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A weekly podcast about the forces shaping politics, power and technology, and how they affect you.
Elliot Costello (00:00)
When I'm told that it's because this isn't a high issue for voters and constituents, I call bluff on that because I'm yet to meet any member of left or right persuasion who does not want action on plastic waste.
this isn't a left and right issue. This is a national issue that should unify us all. And policymakers have missed the moment time and time again to unify the country behind piece of legislation that would be supported by all of us.
Matt Kendall (00:34)
Hello and welcome to Worth Knowing, a weekly podcast about the forces shaping politics, power, and technology and how they affect you. I'm Matt Kendall.
Elliot Costello (00:43)
And I'm Elliot Costello.
Matt Kendall (00:46)
So, Elliot, I'd say over the last month or so we've been focusing on technology, AI, big tech, and how those that at almost at a macro level and how these issues affect us, affect policy, affect the future. And we're taking a bit of a a different tack today. We're going to hone in on an issue that is very close to both of our hearts. And you could say we're
pretty much been working on for the last five or so years, wouldn't you say?
Elliot Costello (01:18)
Yeah, that's a fair introduction, Matt. So today we're going to go a little bit more granular around one topic and that's Australia's packaging waste problem. Certainly something that's key to our heart. And the reason we're doing so is some disappointing news coming out of Minister Watt's office department this week. So that's the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, who have effectively said to industry...
to consumers, ENGOs, that the Australian federal government will not be moving towards national packaging reform. And that's disappointed so many people for reasons we'll unpack in this episode. yeah, let's dive into it.
Matt Kendall (01:59)
I guess this this all really starts off with understanding where Australia is at in terms of packaging and waste. it's a huge problem around the world. other countries have been a lot better at dealing with it. Obviously, there are some countries around Asia and the global south where they've got a real problem with it. They don't necessarily have the infrastructure.
around recycling or or even landfill in many instances. but we are definitely a laggard and there's been these voluntary targets that we've been adhering to or supposedly adhering to failing to adhere
Elliot Costello (02:35)
or failing to adhere to.
Matt Kendall (02:38)
to yeah and it really does show the
It's a almost a brilliant case study on why voluntary targets don't work, wouldn't you say?
Elliot Costello (02:47)
Yeah, certainly is. Packaging waste, we often sort of define it as plastic waste, but it is all forms of packaging. So many materials that are placed on market is a global problem. And it's generally externalised out to society, certainly in the environment. Australia is an outlier in the sense that two thirds of our trading partners have moved to some form of good reform and we'll come to what good reform looks like.
That's 82 countries around the world. And there's been momentum building for the last 25 plus years in Australia to land extended producer responsibility, a national mandated scheme that really wraps together the disparate different sort of approaches that each state and territory have been taking in Australia. And it also elevates what the 530 plus councils are doing around collection and sorting. the history
I'll try and be succinct from 1999 when the Australian packaging covenant was set up was like your first form of self-regulation. That's the kind of philosophy where government industry came together and said, we need some targets. We want brand owners to opt into a system that then 12 years later in 2011 became legislated through a compliance piece of legislation called NEPEM. NEPEM stands for the National Environment
protection measures. So that was the first piece of regulation that gave the state EPA's teeth to start enforcing measurement of packaging waste for any company over $5 million. 2018 was the national framework that set the packaging targets. So that framework was for 2025. So in 2018, the nation came together and said, these are our targets.
2025, you've alluded to those voluntary targets and that was about 100 % recyclable packaging and compostable packaging, the 70 % of packaging, of plastic packaging being recycled, the figures about 50 % for recycled content. So some really good, you know, high level views of where we
Matt Kendall (04:58)
Yeah, the targets were great.
Elliot Costello (04:59)
should... Targets are great, but we're now in 2026 and we can, you know, say that every target was missed, comprehensively.
