Circular Online brings you the latest developments from the RWM Expo 2026.
PackUK and UK Packaging PRO – The Industry Voices Leading the Future of Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging
As part of an insightful session on day two of RWM, Eleanor Williams, Head of Strategy at PackUK, and Cat Hay, Head of Communications and Engagement at UK Packaging PRO, discussed recent developments in EPR for packaging, the role of the PRO, the key industry relationships shaping the scheme, and what a more circular future for packaging looks like.
“When you work in policy, a lot of time is spent on planning, whereas the PRO is about delivery, which was a really exciting opportunity,” Cat Hay told us.
She described the PRO as a new ‘engine of the sector’, a system of accountability and opportunity. In practice, this means working closely with PackUK to help producers meet their obligations within the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme. There is also a system of opportunity, which involves collaborating internationally to make improvements.
Eleanor Williams explained how PackUK and PRO are partners, with PRO offering industry expertise and insights, while PackUK remains responsible for governing and running the EPR for packaging scheme.
A key challenge Williams highlighted was ensuring that the partnership is collaborative without duplicating any actions.
Williams continued that she views success as when voices across the supply chain are heard and collaboration leads to tangible changes and improvements with the EPR scheme.
Both speakers were keen to highlight that PackUK and UK Packaging PRO want to hear from industry and often canvassed the audience for their thoughts.
So, what does success look like when we reach 2030?
Hay said that at the highest possible level, success means closing the loop, but a simpler and more effective system would also be a key indicator of success.
Williams explained that EPR is a single part of much broader, interconnected system. So, she viewed success as ensuring these complex system-wide decisions are data-led and evidence-based. This means collecting better data to ensure the best decisons are made, both at a business level but also at a political level.
Producer and Customer Responsibility Gap: Reusing and Disposing of Products Responsibly
Who is responsible for the producer and customer responsibility gap?
Jon Hastings, Waste Network Chairs, told us that the responsibility is society-wide, not only at a supply chain or end-of-pipe level.
“We’re currently in a policy vacuum and policy tsunami,” Hastings said, highlighting the lack of policy direction around reuse and repair compared to recycling.
Simon Rutledge, Biffa, said that a key example of the producer and consumer gap was vape products, which are causing £1 billion in damage to the sector annually.
Larger stores and retailers offer take back schemes, however, Rutledge highlighted that there is not a desire from consumers to return vape products because of their low price point.
He offered that a solution could be Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for vaping products, an idea Biffa have called for before with the redeemable deposit set at £5.
“If there is no value in a product, it does become a discardable item,” Rutledge said.
Matt Manning, BT, said that in the smartphone space, there is more opportunity for the producer to offer incentives for trade-in scheme and reuse initiative because of the value embedded into the products.
He also highlighted that there is much more of a repair culture with these high-value tech items. Consumer demand has pushed manufacturers and producers to offer more repair options making the process easier and more accessible.
To close the session, the audience asked Hayley Slack about her exciting children’s book Little Coffee Cup, which is made entirely from recycled coffee cups.
Slack wrote the story as a way of engaging kids with reuse and recycling from an early age through a fun story they would connect with.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, she told us about the challenges of using recycled materials to print a book as the publishing industry is not set up to operate in this way.
Positively, she explained that, with the right infrastructure in place, reuse has the potential to reduce costs and not only support the environment.
Women in Waste & Recycling: Creating Sector Attractiveness
As part an engaging and interactive first session on day two of RWM, CIWM President Vicki Hughes asked the panel why women don’t join the sector?
So, what is putting women off?
CIWM Early Careers Ambassador Laura Fischer, FCC Environment, spoke about the need to have clear progression pathways and highlighted that if women see clear opportunities this will make a big impact.
Speaking about her own experience, the Environment Agency’s Katherine Goodall said that this was the case in the Environment Agency as she explained there were plenty of women role models in the public sector.
“The visibility of women in the public sector is far greater,” Goodall said. “I ended up going into waste as it seemed much more progressive and interesting. It was where I could make a change and make a difference.”
However, Goodall continued that the sector is not successful at selling itself as a progressive industry that isn’t only about collecting bins.
“When I tell people the sector I work in, the first thing they say is a question about to me is what bin should I put this in,” Vicki told us.
Vicki then asked the audience what has changed and improved for women in the sector in recent years.
