What if your latest purchase wasn’t really a choice? What if the product was designed to be replaced, the promise of “free” delivery, and the item you threw away never really went away? What if the problem isn’t that we aren’t buying the wrong things, but that we have been encouraged to buy far more than we actually need? These are the questions at the centre of Netflix's Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy, a thought-provoking documentary that takes a critical look at modern co

England’s waste system faces a second problem closely connected to lock-in: capacity. The Government’s statutory 2042 target requires residual waste to fall to 287 kg per person, while the interim target is 437 kg per person by 2030⁠. Defra’s modelling indicates that collection and packaging reforms will contribute towards the reduction, but further policies will be required to close the remaining gap. That matters because incinerators are long-lived assets. If more capacity

Incinerators are built to operate for decades. That creates an awkward question: what happens when councils are trying to recycle more and produce less waste, but long-term contracts still depend on keeping incinerators supplied? This tension is known as incinerator lock-in. In simple terms, infrastructure and contracts designed around a steady supply of waste can make it harder or more expensive to reduce the amount being burned. In an August 2026 open letter, the United Kin

A new symbol is showing up on cups, bottles, and return bins — and it isn’t the recycling triangle. It marks something recycling never could: proof that an item belongs to a working reuse system. A Symbol for a System, Not an Item Recycling’s triangle just means a material can theoretically be reprocessed. The new reuse symbol certifies something different: that the container sits inside a real loop — collected, washed, and redistributed, again and again — by a system built t