2020, there was the RAWR act introduced by the Morrison government that brought in sort of this recycling and reduction waste act. And that gave us some hope that, you know, we're heading in the right direction. It effectively said that the voluntary era needs to be come to an end if we can't meet the targets. Now, this era, call it 2023 to today has been this go slow. We're doing
consultation after consultation, industries at the table saying we need national harmonization, we need leadership across the states to bring them together. Each state and territory effectively begged federal labor. Having spoken to Chris Foley, the chief executive at APCO recently, who was very open when he first joined APCO said, you know, he was told by the national environment minister.
that this will be coming within 18 months. It's been a very long 18 months. It's been over four years now. So we'll come to that coalescing of different powers, but we've been sitting in industry waiting and across the board, the councils, the states, the recyclers, the retailers, the ENGOs have been waiting for some degree of federal leadership. And this week, another burst to the bubble where, as I said
at the start,
The Federal Labour Party has said they will not be moving on national packaging reform, which is a huge, huge disappointing announcement.
Matt Kendall (06:36)
for some people of of certain p political persuasions, regulations can be a dirty word. it just you know, for some people it makes things they makes things complicated, adds unnecessary complexity or expense. but it they s regulations serve an an extremely important purpose. you know, if or if you look at aviation or food food safety and medicine, in fact
If you want us if you want a real time case study on what happens when you don't have regulations, so over in America right now, they've removed a lot of food regulations over there in America. and almost overnight they're they're having all sorts of health and bacteria breakouts
it it really just goes to show that if you don't have if it if the regulations aren't there for companies to adhere to, they will start to cut corners, they will start to essentially ensure that you know they've got a fiduciary responsibility to maximize their profits, reduce their costs. And so if there aren't these regulations there that quite often are quite pro social or pro environment,
That help company or insist companies behave in a in a way that is going to ensure safety, ensure a minimization of damage and impact, then that a lot of the time most companies are going to really just sort of do what get away with whatever they can in order to keep their costs down. And so quite often businesses will rail against regulations, but this is a a
a a really rare example of where there's been this alignment across environmental NGOs, peak business bodies, big brands,
Elliot Costello (08:23)
Hmm.
Matt Kendall (08:24)
retailers, and of course consumers. the majority of the Australian people want this. So there's this been this incredible alignment that's I as far as I know, unheard of for a policy development like this. Yeah.
Elliot Costello (08:34)
You're certainly in the environment space. You'll
never get this degree of alignment in the environment space. You're right. Regulations are guardrails. That's as simple as that. And bureaucrats, policymakers, people in public office have a responsibility to put guardrails in place to protect citizens and make sure businesses are operating within the realm of those sort of parameters. So without regulation, the
tragedy, it's race to the bottom. You are incentivized to buy the cheapest, nastiest, potentially virgin material from any location around the world as long as it does its job, you know, to protect and preserve the product. But that ends up with a very complex and often harmful supply chain because there's no controls. Now, that voluntary system has been effective to get us started and credit to so many people that have come before us.
in this industry who have driven the membership signups, those at APCO, 2,500 odd members, businesses who have put their hand up and said, I'll report my packaging data and try and be a better corporate citizen. But voluntary systems means that there's freedom for free riders or space for free riders. There's 20,000 plus businesses that should be brought into a mandated scheme.
Whenever you've got that, you've got these free riders that avoid costs and that means that responsible businesses are picking up that slack. So that's why there has been this movement towards industry calling for reform that we're all been at the table for years. We've been told it's coming. We've been warned that it will come if the voluntary targets haven't been met. We've been expecting it to come. We've been begging now the federal government to do it. And then at the moment of
truth. It's sort of like, we'll just we'll park this for now. And there's a whole set of reasons that I'm sure Minister Watt if he was a guest on this podcast, would tell us about inflationary pressures and cost of living. But it's You're like, and we'll get into the economics of what Australia's EPR scheme would look like. But it's BS. It's a lack of political leadership that is leading to this decision. Nothing short of that. Because, and I do come back to the point that
When I'm told that it's because this isn't a high issue for voters and constituents, I call bluff on that because I'm yet to meet any member of left or right persuasion who does not want action on plastic waste. Even if you're skeptical about climate change, I know a few within my family and within my social network, they still come back to the point that there's too much plastic waste.
when they go to the beach or go surfing, there's too much plastic waste. So this isn't a left and right issue. This is a national issue that should unify us all. And policymakers have missed the moment time and time again to unify the country behind a piece of legislation that would appease and be supported by all of us.
