastics and what that means for you?>

F17: I have a, I almost have a love hate of it, I mean I can see the necessity of some plastics, obviously medical and stuff, but there's some things that really do stress me out like, if I have to have a medication filled in this country I am given a blister pack, which is obscene because then I'm sitting there trying to pick the foil off of the plastic or I have to find a TerraCycle programme that takes it. When in the US, I could just go buy a single bottle of 120 pills or I could have the pharmacist reuse my bottles, rather than this, see I'm on, I'm on like three different medications and the amount of waste I generate is stressful. And heaven forbid, you'd be diabetic or something like that where you have to have the insulin, and the test strips and the test needles. And, so, I see there's benefits to having a disposable item, like plastic, or a sterile item like plastic, but then as a society as a whole, they, everybody just assumes all of it's disposable. We're such a disposable, consumerist society that it's, it's hard. It's hard to avoid it, they... white, I don't wanna say whitewash it but they greenwash everything too now, they've got, your clothing is made of recycled material but that's still plastics that turned into microplastics which then... something, I'm reading everything when I go shopping, I have to read labels on clothing I have to make sure I buy my veg unwrapped and explain to my children why they need to be washed because, they, before we were more conscious we'd buy plastic-wrapped stuff and they probably would just eat it straight out the pack. And it's a little less stressful if it's sealed in plastic than if it's out in the open, but I'm absolutely not gonna keep buying convenient plastically wrapped strawberries just because it's convenient. Erm. But yeah, I don't know, that's me I guess.

M8: I have to agree on the blister pack thing. That's actually a massive bugbear of mine. Probably the most obvious reason is the fact that it's dual material. It's really difficult to recycle anyway so we're trying to kind of shred it down to fine particles and then try to use electrostatics to pull the bits apart, and that's a massive amount of energy. So it's literally the worst possible, I suppose, packaging for that style of, of stuff, being honest with you. I mean there are manufacturers that do full foil, erm, [inaudible] but actually this, the dual materials has been, I call it 'traditional', and it's terrible, it really is terrible. You kind of, recycling is really, really difficult. I mean TerraCycle obviously do a scheme where they try to recycle that, but it's just erm, it can't be done at the scale that it needs to be done at, if that makes any sense. So and obviously policy, erm, decisions that have been made for local authorities especially actually make it quite difficult to deal with in a systemically optimal way as well, so, yeah I could go on about that one forever, it's kind of (laughs) what I really, really hate.

<Facilitator: Fab. Thank you. Erm, [M9], do you have anything you want to add about plastics and what they mean to you, or?>

M9: I think, erm, I don't know if I have anything to add. I'd just say that plastic is in, it's quite import-- well, it's used now quite widely as we were saying in life, in daily life, and we use it in erm, we use it to kind of, you know, to pack and to store food, too. And we also use it, erm, yeah, just that thing that sort of... food, and we also buy things that are packaged, but I do kind of worry about the impact that our use of plastic has on the environment. But then this, this really does feel quite hard to reduce the use of that as well because obviously, even if you, kind of, look for alternatives you know in your daily life it's hard, like erm, supermarkets and other places, they still use plastic and... so I just, erm, it's something to think about. I suppose it's a case of trying your best to, erm, look for things that are not packaged, erm, sorry, just have less packaging. I suppose that's something... Yeah, in an ideal world, I think it would refuse the use of, I would, sorry, I would not use it at all. This isn't possible, I suppose, just try my best to erm, reduce as much as I can. 

<Facilitator: Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Erm, so there were some interesting words there about plastic, you know feeling consumed by it, feeling guilty...>

M9: I can't seem to hear you, actually.

<Facilitator: Sorry?>

M9: There's something wrong with my... 

<Facilitator: Oh, Is it your speaker? Can you hear us? I hope you can hear okay, [M9]? (laughs) Okay, we'll find out in a second. Erm, so is there something in particular about, plastic, do you think, is there's something inherent about plastic? What is it about plastic, I guess, is it that makes you feel that way about it?>

F16: I think, for me, it's other people's, erm, use of... we're conscious of it, and it's really difficult because once you're conscious of it, it's, like I say you see it everywhere. And so it just makes me like... I remember when I first got conscious like I say 18 months ago or something, pre, well, pre-Covid, and someone's picked up some bananas and put it into a bag, and I wanted to say something to her but I couldn't. And so I think it's more how others make me feel about it, if that makes sense, other people's carelessness of it. But then, in one sense, you kind of can't blame them because I was, I was that person, two, three years ago. So yeah, it just, yeah, I think it's just that disregard and carelessness of it. Seeing other people consume it is what makes me feel... Yeah, uncomfortable.

M8: I might second that actually, though I have a slightly different experience with that one because I've, I've had a similar sort of timescale to yourself [F16], I've only been maybe, really been, I call it second-- born-again conscious if that makes sense because I used to be quite conscious as a kid. Erm, and, it's people's relationship in general with plastics, more, kind of more generally, because we're actually quite bad at it, even when we're conscious, sometimes, and probably a classic example is that we often just look at the plastic as opposed to everything else associated with that plastic including the posting including the carbon footprints, etc. And that can lead us to make, to us making actually sometimes worse decisions, even as conscious people, and probably the one most classic example that is the use of cloth bags, versus plastic bags, and plastic bags we know are bad for various reasons but actually cloth being textiles has a huge carbon footprint. On even cotton bags you're kind of pulling this stuff off the ground, yeah, you're washing it, and the amount of water that's associated with it is quite heavy. So it's difficult I think, more generally, to make the right sort of decision, because actually plastics, even in that scenario when you're comparing plastics to cloth, sometimes it's better in some contexts but worse in others, and that can make making decisions around that quite difficult, I find. I mean, textiles is typically one, erm, cloth bag will need to be reused 131 times to make up for a single plastic bag and that was the result of the Environment Agency study. And when you account for all the kind of life-cycle impacts it can even be several thousand times and we're talking about years of use before you even substitute one single plastic bag. And what's worse, if you wash your pla-- your cloth bag, that timer almost starts again, and that kind of has another kind of bigger impact. So we have to kind of think about this, I think in the round, but there's been no information about it. You almost have to calculate this kind of stuff yourself on the fly. And that's what makes this I think quite difficult because you, everybody wants to do the right thing, but there's so much kind of hit-and-miss information out there it's very difficult to know what to do, so.