CIWM Early Careers President Emma Mulligan spoke about how younger women entering the sector now have much more confidence to stand up for themselves against unnecessarily gendered language or inappropriate comments.
When asked by the audience what the sector needs to improve in the future, Fischer spoke about how the front-facing roles are male dominated, which can create the impression that the sector is not for women.
Vicki Hughes spoke about her Think Again Presidential Campaign is aiming to change this perception by highlighting the vast array of roles, from writers and podcast producers to finance and marketing positions.
“The Think Again Pledge is about encouraging companies to rethink their language,” Hughes told us.
Doing this, she explained, opens up recruitment pathways to a new audience who have the skills and talent the sector needs as it continues to evolve.
When asked for one thing they would change about the sector, the panel agreed that it would be language.
Hughes explained that if everyone was aligned on language this would raise awareness of opportunities in the waste sector from across a variety of industries, such as apprenticeships and other sustainability fields.
Leading the UK Waste Sector: Strategy, Change and Future Direction
What is the biggest issue facing the resources and waste sector today?
A straw poll of audience members watching the Leading the UK Waste Sector: Strategy, Change and Future Direction session found that the attendees at RWM 2026 believe the biggest issues are lithium-ion batteries causing fires at waste facilities and waste crime.
“It’s possible to close entire facilities with a battery the size of your thumb,” Rory Brien, Head of Municipal Treatment at FCC Environment, explained.
SUEZ’s John Wilkinson told us about a recent fire caused by a lithium-ion battery that had caused £30 million worth of damage.
The solution? The panel agreed that a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for products containing a rechargeable or lithium-ion battery would make a massive impact.
“A DRS for those items is crucial,” Neil Grundon, Chairman of Grundon Waste Management, explained.
The panel also agreed that retailers and producers needed to take responsibility, including being compelled to through policy, for change to happen.
This was a point echoed by environmental law expert Anna Willetts who was moderating the session. She told us that laws were only effective as the enforcement effort behind them.
Grundon continued that, he believes, there is a disconnect between on-the-ground regulators and the legislators passing laws. He urged politicians to spend more time on the ‘shop floor’ to get a grasp of the reality facing everyday operators.
Waste crime has put the sector in the spotlight recently and, positively, this has led to a sweep of policy announcements from the government.
Grundon told us that the reason government has ‘woken up’ is they’re seeing the millions, and potentially billions, of pounds slipping out of the system due to organised fraud and waste crime.
The panel agreed that waste crime operations undercut legitimate operators and affects prices, which is damaging their business, as well as public trust.
Concluding the discussion, Grundon said that the government have recognised that fly-tipping on the side of the road, large-scale waste sites, and uncleared rubbish fosters the mindset that things are broken, and can’t be fixed.
Despite the huge challenges facing the sector, the panel agreed that there were solutions and throughout a Q&A with the audience discussed what the future could look like.
Shifting Consumer Behaviour for Competitive Advantage and Environmental Benefit
Why is there a disconnect between what people say they’re doing and what they actually do? This is an age-old conundrum for sustainability professionals.
“In a world of waste, it feels like our lives are spent trying to persuade citizens to do things that are difficult,” circular economy expert Wayne Hubbard said.
He explained that the biggest barrier to people adopting more sustainable behaviours is convenience. When something is difficult to do, or even if the unsustainable option is slightly easier, this can often be an insurmountable barrier to overcome, even when people know the sustainable behaviour is the right thing to do.
One example Hubbard told us about was that of Netflix. The streaming giant originally dealt in hardware, shipping out physical DVDs, which people then returned via post. The shift onto streaming made the process of watching shows and films easier and more efficient.
“If the system make the action easier, people will adopt it,” he explained.
Elfrida Hamilton-Russell, Chief Impact Officer at UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), explained how construction projects often begin with good intentions.
Companies often have good intentions before spades break ground, however, Hamilton-Russell told us that sustainability is often value engineered out when construction begins due to the perception of increased costs. She also pointed out that when projects are designed with embedded sustainbility this can reduce costs, despite perceptions.
When discussing the question of whether citizens care about sustainability, she argued that we all need to care a little bit more.
“We have technical solutions, but we don’t have consumer behaviours,” she told us.
When an action becomes viewed as a cultural or societal norm, that is when it will be widely adopted by the public, she explained.