Matt Kendall (11:48)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's it is across the board. people people just can't stand it. And it's foisted upon us. You know, you you buy something, it can be an appliance, it can be, you know, something from Amazon and it comes with all this packaging and everybody gets frustrated with it. It f yeah, yeah.
Elliot Costello (12:03)
Not to name names with Amazon, but it could be from Amazon. We have worked with Amazon
and it is quite, they're quite good with their packaging, but I know what you mean. They were accused
Matt Kendall (12:13)
Yeah.
Elliot Costello (12:14)
a lot for excessive packaging.
Matt Kendall (12:16)
Yeah, and look and it's across the board, you know, like my my dad's to the right of Gingis Khan on politics and he is fully behind the work we've been doing. He he does actually.
Elliot Costello (12:23)
I hope you listen to this show, Matt.
Matt Kendall (12:26)
He'll he'll appreciate that or or not. but he's you know, it is apoplectic half the time, about this, you know, what we're doing to marine environments, what we're doing even to, you know, just there's there's increasing evidence around our health. there's
all these hormonal effects that we're we're starting to discover, the fact that it's crossing the blood-brain barrier, breast milk, like it it's cr like we're feeding our babies microplastics. where it's really been difficult to build the the health case against plastic is it's really hard to get a baseline. It's been around since the fifties. It's really hard to do controlled studies, but even with that.
there is a an accumulating body of evidence that it is harming our health, you know, that it is affecting our fertility, and just our health in general. And it's not the only cost, you know, and I think this is one of the things that I think Murray Watt and and Anthony Albanese fail to understand is that the the cost, in terms of an extended producer responsibility framework, which we'll go into, it
currently the way the system is now, it's the wild west. In fact, there's probably the the only thing closest to it is social media with in terms of the amount of regulations. and there is an external cost where somebody who's a a a retailer or if you're if you're making a product and you've got this single use plastic, you're paying quite often just cents. It's part of a massive huge ecosystem or as a
infrastructure that's part of the fossil fuel system. It's been around for 80 years. it's got, you know, 80 years of research and development. And essentially it just it's got this inc incredible global infrastructure. It allows the material to be made for cheap. And one of the other reasons it's made for cheap is that in terms of the the actual end of life, they don't nobody has to pay for that. If you're a manufacturer or if you're a a a brand owner,
Elliot Costello (14:24)
Yeah,
it's probably worth just framing up what an EPR is because it's part of this debate and this announcement that we're all frustrated about. And you mentioned some of the social, environmental and health risks of certain forms of packaging, certainly plastics. This is a hit job on the plastics industry. You know, we're all consumers of plastics, having had a son.
at Royal Children's Hospital for months, you you see the utility and versatility and the need for plastics. I encourage Australians to watch Kals recent, the Plastic Country documentary. I know having spoken to him yesterday, he's putting that on YouTube for free. So plenty of places to find out more. Yeah,
Matt Kendall (15:09)
We'll drop it in the show notes.
Elliot Costello (15:11)
of places to find out more about the impact on plastics within Australia. This is about the
regulation and reform required to allow us to minimise packaging waste. And that form is an EPR. And this is where the alignment is across so many groups that I've talked about government, industry, retailers, recyclers, and obviously, ENGOs right through to consumers. So an EPR is Extended Producer Responsibility, which in a very simple way is the producer pays.
