95. The tech that could end overpackaged boxes, with Jude Pullen

It’s a familiar frustration, ordering something small, only for it to arrive in a box far bigger than it needs; wasteful and seemingly impossible to avoid. This week, we’re joined by Jude Pullen, a man on a mission to change that. Join us as we explore why companies so often get packaging wrong, uncovering the logistical challenges behind every delivery, and discover how Jude is using a blend of creativity and engineering to tackle this surprisingly complex problem.

Join hosts James Piper and Robbie Staniforth as they delve into the world of recycling, hopefully having fun along the way. One thing is for sure, they will talk absolute rubbish from start to finish.

We would like to have an evening Talking Rubbish to celebrate our 100th episode. It will be in central Bristol on the evening of the 3rd July, to let us know if you can make it, book your place on Eventbrite

On the episode Jude mentions his board game Goats vs Llamas, which you can find here

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Music licence ID: 6WPY8Q4O2RPFIOTL

 Music licence ID: 6WPY8Q4O2RPFIOTL

Transcript

James Piper 0:01

Hello, welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and one-sided stories. I'm James Piper, author of the Rubbish Book, and I'm joined by Robbie Stanerforth, my Far from Rubbish friend. And we are joined today by Jude Pullen, our Far from Rubbish guest. Good morning, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth 0:20

Hey James. Really excited to be speaking with Jude, who was recommended to me. We didn't actually meet in person, unfortunately, at one of the trade shows a couple of months ago. But a few different people said, you've got to have Jude on. So high expectations.

James Piper 0:39

Yeah, and the more I've researched, the more excited I've got. So it's going to be great. Jude's going to talk to us today about reducing packaging. So we've talked about it a couple of times on this podcast that, like, when you get a product that's been overpackaged and how annoying that can be. And Jude's on a mission to stop that happening.

Robbie Staniforth 0:54

Yeah, had one just last week, you know, with an outer box. It was a tiny pair of surfing wetsuit gloves, actually. And it probably took up about 5 to 10% of the large box that it was sent in. And guess what? It came from Patagonia directly. And they're supposed to be the good guys.

James Piper 1:11

Oh no. They need you, brother. We'll get into that in a second, short. Yes, but before we do that, let's do additions and corrections. We had an email from Chris, who I think it's Chris. Chris, I'm sorry if I've got this wrong, but you have sent me two emails using a different name both times. But I'm I'm gonna go with the latest email, which is Chris. It's either Pasco or Chris. And I'm sort of wondering if one's a surname, one's a first name. But anyway, we had an email from someone who may be using the alias Chris, who had agreed with us on our views on electric vehicles, which was episode 87. And then swiftly you turned and disagreed with us on our views on palm oil on episode 89. Wow, okay. Well, at least we're getting a reaction from it. I know. Such a roller coaster couple of weeks. I'm sure there are lots of people who tune in and go, Oh, yeah, I completely agree with these guys, only to listen next episode and go, I completely disagree with these guys. It's just it's just the nature of us giving our personal opinion on topics, isn't it? We can't expect everyone to agree all the time. I'm sure there's loads of people who don't agree with my views on DRS, and that's great, debate's good, it's what we're all about. In the interest of transparency, I thought I would share just a portion of Chris or Pasco's email. He said, as with most things, and it's related to palm oil, you have to follow the money. Palm oil is cheap, so profits are good when using it. And yes, I'm edging to the view that profit making, aka capitalism, is the evil force behind most climate and environmental damage. And as ever, a thorough and nuanced view is available at ethicalconsumer.org, whom I would thoroughly recommend. So thank you very much for that, Chris. We appreciate it. I guess the summary of the palm oil episode is that we said, look, if you're going to buy a product with palm oil in, make sure it's sustainable palm oil. And if you're going to buy a product that doesn't have palm oil in, then you need to understand the environmental impact of what they are using in place of palm oil. And this whole discussion about palm oil using a lot less land than its replacements. So you've got to spend a bit more time assessing it. So at the time when I was preparing the episode, I did actually spend some time looking at ethicalconsumer.org.