F14: I think, for me, one of the issues with plastic is it's, it's erm, just the throwaway nature so obviously with the campaign that I do our focus is on single-use plastic and unnecessary single-use plastic so erm, people going out, and they want a drink, so they'll go to the coffee shop and get a single-use cup, or they'll get a bottle of water, drink it, and bam, it's gone. It doesn't get a second life so... whilst yeah plastic has its place, it's the fact that we don't use it to its full, erm to the full of its life so it's such a wasteful, wasteful thing. If people bought that bottle of water and then used the bottle again more and more times then at least you can, you can kind of justify it. It's the sorts of things that we do at home so if we do end up having to buy, I don't, I don't know, for... I use loads of stuff. If we happen to have had a drink from a coffee shop, which doesn't often happen, we reuse the pots as little mini propagators so they live in our house for like years. Erm so it's yeah it's, that's kind of my, what I try to do when I'm... I get frustrated, I try and then show people on our, on our Facebook group, ways to reuse what they've got. So yeah, sometimes necessity is that you have to buy it but try and make it last a bit longer.

F19: I think there's a lot of promotion of reusable containers and eco-friendly products that, that capitalise on reducing plastics that don't necessarily, are not necessarily needed, so like you say if we can reuse what we've got more cheaply and, erm... before we choose to buy something that is a reusable container, if that (laughs) if that makes sense, which I try to do with sort of er toiletries and laundry liquid and washing up liquids and everything, we just get normal plastic refills instead of having special containers.

F16: Could I just quickly add a note, it's only quick one, about what [F14] said about reusing, and I totally, I do the same, but what I've found is, I find then there's anxiety around it because I have a lean-to too full of stuff to reuse. So I totally get it, or someone will pass you something and the amount of carrier bags I've got because I've bought something second-hand off someone on Facebook and they've give it me in a carrier bag so... yeah, I agree, but unfortunately it does create another problem. It creates this massive, TerraCycle in one corner, curbside recycling in another corner, eggshells for the garden for the slugs, banana skins for fertiliser (laughs) so yeah, it's great, but I find sometimes I just have to have a cut-off and go, "I can't, I can't do any more". So, sorry, I'll let someone else talk.

<Facilitator: No, great, thank you. Anybody else, your feelings on plastic and what it is about plastic exactly that makes you feel that way about it?>

F15: I think I feel that way because it is a fo-- it's a fossil fuel, so it's a finite resource, and I think we're wasting it, making it into plastic that we don't need, and we could be, if we have to use it, we could use it better. And there's so many different parts of plastic that I find it really confusing because one council will take this one and they won't take that one, and it's very confusing. I've been, someone that I know has been collecting little plastic bottle lids to, I don't know how they're doing it, some sort of charity and it's supposed to be able to get a wheelchair for someone, and she was told, two years ago, that any lids will do. She keeps asking, going, "any lids? Any lids?", and I've been giving her all, loads, all sorts of lids, and apparently it's now only plastic drink bottles. So I've been giving her loads of bottle lids that they won't use. So it's, ugh (laughs) So it's just, not, it's not, you don't know what's gonna happen to stuff as well. So you don't know what type of plastic it is, whether it can be recycled, if it's going to be recycled, and it's so frustrating 'cause you think, I'm doing all this effort, I'm washing them out and putting it in the recycling, and they're then going to end up in a lake in Turkey. You know, it's just awful.

F18: It is frustrating, what I find frustrating is the... So, I live in Leeds, and we can recycle, it tells you what numbers you can recycle, so that's great. It's really easy, you look and if it says 'number one' you can recycle it, fantastic, clean it out, stick it in. And then you get a piece of plastic, it's got no number on it, or it says 'PET' and you're like well, which one's 'PET', is that the one I can recycle, then one I can't recycle? And then the Co op have just started this scheme where you can, they, they will take the recycling for the, like, that film plastic on top of things. And I've started doing that and just, I've got a bag from Friday. And I don't think we use a lot of that stuff. It annoys me 'cause it goes in the bin and it scrunches up and it opens up so it takes up loads of space. So I'm putting it in a separate bag, and I'm thinking, "I can't believe how much we've generated of that plastic since Friday". I mean, I need to go to the Co op, to get rid of it, otherwise the bag's too full. It's just like, oh it's just, there's just so much of it. That's my gripe. (laughs)

F17: I think my issue is, yeah, it's really hard to make sure you're getting rid of it in the correct manner. Erm, I drove around 30 minutes one evening, trying to find various different, like, drop-off points for different plastics and pet food pouches that we'd acquired and all this stuff but then you calculate my own fuel consumption, time to do all that... It's just, it's frustrating. There is no rhyme or reason in this 'cause, I, like they say I could maybe recycle it here, maybe not, my council's very picky. If we end up with like a yoghurt container, heaven forbid we try to recycle that, because they go up in arms, and they say "no, it has to go into the black bin", well that just goes straight to the incinerator. That's no good. And yeah, then I turn around, turn into like a plant propagation container or something, but... it, it just, it's frustrating and then why is soil even in a plastic bag? Like, what? It doesn't need to be sterile, it doesn't... I mean, I guess, in certain situations, yeah, you need sterile dirt but on a large scale, like if I'm trying to fill a garden bed, I don't need bagged soil, I need bulk soil that I can fill up my own containers and go with. And that needs to be more readily available. Those options need to be out there, so that we can avoid buying the plastic option.

<Facilitator: I see [M8] nodding vigorously there.>

M8: I have a lot of nodding to do on this stuff, to be fair, for various reasons, 'cause (laughs) 'cause I think that's again one of the biggest bugbears, the councils have a very fragmented approach to it. And as you say, even, er if you put it in the black bin it's incinerated or landfill, it's often an incinerated for energy but actually that just releases CO2 in the air into the atmosphere which is silly, but crucially, even if you put the stuff in the bin you're supposed to put it in, not all of it gets recycled. So what ends up happening is that if you think about the number of extra trips you get with your two bin lorries a week instead of one, you're actually doubling the carbon footprint of collecting and sending the waste away anyway. So the council, whilst they think they're doing the right thing by offering a plastic recycling bin, first of all, only recycle about 9% of all plastics across the entire erm, fleet, if you like, but also double the amount of carbon emissions. And the net effect of that is effectively to quadruple the carbon footprint of every household. That's not a clever thing to do when we think systemically about the problem. So I think, I think you're quite right there, [F17], that's there's a complete lack of systemic thinking around this, both from the perspective of I call it 'downstream effects', i.e. what happens when it goes into landfill, and the upstream effects and what else that affects. So for example, the demand on the health service, so, people with respiratory disorders, them having two bin trucks a week spew out diesel and nitrous oxide all the time is worse for people with asthma and bronchitis, and this creates demand into the health service. And the irony is that when the health service buys they have exactly the same phone as we do. They buy plastic stuff, that stuff gets incinerated, and that creates demand on itself. So the whole thing just starts to churn away at almost this nonlinear feedback that gets worse and worse and worse over time, for sure.