So if you are a manufacturer of a good and you bring that good into the country or manufacture locally that requires packaging, there is a fee based system for the material you place on market. So easy to recycle material or easy to compost materials, tick, very low fee. Hard to recycle material, hard to compost material that's complex, harmful, has no certainty of end of life.
higher fee. That's simple. Those fees, and this is an EPRs all around the world, I said at the start, 82 plus nations who have an EPR in place and it works. Those fees shouldn't go into government coffers and sit there and be spent on whatever the government decides of the day, whether it's road schools and hospitals. They need to invest in infrastructure to ensure the collecting and sorting of packaging waste improves. So that's the pull through. Fees upfront.
better infrastructure down here. So if you speak about, if you want to think about outcomes, Australia's plastic packaging, recycling rates are about 14%. That's DQ's own studies from 2025. again, Minister Watts' department, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, their own modelling is 14 % of plastics that we put into curbside recycling and industry recycling is
gets recycled. 86 % of plastic packaging placed on market goes to landfill. That's horrifying. Worse yet, there's probably fugitive plastic in there too. So what an EPR does is it creates that responsibility and that incentive structure to use more easy to recycle or easy to process materials, therefore increasing the rate. EPRs aren't a silver bullet. It's not the panacea that's going to solve all problems connected to plastic or packaging waste.
the studies and there's a lot of empirical studies here that shows that we'll get recycling up to that 60, 70%. And then in cases around the world, once you get that baseline, it's kind of a policy stack that helps you get up to that 18,
Matt Kendall (17:56)
Mm.
Elliot Costello (17:56)
90 % recovery rates. And that's what we've been begging for. And that's why EPR is so necessary and why we're disappointed that the federal government's turned it down this week.
Matt Kendall (18:07)
Yeah, and there's I I saw just recently that a recycler in Adelaide went broke. and from what
Elliot Costello (18:16)
And tragically,
Matt, this is going to be the first of many. And I'm sure you'll
Matt Kendall (18:18)
Yeah.
Elliot Costello (18:19)
talk about the impact of not having an EPR in place.
Matt Kendall (18:23)
Yeah, I mean this is this is it. This is from what we've heard, it it could well be the first of many. and and that's gonna be on the government because there's been so much uncertainty in this space for so long. And you know, I I'm I've been a massive circular economy advocate for quite some time.
Elliot Costello (18:40)
Let
me just explain why there'll be more recyclers that go out of business. know, Suzanne Tomberoo at Acor has been phenomenal. If there's a voluntary system and any brand owner can bring in any material, which is what Australia has become, a dumping ground for whatever materials around the world, predominantly Asia, I think it's 94 % of
plastics.
we import. So we don't have a good domestic market for producing packaging that's been gutted and gone without manufacturing. And EPR cleans that
that stream up of imports coming into the nation, then it creates a recycled content mandate amount, whether it's 30%, 50%, 70%. And that creates a domestic economy for reproducing recycled plastics. So that gives clarity, certainty for investment to our recyclers. And it cleans up the stream that they're getting on the collection end. So that's why recyclers have been so vocal about
an EPR system because they've got the regulatory certainty then to invest in better machinery and infrastructure. And then they know their feedstock is going to be cleaner. And then they're going to have a great offtake market because of the scheme that's set up to incentivize recycled content made in Australia. So jobs, industry benefit, sovereign capability, like it's a, it's a home run. that's the frustration that I'll park.
Matt Kendall (20:08)
It's yeah, it will it is credible
incredibly frustrating because our current government, you know, makes a lot of noise about, implementing circular economy principles. And I I laud that. I it's great that we do have a government that that that is willing to do that. But a little bit like I was saying yesterday, they signal one thing and they do another. Because, at the moment we don't even have a recycling economy.
So if you look at it, you know, our materials economy right now is is actually quite linear, apart from a few exceptions, like aluminium. So quite aluminium can be recycled infinitely. And so there's, you know, with the container deposit scheme, it does a really good job of collecting a lot of the the cans that go out there and then they are then recycled and then turned into other cans. So that's a a great example. Yeah.