David Hall, Executive Director of Behaviour Change, who arrived late after a train delay, wasted no time in sharing his expertise after darting onto the panel midway through the session.
“Data shows people care about the environment and climate change; however, we’re not always rational,” he said.
He explained that lots of factors guide our decisions and why they’re not always aligned with our ethos and values. We’re driven by habit and, sometimes, bias, as well as how easy something is to do. As people tend to gravitate towards the easiest action, the most sustainable behaviour has to become the default for the majority of the population.
If not, motivation will not overcome the effort barrier, he told us.
The best evidenced way to spark this shift, Hall said, is to show people that others are doing it. In other words, making something seem like the social norm.
A fascinating example he shared was around chewing gum litter. Behaviour Change research found that people often littered chewing gum outside of train stations, so as a solution, they launched a campaign with signage outside these locations and saw a dramatic fall in littering of 43%.
He explained that behaviour change isn’t always about delivering the most effective message, but delivering it at the right time as well.
How to convert the pope | Merijn Tinga
“In the Netherlands, we have a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS),” Merijn Tinga, a DRS and anti-littering campaigner, said to open his fascinating talk.
Over the next hour, he explained his crucial role in persuading the Dutch Government to introduce a DRS and how he has been wind-surfing across Europe encouraging others to do the same, culminating in a private audience with the Pope in Vatican City.
Tinga’s journey began over ten years ago when during a visit to his local beach he was shocked by the sheer volume of plastic bottles littered across the sand.
Resolving to do something about it, he thought up his first stunt and collected the littered bottles to build his own surf board with.
Unfortunately, as he had no experience building a board of any kind, this effort was a ‘massive failure’, he admitted. However, the stunt got attention and taught him a valuable lesson.
“Awareness is not enough,” he told us.
People know that plastic is harmful to us and the environment, but, Tinga concluded, it will take political action before change can be enacted.
With help from experts, Tinga built a new board from littered plastic bottles and wind surfed from the Netherlands all the way to the UK. The stunt captured people’s attention again and they signed a petition calling for the Dutch Government to launch a DRS.
As he was invited to share the petition with politicians on Valentine’s Day, Tinga ordered 60,000 sugar heart candies, each embossed with a signatories name.
The policy was adopted and within six months of its implementation, the Dutch DRS led to a 80% decrease in littered plastic bottles.
From there, Tinga decided to wind-surf around Europe spreading the word to the few countries on the continent that had not launched their own schemes.
His journey culminated in a private audience with the Pope in May earlier this year. Tinga presented Pope Leo with a Reverse Vending Machine and tried to persuade him to have it installed inside the one and only shop in Vatican City.
As of today, he is still waiting to hear back on whether he was able to convert Pope Leo to a DRS disciple, but fingers crossed he will hear back soon.
The Future of Environmental Regulation
Gillian Pratt, the Environment Agency’s Deputy Director of Future Regulation, delivered an insightful session exploring the future direction of environmental regulation and the evolving regulatory landscape.
“We’re currently experiencing a critical and changing situation,” Pratt explained.
She highlighted the scale of issues including climate change, water quality and availability, nature recovery and economic stability as key reasons why change must happen on a regulatory level.
Pratt, who is leading on regulatory strategy at the Environment Agency, explained that these issues are all interconnected and regulation must account for this overlap. This way, she argued, regulation can be a ‘foundation of strong communities and sustainable growth’.
“Regulation should quietly do its job in the background,” she told us. “The consequences of bad regulation is quickly felt.”
Putting the case for why regulation must adapt, Pratt explained that the need to respond to the pressing challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss means a new strategy is needed.
She also highlighted that the public has higher expectations around aspects such as regulatory transparency, which means some of the more than 3000 individual regulations are ‘outdated’.
So, what does transformation look like?
Pratt showed us some key factors the Environment Agency are incoporating into its new approach, including consistency and ensuring targets are outcome-focused.
This new approach is currently being put into practice across the UK through several pilot projects. One of the most interesting Pratt highlighted was a pilot where several infrastructure projects worked with a single lead environmental regulator. The aim of the pilot was to test whether this approach improves efficiency, reduces regulatory duplication, and helps avoid unnecessary delays.
So, far the feedback has been extremely positive, Pratt explained. With an increased focus on the Environment Agency, and changing political priorities, we may see quicker regulatory change than many anticipate moving forwards.