<Facilitator: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. This, I think, leads us quite nicely into the first thing that I would like to show you which is on the subject of, I guess how we handle different materials, different packaging... erm, and for [F19]'s benefit, I'm going to do a bit of audio description of what we're seeing. So, let me see, let me share my screen. Okay. [shows image 1] So here we have a packet of cherry tomatoes. They are inside a, what looks to be a card tray with a sort of plastic-looking film over the top, and the label on the front of this packaging says "Natoora", that's the brand name. And then it says, below that, "this film is 100% plastic-free". Then it has the name of the product which is Sicilian cherry tomatoes, origin Sicily, Italy, the weight, the 'best before' date. It says "keep refrigerated, wash before use and enjoy at room temperature". So that's the front of the packaging. I just want to show you the side. [shows Image 2] On the side you can see again this tray, this kind of card tray. It says "plastic-free" in the middle and then at the top it says, "together we can revolutionise the food system", and it's all encased within the same sort of plasticky clear film. And then finally, on the back... Forgive me, I'm going to do my mom's party trick, which is reading everything off the back of a packet... [shows Image 3] It says on the left-hand side, "A food system revolution". And then at the top it says "Natoora", again, the brand. "Radical seasonality. By sourcing fruit and vegetables during their real seasonal window we celebrate bolder flavours and support sustainable farming practices. Real transparency. Our produce comes straight from our own farms and from small-scale growers that we know by name. Revolutionary flavour. We seek out heritage varieties, traditional growing methods and unique seeds chosen for their revolutionary flavour. Now all of that takes up, I'd say, the top three-quarters of that packaging on the back, and then at the very bottom on the bottom quarter, we've got a range of different logos, so we've got the FSC logo, which says "mix...packaging from responsible sources", I think, and then there's the logo, it's got two of those recycling logos, it's, one of them has the tray logo, which says "widely recycled", and then the next one is film, which says "not yet recycled". Then we have another logo which says "film". Underneath it's got this kind of compost logo, which is the three arrows going down, it says "home, okay compost". And then it says "TV, Austria, home". And finally it's got this little, er, next to these logos, takes up about the same space as a logo, it says, "think of this film wrap as orange peel, put it in your food waste bin, not your recycling bin". And then it's got this "by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen, supplier of fruit and vegetables, Natoora Limited, London". Okay so that's all the text on that packaging. So, imagine you see something like this in the supermarket, you know it's got your usual sort of tray of cherry tomatoes in the, in the plastic wrap, but it does say on a side "100% plastic-free" and on the back it's got this information about home composting and what you can do with it. What would you think of this, is this, is this something you'd be interested in buying, maybe?>

F16: Erm, yeah, but the first thing I think of is what everybody is going to put it in recycling, and contaminate it, so... And, you know, what proportion of people out there are like us? So, regardless of whether I'd buy it or not... one positive thing I'd say is, um, I'm a [inaudible] volunteer for Staffordshire County Council, and their home composting logo actually is home composting. You know a lot of them are industrial, that is the actual proper logo. But my thoughts are everyone's gonna stick it in recycling! Sorry to be negative. (laughs)

<Facilitator: No. No, great. I think [F17], you've got your hand up.>

F17: Yeah, um, I probably, I'm not sure that I would buy this. I have a couple of issues. Erm, if I were to stick it in my food waste bin, that is my general waste bin because we don't have a food waste bin here... I could compost it, but does the 'TV Austria' mean that this plastic or this cellulose-based item here,  was that developed and manufactured in Austria and then shipped to wrap in London, the tomatoes, 'cause then we're talking about a carbon footprint to get the plastic there, or the not plastic, from one place to here. We're also imported tomatoes from Italy. So, it's a huge carbon footprint for this little item. Is it, is it better than plastic? Absolutely. I do think a lot of people are going to mis... dispose of it incorrectly, it'll either get burned or, it won't, it'll never see a compost.

F18: I'd like to think that if I saw that, I mean initially to me I would be thinking, cardboard in the recycling bin, plastic, I would, well what looks like plastic, I would put in my now Co op bag. If I realised it said 'home composting', I think I'd like to think that I would look into it because I can't, in my head that would be so wrong, to put what looks like a plastic in my compost. So I think I'd be wanting to know, is it better if I shred it? Do I need to chop it up in small pieces? Or can I literally just put it in my compost and in six months it will have... So I'd want to know some more information about that, I think, before I put it in a compost heap.

M8: I have to agree with that for a couple of different reasons, but I probably would still buy it. The trouble... The first problem is that this sort of packaging gives off methane if you leave it somewhere, yeah, so when it, when it's, when you leave it to compost it gives off methane. Erm, now sometimes in food composting areas that's okay, it's actually the way [inaudible] interact with [inaudible] in a traditional sense. But in a landfill situation, that's terrible, 'cause what ends up happening is you basically set the pile on fire. That's one risk. So it could be the amount of heat that's generated within a typical landfill, together with methane emitted by this still actually can be quite dangerous. So, as has been pointed out by a number of people already, putting it in the wrong place is terrible, it is really, really bad, it's probably worse than plastics now in a lot of ways and for a lot of different reasons. Erm, because when methane combusts, for every kind of 11 kilogrammes of methane or so that you somehow generate, when it burns, it generates 40, about 46 kilogrammes of CO2, so it's again just as bad. But that said, I probably would buy it because I know, if that makes any sense. So it's one of those kind of, it's a roundabout things. Would I end up supporting the product, because of what I think? There has to be an education step there, 'cause if people don't really understand this type of plastic, it's gonna get really confusing really quickly. I mean, bioplastics have existed for quite a while, I mean cellotape and cellulose has existed for, you know, sort of 60, 70 years, that's not new per se, but people don't really kind of associate cellulose-based plastics with being plastic in a lot of ways. So that's why I think the, the packaging here states that it's plastic-free. Well, sorta, yeah, but actually plastic is scientifically defined as about the polymerisation process and what kind of makes plastics, plastics through that. And this is polymerized, you know. It might very well be orange peel, coffee grounds, whatever it is, but it's still polymerised. And that does obviously create a long polymer chain which makes this stuff kind of more robust and resilient, as plastic. So it just depends on kind of, kind of how you want to take that statement, because technically speaking, you've got a plastic there. It's a bioplastic but it's a plastic.

F15: Well I think it's confusing because it's saying 'home compost', and then it's saying 'put it in your food waste bin', which is industrial composting, taken by the council, potentially. So, no 'cause I've got a food waste bin, my council collects that, so which one do I put it in? If I put it in my home compost, is it gonna sit there for four years and do nothing because I've been to a talk recently and they were saying that a lot of them, their compost at home doesn't get hot enough. If it says 'home compostable', it will still be sat there four years later, looking exactly like it did. So that's quite frustrating as well.

F17: (sighs) I've got one in my [inaudible] so far.