Elliot Costello (20:54)
Which is evidence of an EPR. The
container deposit scheme is a great example of an EPR. It's state by state. And again, you know, there should be a national framework, but credit to South Australia who started this 40 plus years ago. You incentivise good behaviour. And yes, some of those brands come in kicking and screaming because they've got to pay a fee, 10 cents in Victoria. But that creates like the...
The agency that provides, we collect and give it to a neighbor of mum's whose son takes it off and he's saved $2,500 in the past like six months. That is an EPR scheme and that guarantees that a cleaner stream goes back to recycle and repurpose. So, sorry, I'll cut you off, that's dependent.
Matt Kendall (21:43)
Yeah. I guess it's
but it's beneficial for me to to explain, you know, the i in terms of at the biosphere that we live in, our natural systems exist in a loop. So something is created or born or grows, it dies or defecates, and then that waste is then absorbed back into the ecosystem as as food, as nutrients, and then that loop then, you know, it goes goes on ad infinitum.
Where ecosystems fall out of balance is when there's too much waste or the ability to deal with that waste is vastly diminished. And that's where we're at now. And
In in particular in Australia, we we very much have a linear materials economy. So that is we extract the materials, it could be plastics or metals, we use them in a product. It's you know, take, make, waste. we take it out, we extract it, we manufacture it, we use it, it ends up in landfill. A circular economy is, you know, a a material is is created and made, it is used, and then it is then transformed. And that can either be recycled.
and then turned into another version of that product, or it could just be composted in your backyard and then used as compost for your veggies. That becomes that's the genuinely circular materials economy. We're still very much linear. We've barely got a recycling economy at the moment. And recycling is kind of in the middle of the two. A lot of the materials get re-collected and reused and repurposed, but it's quite lossy. A lot of times the materials aren't collected yet.
in as as you've just laid out, that's the case we're at at the moment. And what essentially with this policy position, by doing nothing, they are taking a position. They are saying that what we're doing now is in their eyes good enough when clearly it isn't, we are, you know, lose we're going to lose capacity to be able to recycle. And also we are with because we're not going in with this EPR and with the standards that would bring in, we risk being a dumping ground for other economies.
that are potentially making these materials but can't sell them into markets with an EPR or or equivalent regulation.
Elliot Costello (23:54)
Yeah. So let's unpack the excuse from the Australian federal government. And we don't know why this decision was made or where it came from, but we assume it was the prime minister's office in the face of a rising right populism that anything that could be defined as a tax or a cost
or levy on consumers is too politically risky. So that's the calculus. That's the read from us in industry who've been advocating and that's the sort of, you know, clarity that we've got. Which is a farce. So Renny's modeling that was released by APCO and ACORE at the start of the year. the head of the packaging organization, the industry body for recyclers.
showed it was a 0.1 % EPR would bring in a 0.1 % rising cost. Our own modeling at Phantom earlier this year, I showed it at 25 cents on an average shopping trolley per family per week, and that's on a $220 plus shop. And both of those sort of independent analysis show that you don't need to start this strategy, it's a phase in approach. Both of those figures are negligible. So it is negligible, and that is not taking into consideration
the way that brands will innovate, design better standards, and be incentivized to minimize their potential EPR fees. Then there's the rate payers. The government will never look at this, an EPR scheme would minimize the collection fee that we pay as rate payers. So Ed Whitehead, our team at Phantm, has done some fantastic research to start a national conversation.