Robbie Staniforth 3:24

Oh, okay. Step ahead here, James, clearly, of the recommendation.

James Piper 3:29

I yeah, it's difficult. When you search palm oil in Google, you inevitably end up on all of these different websites. And I sort of felt their view actually was very similar to the WWF, who we spent most of our time discussing. Because what Ethical Consumer says is that they have taken the view that avoiding palm oil altogether or choosing products with the very best sustainable certifications are both reasonable responses to a very complex set of issues. So they're basically saying the same thing. Either pick certified sustainable palm oil that you really understand or avoid it altogether. I do stand by the fact that demonising one product, in this instance palm oil, has a tendency to promote the others without actually reducing use. And so when people say, oh, I got my water in an aluminium can, aren't I sustainable? It's because the media has fed them this narrative around plastic. And actually, we should just have tap water. We have touched on that a number of times, but I just wanted to summarize that we're not that far apart, even though you did say that you disagreed with us on palm oil. I don't think we're that far apart. Buy less, guys. And if you're gonna buy stuff, make sure it's certified or avoids the product that you want to avoid, but understand what you're switching to. And we actually had Alice on Discord, very similar about palm oil, saying she felt the episode had missed a point. Um, we use much more palm oil because of hyper-consumerism. And there are many products that we really don't need or that are wasted. And completely agree with her. You know, we need to do more on consumerism and how product demand is increasing and how we reduce that. And that I think that's tied in really nicely to our interview with Jude today, who's all about reducing the packaging that we actually get through our door.

Robbie Staniforth 5:07

Yeah, hopefully we'll find out from Jude about packaging minimization and exactly how you can make the very best decision when it comes to packaging up products and make the right sustainable choices for whatever it is you choose to ultimately buy, whether it does or doesn't have this sustainable palm oil in or not.

James Piper 5:29

And this is a great opportunity for me to create a new motto. I mean, maybe someone's coined this motto before, but I was like, this is going to be my motto from now on. Buy less, then buy best. And what is best? Whatever has the least impact. So if you're talking about palm oil, choose between sustainable palm oil or an alternative product that you understand the impact of. And then you will meet my newly created motto of buy less, then buy best.

Robbie Staniforth 5:54

And so I've got a quick, hopefully helpful addition uh from back on episode 88. Do you remember we were talking about floss picks? Uh yes.

James Piper 6:05

I have seen so many of those recently. I went for a walk with Ellie yesterday and I was like floss pick, floss pick, floss pick. There were just so many on the out on the road.

Robbie Staniforth 6:13

Yeah, funnily enough, I've also now I'm tuned into it. So I've been seeing these floss picks everywhere. And remember, we said they're 100% rubbish. You're not going to be able to recycle one of those things. But I stood in my bathroom the other day, I was brushing my teeth, and I was staring at my partner's rechargeable water flossing machine. And I thought, why the heck did I not mention this option when we were talking about floss picks in the episode? So I actually went back to the episode to listen. So I was like, surely I must have mentioned this thing. And I hadn't. She's had this thing for over a year, so it's a little, it is an electronic device, but you just refill it with water, you know, you don't need to change any of the parts or whatever. There's no string as you find with those floss picks. And it's a great thing for doing the flossing that's uh recommended obviously by dentists. And you were talking about those interdental toothbrushes that you use, those little bristly brushes that go between your teeth. So I thought I would helpfully add this addition of the water flossing machine, which means you're not having to use single-use products. And if you do use those single-use products, please don't throw them on the floor. At least put them in the rubbish bin.

James Piper 7:34

We'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, EcoSurety, who are on a mission to rid the world of unnecessary packaging. They help brands navigate the tricky world of extended producer responsibility, but that is not all. They also collaborate on some incredible recycling projects and consumer awareness campaigns for those tough to recycle materials. If you're an organization looking to make smarter packaging choices, check them out at ecosurity.com. Best thing you could do to help our podcast to go is to tell your friends and family about it, or you can leave us a review.