<Facilitator: Sorry, [F19], were you going there? Were you saying something?>

F19: Yeah. I also find it quite confusing because I don't have home composting but I have a green waste bin, not a food waste bin. So I put my orange peel in, in green waste, and I would probably put it in there but not be completely sure if it was the right way. And I would probably still prefer to buy some tomatoes loose in a paper bag than in that sort of packaging because I wouldn't be confident that it was recy-- er, compostable, enough.

<Facilitator: Yeah. [M9], you've got your hand up?>

M9: I just wanted to say that it seems kind of interesting, erm, in the sense that erm, it says we should just treat it like an orange peel, like a fruit peel. However, it's not really food... Yeah, orange peel is like a food, like a food waste, I would say, kinda, erm, or that's how I would consider it anyway, like erm, like erm, and we have, we have a green bin, like a small, green bin for the house, but we don't have like bins specifically for food waste. Well, the bin, we have the green bin which is for, it is for, er, food waste and for composting. And like other people, I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable putting this, this film wrap in, because I've been like, our binmen, like they're quite... can be, they can be quite iffy about things, things that they will accept, actually. One time we put, we put something in, in the bin that we, in one of the bins that we thought was okay, but they said that they wouldn't take it and then they refused to take the whole bin at all. So, yeah, there needs to be much more, there needs to be clarity, we need to be sure that the council will actually accept things wrapped into the, into that, into the, the bin, or no, sorry, no, we need to be sure that they will accept this, accept the, us putting this into the food, food waste bin. But actually I don't have a food waste bin, the green bin, I suppose, yeah. Oh, no sorry, not green bin, brown bin. Sorry, I'm confused, getting confused. Brown bin. Er, we need to be sure that erm, the council will accept this, basically, [inaudible] into that, the bin. There needs to be much more, there needs to be clarity on this, so that we're, you know, so we're not facing any problems later down, later down the line.

<Facilitator: Thank you. Yeah, it, it is very confusing, isn't it. [M8] are you going next?>

M8: Thank you. Yes, I just wanted to piggyback on what [M9] said and probably should have mentioned last time. I don't know if anybody else noticed it but I don't think those symbols are on the actual wrap. So when you put it in your green bin, erm, sometimes they do take, take it anyway but then later on they pick up whatever is in there to decontaminate it in a way, before then sending the rest of the stuff on. So what could happen is that they end up taking it when it's in the green bin, find it, and obviously it has no wrap to explain what it is, they might end up picking it up, putting it in normal refuse. And now you're back to the methane problem again. So they've actually done it themselves, if that makes sense. That actually is this part of the problem, a problem with the process, because they may decide the whole load is contaminated but sometimes they'll just kind of double-check that they can remove maybe a dozen items. If not, they'll don't get with a whole lot. And that does leave you with a problem, because the wrap itself doesn't have the necessary information on it, so.

<Facilitator: Yep, that's, that's a really good point. Erm, what would you do then differently about this kind of packaging, how would you prefer it to look or what kind of information would you prefer it to have, to make it clearer and make it better, do you think?>

F19: If it didn't resemble normal, non-recyclable plastic as much, if it had some sort of pattern printed onto it, or a coloured stripe or something that would clearly identify as a different material from, from normal plastic.

<Facilitator: Yeah.>

M8: I think I would, I mean I'd probably agree with that, 'cause I think, the problem with tomatoes, I don't know enough about how tomatoes react with air, if that makes any sense, but generally to keep stuff fresher, often a lot of these packaging... put the tomatoes in but also they put nitrogen in, because it's actually quite inert. They don't want it to oxidise, because that's what causes mould. So they'll then seal it with the nitrogen, and then, erm, as a result that becomes your kind of freshness process. So obviously it then last longer. So you're kind of rock and a hard place, so I would actually prefer not to see this in, in plastic at all. But, by the same token, if it's being imported, you've then got this issue, where actually our climate doesn't grow this stuff. And this leads us to a situation where something has to, has to give, and the question mark is how do we do that. So a move to bioplastic might not necessarily be a bad thing, but there has to be a huge amount of education and the label has to be on the wrap, otherwise it's kind of defeating the purpose, isn't it? But that said, if we can grow our own tomatoes, why are we, you know, why are we doing this? Grow local, buy local, that kind of solves the problem I think, overall, because it removes the carbon footprint of imports as well, so.

F18: I think if I saw this for the first time, yeah, this is the first time I've seen that logo so-- [disconnected]

<Facilitator: Oh, I think we've lost [F18]. Hmm. Okay, erm, while we're waiting for [F18] to, to reconnect, anybody else, what, what you would like to see done better, how you, how you might do this packaging differently.>

F16: I think, like you said, a lot of the space is taken up by marketing how wonderful their product is with a very small section. And I don't think, you know, most people do nowadays look at the sign, so they see the tray and they see the film... And I think, they may forget, it says 'plastic-free' on it, I don't know, But they'd just put it in the bin. And so many households don't compost. And, like I say, the thing with this film, you know, that, the explanation on the right... That's further over, we read from the left to the right so they'll see these symbols first. That's what we do, we look at symbols, don't we? We can't be bothered to read. So, erm, it's a shame that they've got this product that potentially is better, I'm not saying it is but potentially, but they've spent such, the marketing of it is, yeah, is not good at all. And I used to work in marketing so I can say that (laughs).

F18: Sorry, I'm back now. I keep losing internet so apologies for that. I think it's, I mean if this is a logo that's going to start getting used, what, I mean what a lot of people struggle with, and I think probably most of the people on this group are well educated in this, is what all these bloody symbols mean. So, you know, I'm looking at that and I'm, I'm squinting and going "right, tray recyclable, that's fine, film, not yet recyclable, ah yeah but I think I can put that in my Co op bag, right, I can put it my compost heap, really?" I just... because it looks like plastic. I, you know, my compost heap's full of... food produce that probably the rats eat, I don't know, 'cause I haven't used it for compost yet. But yeah, I would look into it and it, obviously, if that became a logo that became more commonly used, and people, and it actually does what it says on the tin, erm, that'd be an interesting concept. But then I'm looking, listening to what [M8] says and thinking, oh actually, maybe it's not quite as good as it sounds (laughs).

F15: I'd like it to say what it is actually made of.

F18: Yeah.

F15: Because it doesn't say. It might be worse! [inaudible] There's just no clue. Is it made from something biological? It's just no clue. To find out--

F17: And ultimately, I think it'd be beneficial if we knew the carbon footprint it took to produce this. Yeah. There's just too many questions about it.

M8: Yeah. I'd say produce and ship it as well, 'cause, you know, actually, as well as disposal, in principle.