He won't say it's empirical or independent or perfect, but it's like, we're not thinking about the fee reduction from the 530 plus councils that are charging us to collect our packaging waste, which makes up over 30 % of waste collected at home from the curbside. So that's one big theme that I think we need to debunk. And it's hard because these are facts and we're up against a federal government that's sort of saying,
I'm not feeling the pressure. Let me just put that one ice. The other thing I just want to be really clear about is why this matters. In a federalized sort of nation that we live in, fragmentation is the enemy. So six states, two territories with six rules or eight rules across those different state and territories that have different standards, different expectations, different bands. And if you're a national brand, which most
companies aspire to be or are trading with eight different sets of rules really hard. And that's the importance of national harmonization to bring together
standards, this is where we're going, this is the expectation, these are the fees. Get on with it. So that's just two very important things for anyone that geeks out on policy like me that needs to know that the fees are negligible and it's an excuse, not a reality.
for why this is being shot down and that fragmentation is the worst friend of business right now.
Matt Kendall (27:17)
Yeah, on on the council rates side, we've just received notification up here in the Byronshire Council that our rates are going to be increased by 37%. So it's and that's obviously
Elliot Costello (27:29)
Call him up, call him up and see how much that's related to packaging waste.
Matt Kendall (27:32)
yeah, it's it's not all related to that. And then even, you know, I you know I I remember looking up, you know, there are some councils that, you know, between six and nine hundred dollars a year for a red bin. And so
that's a lot a lot of packaging goes into that. Redbin, of course, it's not all of it. But you do the you know, you you start to do the maths on this, you realize that it's actually not gonna be at the cost imposition that the government is so worried it's going to be. I don't think they're I I think it's I think it's political cowardice. I don't think they've they've given it proper thought. and when exactly like you s
Elliot Costello (28:04)
think they've given it
thought, but it's your first point. It's an unwillingness. They're not feeling the heat. They'll run to issues where...
Matt Kendall (28:11)
Well well when well when I
say when I say thought, I just don't think they're running it ahead quick enough to actually sort of have that long term vision that you were talking about it.
Elliot Costello (28:17)
Deque has done so many consultations
and 62 % of industry said yes. Like they voted for a move to a federalised EPR scheme. Like the department's done the work. We do not need more consultations. That is the enemy of progress right now. Go and cost out how much those consultations cost. We've probably spent millions for the department to have that clarity to say to...
a minister what's office and Tanya Plibersek, he's predecessor, that this is what industry wants and this is what consumers want. Like your job is to govern on that basis.
Matt Kendall (28:54)
Well, I think what we've got now is just and it's part of this malaise, it's part of this grievance and disc discontent and dissatisfaction, is that we've got politicians who don't do policy anymore. It's it's just politics. So I think this issue is being looked at through the political lens, not the policy lens. Because if you just looked at the policy and looked at the impacts, it it's a it's a no-brainer. There is no opposition to this at the moment. I mean, you know, like we said, it's it's it's nonpartisan. And then on top of that.
Elliot Costello (29:21)
There's a fear of opposition.
think that, you know, there's a fear of a one nation.
Matt Kendall (29:23)
There's a fe yeah, exact but that's it. That's politics.
Elliot Costello (29:27)
Yeah, that's the politics. I know we're coming to an end, so I just want to be quick and maybe encouraging a little bit more positive. Last year, the federal Labour government under Minister Watt as the environment minister did implement the EPPC, the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Act.
and or conservation act that included a framing and development of a national EPA. This was a huge political like win. It was contentious and we know Kelly O'Shaughnessy from ACF Australian Conservation Foundation that did a lot of work leading these discussions and bringing, you know, mining groups to the table and making sure there was alignment.
EPR or national packaging reform is less contentious than EPBC. So there's evidence in the last year, federally, that the Labor government can move on environmental issues. And that's part of the disappointment that, or maybe it's part of the hope that enough pressure and a realignment of voters that stand up and say, no, this is important to me. We know how much work, and as I've mentioned, APCO and ACOR have done, but...
ENGOs, WWF, Surfers for Climate, Australian Marine Conservation Society, Boomerang, who have been putting pressure on government. I think what they're inviting us to do is stand up and prove to the federal government that this matters to us as individual constituents, voters, members of community that have assumed government would lead for something that has social and environmental good and economic good. Very clear that the benefit
right through the supply chain and certainly for end of life infrastructure like recyclers. But now it's our responsibility to knock on all our MPs doors and literally say to them, we want this. You don't need to know the last 30 minutes of an EPR scheme backwards. We've spent too much time geeking out on the policy, but we want action on packaging slash plastic waste.