Robbie Staniforth 8:00

And if you do that, you could be Robbie's review of the week. So this one comes through on Apple Podcasts. It's not actually a five-star rating, this one, James. It's an eight bananas rating. That's correct. Is that better or worse? We shall discuss. So this one comes in from MACT. Brilliant show. Loving the podcast as a fellow recycling nerd. Still learning loads, so keep up the good work. Eight. And then eight banana emojis.

James Piper 8:34

Eight banana emojis, yeah. Now I had no idea why we were being scored eight bananas. Absolutely not a clue. And then yesterday, and this is so genuine, yesterday, I've become a bit obsessed. I haven't watched I'm a Celebrity, but but I've become a little bit obsessed with this kind of fallout that's happened on the I'm a celebrity South Africa thing. I mean, we we don't have time to go into the detail, but basically some celebs are fighting. And Anton Deck were kind of mediating this fight, right? And that they Anton Deck have a podcast, which I haven't listened to before. And they put up an episode called, you know, what really happened on the I'm a celeb live final. And I thought, okay, well, I want to know. I've no, I haven't watched any I'm a celeb, but I'm like, I want to know what was happening on the live TV show. So I tuned in to Anta Deck's podcast for the first time ever. This is yesterday. I promise you, I'd put this review in as our review of the week, and I thought, I have no idea what eight bananas are. I'm gonna go onto the show and say I have no idea what eight bananas are. And I scrolled, as I often do when I find a new podcast, to their reviews. First review I saw, seven bananas. Can only give this seven bananas until video is added to Apple Podcasts. That's the first review I saw for Anton Deck. Press show more. Every single person is rating it out of eight bananas. Really? I love it. Eight bananas. Really funny, eight bananas. And I'm like, this is where the bananas things come from. Backti, who's reviewed us, must listen to Anton Deck. And I think Anton Deck on their I don't know, I've tried to find out, but I haven't had enough time to truly find out. I think on the Saturday night takeaway, they just every time something was good, they went, We give it eight bananas, it's carried over into their podcast. And somehow it's carried over to our podcast. And I was delighted to solve the mystery of why we have been given eight bananas. So we think eight bananas is the top rating. It's not out of ten. I think it's the top rating. Okay. Correct.

Robbie Staniforth 10:27

Oh, great.

James Piper 10:28

So thank you very much, MacT, who must be a fan of Ant and Deck, or maybe it is, or Ant or Deck. And you can follow us at rubbishpodcast on social media. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. Also join our Discord. It's the easiest way to engage with us and listeners of the show. And the link to all of those things is in the show notes. Every five episodes of Talking Rubbish, we get to interview someone we find really interesting. And I think it is worth saying we genuinely just find people that we think are interesting. Loads of people emailing us to come on the show, which is lovely. And they all get added to a nice long list. But so far, it has just been people that Robbie and I have found interesting, and Jude is no exception. So, hey Jude, how are you today?

Jude Pullen 11:13

I'm I'm excellent. Yeah, really nice to be involved in this. And it's uh been a bit of a sort of circuitous route from starting off talking about AI to moving into packaging to presenting at Birmingham NEC. And I presume that's probably where you got some of the recommendations. But I should probably say for your learned and scholarly listeners that uh I'm not a uh anywhere near as much of an expert in these sorts of things as you, and then that's actually a bit of a trademark of how I work as a as a freelance sort of inventor consultant, in that I just like working in lots of different sort of fields and uh professions that take my interest. So, similar to you, I work on stuff that I think is really interesting, and I think packaging waste is really interesting, so that's why it's great to be here with uh great community. Well, we love packaging waste, as you know.

Robbie Staniforth 12:06

No, we hate it. We hate packaging waste.

James Piper 12:10

This is true. It keeps us busy then, Robbie, without it. What would we talk about? And I I'm gonna start with something non-packaging because I have previously in my life had several moments where I've thought I need a 3D printer. Okay, so that's better. That's happened a few times, but nothing has made me want a 3D printer more than Radio Globe. So, Jude, can you describe Radio Globe to Ub Influencers?