F16: But then that takes a government change in policies and laws, doesn't it (laughs)

M8: And therein lies the problem, I know (laughs)

F14: I don't, I don't think the average, I know we would look at it and I do spend a lot of time looking at labels on the, the odd occasion I go to the supermarket, but when I observe other people shopping, they don't... People have their favourites that they go for so if you always go for Sicilian tomatoes, you're not going to care what packaging it comes in, so we're back to the the original problem that it's not going to get separated into its, its rightful places. And also there's the, the price thing, I find that if you try and get something that is more eco, you end up having a price label, so immediately you're putting majority of people off because it's not within their budget. Erm, so yeah, yeah, I think it's raised more questions than it's actually solved hasn't it, I think. (laughs)

F17: Yeah, I don't know that we'll see a change in our lifetime, but my hope is that I can educate my children to read labels to make the right decision, so that all these changes that we're trying to set up will be accomplished at least in their lifetime. I would love to say, next year, we'll be, you know, have a better carbon footprint all around, but I know government is slow and manufacturing have to deplete, deplete what they've already got before they can bring in, you know, these alternatives. Otherwise, then, they've just wasted all of that resource.

<Facilitator: Yeah. Well, thank you, everybody, that's really useful and really interesting for us to know. So, great, we've talked a bit about plastics, I think, generally. It'll be good, also, to hear your views on reuse. So, again, I have quite a big question for you, same as before and that is, what does reuse mean to you? so you know when you hear the word 'reuse' or 'reusable', 'reusable packaging', what, what comes to mind and what do you think about that?>

F18: I think that so many of the plastic packages that you get are not, I mean I appreciate what you're saying about putting them in your greenhouse and growing things, I don't have a greenhouse. There's so much, like I look at things or some things you think, "oh I could reuse that for something", but there's so much, it's just literally... there was nothing I can use that for in this house. The best thing I can do is recycle it. And then at least I feel in my heart I'm ticking the box. I might not be, but that's how it feels. There's so much. You know, we've, I've got a family of four and we have two green bins; our green bins in Leeds are recycle bins. We fill those in two weeks. And then our black bin is about half full in two weeks. So that's, that's, I'm pleased with that ratio, But I'd also prefer not to be putting all that crap in the green bin. But it's like, what you do with it? It's like, one of the other ladies was saying, I'm not sure what it was, you're getting anxiety over the amount of stuff you've got waiting to be reused 'cause you're being, you're trying to do the right thing. It's like, what can we do with all this stuff?

F14: I find erm, interesting conversations and activities where people think they are promoting reusing and upcycling by using, say, plastic bottles to make displays and-- I'm a teacher, in the classroom. And that often makes me sort of like break out in a cold sweat because I'm like, "Yeah, you're reusing it but then the end product is just going to end up in the bin". There's a little bit of, I think, a confusion sometimes about reusing. People, their intentions, their heart's in the right place. But actually, they're sprinkling glitter on it or whatever and actually they're making a much worse product and, as the end result. That's just from my, my career background point of view, that's sometimes what reuse often means. It hurts (laughs)

F16: For me, reuse is just like another way of companies making money out of... people go in and buy even more reusable cups that they leave at home and don't take them to the coffee shop, erm, as [M8] said before about the cotton bags, erm, so yeah. Part of it is good because it's educating people that you can go and use a mug and reuse it and reuse it. But the other part of me is we live in a capitalist society, sorry, but a lot of politics there and it is another way of getting into the green market by, you know, "buy our lovely mug and get 20p off your Starbucks coffee" or whoever it is, and then people don't use it again. So, yeah. It's a difficult one. And I don't think people do reuse. You know. Yeah, we talk about propagating everything and we all, you know, if we're in that area we do that, but most people... might go junk, to junk modelling at school but... it's not recycling. And I think it's just frustrating because everyone thinks to do such a good thing, the group that I run, everyone wants to talk about TerraCycle. And I'm like, "Yeah, but change your energy supplier, do other things, it's not all about TerraCycle", but I can't say that because I want to encourage people. But I'll shut up, cause I can rave on forever! (laughs)

M8: I think there's a balancing act, isn't there, 'cause I think there's... If, when you start to use stuff you've got to clean stuff, the vast majority of stuff you got to clean. Obviously cleaning has an impact on a lot of things. And, that said, it's often better than, kind of, getting rid of it, disposing of it. But then you've got, like, however many takeaway trays that are plastic and you suddenly got that you, you can only give so many to your nirce to build castles at all 'cause there's just gonna (laughs) bored of that eventually. So it's kind of uses... it's useful but the problem with it is you've got to constantly make these trade-off decisions as to whether or not that's actually better to use, and therefore not introduce, I don't know, microplastics through detergents that might have them in, or you kind of make sure that you don't, erm, say, or you could reuse your bin bag, your carrier bags as bin bags, and make sure you don't throw the bin bag away when you throw your bin in the, in the, whatever bin that you gotta throw it in, if that makes any sense. So that you kind of increase the longevity and therefore not use such a heavier plastic on the refuse sack, and all these kind of decisions and stuff you're calculating all the time, it can be absolutely exhausting to determine whether actually reusing versus recycling, which side of the seesaw should fall in this particular case. I mean, it got so bad I kind of looked at actually recycling my own stuff in-house, erm, and I've got next to me I've got a, this is a face mask. All of these are my face masks that I've shredded. Why am I shredding them? I'm turning them into this filament which then goes into these machines behind me, and makes other stuff. Right. So actually I'm kind of, that means there's no... this stuff goes into making anything, I'm supplying a pharmacist with, with equipment, that they would normally buy from China, it's not care equipment it's just kind of a lot of non-medical stuff, and we just make them out of face masks right so things like pill cutters. I'll just kind of use it to split pills. So this is the sort of thing that I've kind of spent quite a while thinking about but actually because the footprint we have as a, as a country is huge and problematic, but also the decisions are not straightforward. You can't just say, "all plastic is good", or "all plastic is bad", it's a really complex kind of balancing act or trade-off analysis you're having to do. And because it got so bad I thought, "okay, well, nobody else is doing anything about this, we've got to deal with government, so actually I'm going to do it myself", and that then just spun off from there. But that doesn't mean that you've got to, you've got to kind of really think about everything you reuse, recycle, or, or even make sometimes. So, maybe, how many people here have a, a kind of linen bag where torn clothing gets used as, you know, kitchen towel substitutes? Yeah, exactly, I'm the same, I'm the same, it's not a bad thing, it's good thing, because actually that prevents all this stuff kind of disappearing out into the, into the, into landfill in a lot of ways, yeah, especially kind of reducing the amount of paper that's used and water to process that paper just creating kitchen towel, so that's, kind of, it's complex but these are the kind of sorts of things that actually some people stumble across, great, but actually when you're kind of constantly spending an hour deciding whether I want to buy this bag, or kind of go and get this tomato pack, erm, that's kind of, it's, it's an exhausting exercise, I mean most people just don't have the time, so.