Matt Kendall (31:40)
Yeah, one of the things that surprised me working on this was you know, we learnt from a f a few political insiders that in this current term, Anthony Albanese takes the progressive vote for for granted. There doesn't seem to be too much concern about getting wedged from environmental groups, or or you know, pro parties to the left of him.
Meanwhile, he's extremely concerned about being wedged by the coalition, the Murdoch media and of and obviously One Nation. and fact we we saw that a little bit in the the West Australian by election where they parachuted in a mining lobbyist, and that went terrible. I know that went terrible for them.
Elliot Costello (32:22)
Don't go there, Matt. That's a whole other episode.
Matt Kendall (32:25)
They lost to one nation. But it really does i I I think it is an example of
We're incredibly frustrated and where this frustration is coming from that this government isn't governing in the national interest. And, you know, we just we just saw that came out on Thursday that the United United Nations has basically announced that we are not going to stay under one point five degrees in of of cl of warming by twenty thirty. And if we don't get on top of it, we could even reach two degrees by twenty thirty four. And, you know, we're just seeing what happened in Nepal.
We're about to have a super El Nino kick in. And I think this waste crisis is the climate crisis in material format. And I think it it whereas climate is is a bit amorphous and we don't really understand the threat until we see it on our doorstep, we see the threat of this on our on our beaches, in our waterways, in our streets, all the time. And I think when the government is trying to take this center line like this and not govern.
in the national interest. I mean, honestly, the only thing in the middle of the road is white lines and dead wombats. I this government needs to be bold. What is the point of having a majority that they've got and not governing in a way that is going to improve the lives of Australians? And I think if we want to start putting pressure on Albanese from that side of things, we are all going to have to start to get a bit louder, start to organize, at least write to your MPs.
Because I don't know, with all this new I mean, what am I meant to tell my daughter with half of this stuff? You know, we really
Elliot Costello (34:03)
Yeah.
Matt Kendall (34:04)
do have to step up.
Elliot Costello (34:05)
And that's... I think we need...we like having a call to action... ...or at least a positive framing here on the Worth Knowing podcast. It's a new podcast, we're only a sort of month or two in... ...but we try and make it...take a big issue, you know... ...communicate the politics and how it affects our daily lives... ...and the future we're building. But also make it clear that there is action, there is hope... ...there is an outcome. And for us...
This, we're now moving away from this industry alignment to the individuals and sometimes a decentralized approach to reform is the best thing. Personally, I will be contacting my local MP or, you know, there's a few campaigns that have been pieced together from the ENGOs that I can't mention about yet, but it's super exciting about some of the activations and the ways they want to engage people to inform their federal MPs that.
Packaging waste matters and we want action. We want alignment and we want a national framework that works for all of us.
Matt Kendall (35:05)
Yeah, and I think we'll we'll certainly bring anyone up to everyone up to date once we get news of those campaigns. 'cause it is going to be important. You know, we really do need to get active.
Elliot Costello (35:17)
if you do care about waste, just take that 10 minutes in your week to contact your local MP. That's the starting point before there's other activations available, but contact your MP, write that email.
write a letter, sign a petition, and just say to the MP that I'm disappointed, that there's not a national movement towards national packaging reform or cleaning up packaging waste. And I would like to see some action. Because at end of the day, policymakers are responsible to us as voters.
Matt Kendall (35:51)
Absolutely. I think that brings us to the end. with this topic, I I you know it's it's a topic a bit close to my heart, so I might have got a bit emotive and and passionate there a few times. But it really is it really is something worth knowing, I believe. And I as always we'll be back next week with another topic worth knowing. please make sure you like, subscribe. you'll find everything you need at worth knowingpod.com and we'll see you again next week. See you soon.