F19: I'm currently having the dilemma of whether to start using reusable nappies and whether that is, erm, you know, obviously the plastic waste generated by nappies, is making me feel incredibly guilty. My baby's only four months so I've still got a bit of time to use them but, but then also the washing, how much energy that does that use, and... to be perfectly honest, can I cope with the amount of washing I need to do on top of, on top of the normal washing to do all the nappies. So that's one, my current dilemma, but.

F16: Sorry, can I encourage you to go for it. (laughs) Buy second-hand. If they don't work for you, sell them on afterwards. Sorry. (laughs)

M8: Yeah, I have no kids and I second that, because, because the footprint of nappies, given the number you use in a day, is huge. So even though you're washing quite a bit, it doesn't match the number of nappies that you go through from a disposables perspective given the carbon footprint of making that, wherever it is, and shipping it to you. Once you've got the cloth, while it's heavy, you're, you're more than offsetting your, your carbon footprint on--

F16: And you don't have to use them exclusively--

M8: Absolutely right--

F16: Even if you only use a couple a day, and use disposables at night, you do what works for you, but, yeah. 

M8: Hundred percent.

F6: Try it, try it.

M8: You'll be surprised. Definitely second that, for sure.

<Facilitator: Fab, well I'm glad we could share some tips, within this group. Erm, yeah, great, thank you for these thoughts on reuse. We've talked a bit about reusing in different senses, so repurposing, and reusable containers... I'd like it if possible to show you a couple of videos about refill. And again, I'm going to show a video and then I'm going to just describe what happened in the video. The first one actually doesn't have any speaking or any audio really, it's music, but, so I'll just play those and [F18] you might already be familiar with this. I'll show you why. So, hope you can see this. These are two videos I want to show you from the Asda in Middleton in Leeds. So I'll play this video. [shows Video 1] Okay, so, just to explain what happened in that video, it was a kind of slow-mo, promotional marketing video from Asda and it showed a refill zone which has recently been launched, and it had three of these kind of, er, machines, which you could put a metal bottle for Persil in and basically press a few buttons on the screen, and it would, it would fill the bottle with the product which in this case look to be detergent. They also panned across shampoos and that kind of thing, conditioners, and it showed somebody, I think it showed some tea bags that you can also get from the same refill machine, so it was basically a kind of introductory video for a refill zone in this particular Asda, where, yeah, you would you would have a refillable bottle, in this case it was a stainless steel bottle, and it was filling with product, and you'd print off the label and you, you'd have this label that would show the price. And I'm just going to quickly show you one more video and this one's another short one, it's a TikTok, and it's from the same, it's of the same thing in the same store, so, share this one. [shows Video 2] Okay, so the lady who made that TikTok actually gave us quite a lot of audio description there which was nice. She was describing using that machine. And it showed her, you know, using the tongs to get the teabags and it showed that, erm, yeah, it was a stainless steel bottle, and she paid five pounds for this first time and then after that was three pounds for a refill. She showed that there was a QR code on the bottom of the bottle and that was what you would scan to get the ingredients of the product. And it also just showed her using that machine and putting her details in and things like that. So, yeah, this is all, these are two videos from the same place, same refill zone in the Middleton Asda. What do you think of that if, is that something that you would use? Yeah, what do you make of this?>

F18: I, it's not my part of Leeds. I am aware of it and I have seen adverts for it, but I haven't been in it. And my, part of me thinks, fantastic idea, first thing I would spot is... I always buy washing powder when it's on special offer. I don't, so, I'm motivated by price on that because I buy it in a box, and I buy powder, so I feel like I can recycle the box, and, and I also buy washing powder before I run out so if it's, if it's on special offer and I'm halfway through a box, I will buy my next box. So if you've got a bottle for five, that you've had to pay five pounds for you're going to actually have to have two bottles, aren't you. And what I'm not quite clear about is do they discount it? Something that we all know, the washing powder prices go up and down, and anyone who's bothered about their pocket watches the price. So if that's, it's a great idea but if you're not going to get the price benefit, you're, you're sort of running out of incentives to do it. I'd like to think I would do it, but it'd have to be at the right price, I think.

F19: We have in Chesterfield a lady who has a market stall a few days a week, and she does exactly that, a lot more cheaply I would think than the supermarket but you don't, you can take any container that you have, as the previous lady was saying if you already have some in the container, she weighs the container first so you don't have to have two separate containers, that you can, you can refill it before you've emptied the container that you're using. Erm, so, it would be something I would use, but I don't go, I don't have an Asda near us and I don't really go into the supermarket anymore. I try to buy from market stalls and as locally as possible. Erm, but the idea behind it is something I would do.

F16: I would love my heart to sing, because it's refill, but the second I saw it was Unilever, mm-mm, sorry, 'cause it's more than packaging, it's what goes in there. And also that they bought out... was it Johnson Johnson or Unilever, I get confused, Ecover and Method and all that. So, before I knew about all the chemicals, I would have gone, "yay, great!", but a) no, not buying that product, erm b) yeah if you're going to do refill it should be like a refill store and be able to take in your own containers like we said. But the principle behind it is great, but again, it is the big corporations coming in to make money out of something that we should be able to buy from independents. But I do understand that it's the price, and I know that independents can't offer at the same price. So, yeah, positive, but there's a big no-no there as well, unfortunately.

<Facilitator: Yeah. [M8]?>

M8: Erm, yeah, I'm in two minds about it. Refill as a principle I agree with [F16] perfectly, perfectly fine. The difficulty is that there's a massive carbon footprint associated with the machines. There's energy used in refilling it, the machines use obviously computers built into it and there's obviously energy associated with that. Stainless steel doesn't have a zero carbon foot, it's hundreds of times higher than plastic of the equivalent weight. So there are these extra elements which mean that there's a front-loaded carbon cost, if you like, associated with that. And over time you'll make it back, but how long is that time? What does that mean from the perspective of the machines themselves, the storage compartments that are all plastic... You know, those the kind of questions I've got to ask about it. Would I use it? Would I use it, maybe, but I need to know what that number actually is, because actually sometimes that could be worse than plastic in its incarnation, I just don't know what the numbers of the machines are, I don't know how heavy they are, I don't, you know. So that's the kind of questions I'd need to know about it.

F17: Erm, yeah I wrote that it's a gateway, maybe, to be, to like, people to go to a reduced waste lifestyle. I don't think it's ideal. I have questions about the labels. Are they plastic-based? Are the backing for the labels plastic-based? How many times is somebody really going to remember to bring their stainless steel bottle to the shop? And there's a lot of things like, it would be so much easier, like we keep plastic bottles, when they're empty, right by the door so if I go to the zero waste shop, I'm grabbing that specific bag and I know what I need. But not everyone's going to do that. I think, I think it's a great idea. I think it's not greatly executed. There's, there's too, too many limits to what they're having there. 

<Facilitator: Yep. Thank you. Er, [M9].>

M9: Erm, yeah, thank you. Something I do think is quite a good idea, erm, you can make easier to, it'd definitely be good I think... But yeah, I think there's quite a lot of steps involved. Like for me, it'd be fine, but I think for the general population of people who are not that tech-savvy or... it may be tricky at times [inaudible]. Yeah there's quite a lot of steps, you have to take your bottle, then it's like erm, then I think you have to do your product... erm, and then put a label and I think there's something, a QR code, I think lots of people would find that confusing, because many people are not familiar with that, I think. And even I was just... I suppose yeah, they mentioned, I mean I think they said the QR code is for the ingredient, ingredients. Yeah okay and I was a bit confused actually about the pricing. So the, okay, so they said that there's five pounds for a bottle, three pounds for a refill, is it... Okay so I think, erm, yeah, I assume it's just that... if you want to get a new bottle, you would have to pay five pounds and then I suppose refilling it would cost money, I just kind of a bit... I suppose I feel about, I'm just thinking about in terms of pricing, like, I suppose if you want to be cost-effective then you could, perhaps, you could take your own bottle. I think, if I'm not sure if they have said that that would be acceptable. I mean, hopefully it should be. So that would save you money. I mean, but yeah, then you would have to buy a bottle from somewhere. So, um, but yeah so like if you can get a bottle for a good price and then... But then again, the refill price, I'm not sure why is it, why is there a refill price, I mean I understand like, I just I'm thinking like the cost of the product that you're going to refill, like going to get, like, you take your bottle there and get more product, and you will be charged for that, right, the price of the product. But then why, why, is there a refill price on top of that? I don't understood. I don't know if I misunderstood. Erm...

<Facilitator: I think it was er, you pay five pounds for the first bottle on the premise that it's, that's for the filled price so I think it means you're paying two pounds for just the bottle itself. So when you get the first bottle it's two pounds, I think, it was two pounds for this, you know, fancy branded Persil stainless steel bottle and then you pay the regular three pounds on top of that to have the material inside, and then from then on, you are just paying the three pounds. I think it was implying that you could use a different container because she mentioned something about you, you have to take the lid off and then weigh it or something and it asks you is the lid off, or something... that was my, but I don't know what everybody else thought about that and how, whether that seems reasonable to you, you know, paying... I imagine they have that there so that if you, you know, let's say you're, you're, you're brand new to refill, you've never done it before and you come and they've got some bottles there ready for you if you want to buy this reusable, refillable, bottle I suppose-->

F18: I took it, I took it that you could only use their bottles, that when you got the bottle it had the lid on and it was reminding you to take the lid off. Because you would only, if you look at where they put the bottles, your, if you were allowed to put your own bottle in it would have to be the right size, and... I think most differences in, we've got a local, re, sort of filling-up shop in Chapel Allerton. And I think because that's more low-key and chilled, you know, if I turn up with my own containers, if they're, if they're contaminated that's, it's almost like it's my problem. But if I went up, if I went to Asda, and my container was contaminated, and then I filled it with some food, and then I sued Asda for making me poorly because they didn't check that my container was clean... You know, you can so you can sort of see why they're wanting to have control over the whole process.

<Facilitator: Speaking of contamination, then, is this, is there anything that you wouldn't feel comfortable having a refillable container, you know, refill purchase for? Is, you know, are there certain things that you would only ever want to buy single-use? Or, you know, in terms of this contamination issue I guess, if there's something you don't want to refill, or use in that way.>

F15: I suppose if you had an allergy to something--

F18: Yeah

F15: You might be concerned that someone else had put nuts near it or something, and you would then get the nuts, even if you hadn't bought, you know, no nuts in your container but if someone else had bought a nutty container and the nuts had pined out or something. If you're a bit, you know, I suppose people are worried about that. I wouldn't be worried about the contamination, personally. You know, that's up to me, but I can see that the company is worried because they might be worried about getting sued and they're terrified of that. The other thing about that is it looked like you had to dispense a certain amount. So you, you, even if you provided your own container, it would dispense a certain amount into the container. I didn't think, in the liquid one, that you were weighing it. So you can't choose how much you want. You have to buy their amount. You can't buy a small amount. Like, when I go to the, the place in Chesterfield that the other lady was talking about, you can buy, you can buy a bay leaf. She'll sell you a bay leaf. Or you can buy 400 bay leaves. You know, it's up to you how much you buy, you're not, you're not buying the industry standard amount--

F18: How much does one bay leaf cost? (laughs)

F15: Not very much I don't think

F18: (laughs)

F15: [inaudible] bay leaf! But yeah, so you're forced into the standard packaging size that the industry has decided it wants to sell you and you might not want that much, that much washing... I didn't know whether it was washing up liquid or detergent, or, I don't know what it was for. That might last you two years, you might not want that much. But, you know, you go to a zero-waste shop you can literally get as much or as little as you want.

<Facilitator: Yeah, that's a good that's a good point about these machines, I suppose. Yeah. So, any, any particular products you wouldn't want to buy in a refillable, on a refillable basis, like, you know, any particular foods that you would want to buy refillable, based on contamination, possibly, or something like that? Because we were looking at detergent, weren't we, which is slightly different from certain food products, I guess.>

M8: I know people still--

F19: I would say something like--

<Facilitator: Sorry, I forget that you can't see us [F19] so it's difficult to know... Go on, then.>

F19: There isn't much that I wasn't wanting but when you said about food products, possibly something like mayonnaise or something that, erm, that can easily go off, but still then I would think if I clean my own container thoroughly, I don't know, there's very little that I would be [inaudible] to refilling, to be honest. It's just, there's just not much food available to refill, apart from dried foods and spices and herbs and things.

<Facilitator: Yeah, so maybe liquidy things? I don't know. Anybody else have that?>

F18: I think something like milk, I wouldn't like the idea of milk 'cause I just think, ooh, you know. I might think my bottle is clean that I'm pouring it into but is it really clean? So I think there'd be a few things, I mean things like, it wouldn't bother... washing powder, washing up liquid, all that sort of thing, I wouldn't have an issue with, that'd be fine.

F14: I just gotta say, our local newest refill shop in Lincoln, I just got a jar of honey, the other day, refilled from them. Erm and one in Grantham does peanut butter, so you take a jar in and then they grind it in the shop so... it's coming along, I agree, maybe with the milk, although I did drive past a milk dispenser on the way up to Scunthorpe the other day. So it was a farm, had a automatic milk machine there, which I thought was quite cool but then I started thinking about the logistics of keeping it clean. But erm, yeah, I just thought I'd share that. (laughs)

F17: The only other thing I, there's not much I wouldn't consider refilling, but I do sometimes have to find myself asking, how long has this product been in this dispenser? Like, beans for example, if they're not stored airtight, long-term, they get harder to cook with, or stuff like that, just, just because they don't often have those date labels on the dispensers. So you just have to ask, but I... I don't know that if there's anything I wouldn't try to refill, given the option.

<Facilitator: Great, er, [M9]?>

M9: Yeah I think I wouldn't like to refill, erm... there's some things I wouldn't like to refill, like milk, maybe juice, just because erm, I don't know if I feel confident that they're, that these things are, that there's not, I don't think I feel confident, feel enough confident that erm, this can, so, there's no cross-contamination and so, yeah it's okay, like erm, just because, I don't know, just, I don't know why, just like, yeah, juice, milk and like someone mentioned, like mayonnaises, like, sauces, actually, I don't think I'd want to refill them either. Erm, I just, you know, I don't know, I don't think so, I think things like shampoos, body soap, like, soap, maybe cosmetic products, [inaudible] perhaps , er, I think might be okay. I don't know, maybe it's because I feel there's less risk of any kind of issues arising from, erm, I don't know, like, I just feel safer for some reason. 

<Facilitator: Well, I wanted to ask because one thing that our project is looking in particular to innovate, is yoghurt. So, how would you feel about yoghurt? I mean, we have, there are a few options. There's a refillable option, or there's a dispenser, like you were talking about the milk dispenser. There's one, there's that possibility, and then I guess the other would be like a return model where you, you know, you buy your pot of yoghurt, as you normally would from the shelf in the fridge, and then you would, I guess need to bring that packaging back to the supermarket, and then the manufacturer would take care of the cleaning and the reusing of that packaging. Bear in mind this would be plastic, so, what do you, how do you all feel about about this idea of reusable, or refillable or returnable yoghurt packaging, plastic packaging?>

F15: I think that's doable. I mean we used to have glass milk bottles and we'd give them back to the milkman and [inaudible] get washed and returned. It was the same, it wasn't our container coming back, was it? So I think that'd be fine, yeah. Because... we've got used to having them, you know, new stuff and everything, the milk put in the new container and then the throwing it away. It didn't use to be like that so I don't know why we couldn't go back to it, it's just, it's, people have got used to that so they don't think, they haven't, they can't remember what it was like but it was fine, no one, no one bothered, that way. So I think it'd be fine with yoghurt, same principle.

<Facilitator: Okay. Great. We've got [F17] and then [M8].>

F17: I think, for the convenience, I like the idea of just being able to go grab the yoghurt off the shelf. I do think [inaudible] you're going to face those issues we talked about, though. People aren't going to realise they need to return it, or they just won't, but it... is plastic, like, do you have to use plastic? Could you not use a carton? Is that weird? 'Cause there is recycling schemes out there for cartons, at most major supermarkets, and that... most, I think a lot more people realise, "oh I can carton-recycle this", erm, and it won't get kind of lost in limbo. 

<Facilitator: Yeah, that's, that's another thought. [M8], then [F16].>

M8: Yeah so yoghurt, erm, is very unlike nappies, I have to say, for obvious reasons but actually more importantly because you'll typically only eat maybe one yoghurt a day or every other day so the amount of plastic you get through by comparison, erm, that would then require cleaning, if that makes any sense, is low. While, with, when you've got a compa-- so when you're comparing this against other things like glass or stainless steel, the fundamental total carbon footprint across the lifecycle is very, very different, because of that. Using the example of the glass milk is a really good exa-- actually analogy, because we return the plastic milk bottles, but the thing with glass is glass has a very high carbon footprint, and the cleaning of it obviously has an impact on that as well. If we would turn plastic... Plastic is actually a fairly small part of the overall carbon footprint 'cause it's almost like you're transporting the glass and the plastic the same distances, you're storing them in the same spaces, digging up the same energy to, to deal with it's because it's probably carbon energy, but equally the carbon footprints don't offset against that, so glass does, plastic doesn't, if that make sense. And so I don't know whether I'd probably use plastic but if there was another container I'd probably use it, I mean cardboard might be an example of that. Because actually, it's better to kind of deal with that, erm, problem, than try to deal with the plastic, the resulting plastic problem if the plastic isn't properly returned, if you know what I mean. So as [F17] has quite rightly said, people won't necessarily know to return it. And that does have a knock-on effect on, on what ends up in the in the, in the, in the cardboard bins or your plastic bins, because then, can you imagine a situation where they say, "Okay, well we've returned this container", people don't return it, and suddenly what you've got exactly the same amount of containers in the plastic bin as you always have. So yeah, that's kind of the, te question, so, it's what is that educational step to bring people along with you, so.

F16: Yeah, I have my milk delivered in glass bottles and, you know, they're sterile and I don't have an issue with it. I think I agree with what [M8] says about the glass and we all know that the weight and that, that massive carbon footprint. But erm, yeah, I think... I mean, if plastic, could be, if it is, it's gonna have to be sterile 'cause like you say, they're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to introduce something like that because of supermarkets and suing and everything. But in principle, I don't have an issue with it but I think it has to have value. So, with the milk bottle, it's... there's no kind of other use for a milk bottle really, 'cause it doesn't have a lid with it so it's kind of... you're not going to cheat the dairy and keep the milk bottle, so there has to be... but then obviously we've got, you know, other countries with the glass, you know, with the plastic bottle machines where you get your money back and things like that. So there has to be some kind of financial incentive for people, you know, to do that. But in theory yeah, I don't think there's an issue with it, I don't have an issue with it.

<Facilitator: Great. Okay. Does anybody else have any final comments you want to make about that kind of proposal of reusable, returnable yoghurt? [M9]?>

M9: I think it's a good idea. Erm, ideally, if it was, if it was in something other than plastic that would be good. But yes I think it's quite a good idea, erm, just need obviously assurances that, erm, that, that obviously hygiene would be meeting high standards, obviously we need to be confident with that, assured with that. And erm, yeah, obviously, like, I also don't want this to, this reusable, erm, don't want this option to be an expensive option, either way. Erm, the prices should stay the same, so that... Because obviously lots of people have to like, although they're conscious about the environment and they want to recycle and, you know, do their part, they also still have a budget to follow, so it's quite important. I think is quite good if the price stays the same. Yeah and, you know the price stays the same and that will be be killing two birds with one... or it will be beneficial, basically, like we will still be, same thing, same price, and they wouldn't be at a disadvantage, but they're also doing their part for the environment, you know.

<Facilitator: Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Erm, well, it looks like we're at time, really. So, yeah, I guess I just want to say thank you so much everybody for taking part. I think it's been a really great discussion. I've learned a lot. And I really appreciate all of your your contributions, all your participation, and yeah, it's been really good so thank you so much.>

</text>