Jude Pullen 12:37

Um, assuming that we're doing this all uh for for podcast and it isn't visual, otherwise I would pick it up and showing you. But but basically, this is a uh like one of those old-fashioned globes that you have that you can spin round. Only this one has a little pointer on it, a reticule, uh, and then it's like a crosshairs. And when you line it up on any city in the world, um, of around 15,000 stations of web radio will pop up uh relative to that city. So so basically you can sort of travel the world, and with honestly, the processing power of a Raspberry Pi, it's extraordinary how quickly it'll just dial in to radio in in anywhere in the world, really, that's um published it online. So yeah, the the sort of the the concept fascinated me, but it also is an excuse for me to sort of tinker and learn about hardware and software. And I hasten to add, it wouldn't be possible without two wonderful uh software engineers, Don Robson and Pete Milne. And again, that's very much a hallmark of how I work. Of the I'm often an instigator, but I need other people to help me finish things, and certainly what we're going to be talking about today will get into exactly that same formula.

James Piper 13:52

Great.

Robbie Staniforth 13:53

Does it make you want a 3D printer, Robbie? That's very cool. I mean, I'm into globes just in general, like they're beautiful objects, aren't they? So one that has this kind of purpose would definitely take it to the next level. But I'll let you buy the printer and I'll just pop round yours, James. The sharing economy.

Jude Pullen 14:14

Absolutely.

James Piper 14:15

Someone tagged us in a video the other day of people shredding up plastic PET plastic bottles, turning it into filament, and then turning those into litter pickers. I really liked, I mean, I'm generally of the view that a PET bottle should become a new PET bottle. But hey, if you're going to turn it into a litter picker, that's the next best thing, isn't it? To pick up PET bottles.

Jude Pullen 14:33

Well, whether you whether you it would be an interesting thing, I reckon somewhere in your listeners, they would be able to grind up some recycled bottles and produce a radio globe, specially for your podcast. So you are it's open source, you you can access all the files for free. So you could make a talking rubbish radio globe.

James Piper 14:54

Oh my goodness. So with the globe, instead of cities, we could just cover the globe in like episode artwork. And then you could just hunt Robbie. Right.

Jude Pullen 15:04

So all the all the listeners that you've interviewed, you could populate the world. Yeah. I'm committing to doing this.

James Piper 15:12

This is gonna I'm just gonna pause the podcast now to order myself a 3D printer and we're gonna do this. We're gonna cover the globe in episode artwork. That looks so good. Oh my goodness. Okay, I'm gonna do it. I love it. Thank you. And then we'll just have to get little stickers so that every time we add a new episode, I can stick on a new, you know, a new episode artwork. That's so good. How do you go from something like that, which as far as I gather was a COVID project, you know, because we were all going a bit um getting a bit lonely and there's an opportunity just to hear voices from around the world, which is a really nice way of presenting this project. How do you go from that to I want to help people package things more effectively?

Jude Pullen 15:51

Um, I guess, you know, this this is maybe going to sound pre-rehearsed, and in some ways I've thought about it a lot, and it's kind of the strapline on my website of the human story in tech. So it's weird. If you go on LinkedIn, you'll find me, you know, describing myself as a you know, creative technologist, which I think is a loose enough term that I can do whatever I want, basically, that's a bit creative with technology. But the differentiator is I'm not really interested in just producing some PowerPoints or a rapport. The prototyping part means I want to basically be able to sort of disberth some idea in a physical form. Because for me, the most exciting thing, which is why I love the Radio Globe, is is is seeing other people interact with it and indeed other people remix it and build it in their own way. There's almost something a bit Darwinian about watching you put something out open source and other people just take it in completely different directions. So again, we I realize this is podcast, so I won't get lost in visuals here, but I had a guy from the Netherlands completely redesign it from the ground up. And so he actually sent me one amazingly, a guy called Frank. And that sort of thing just completely blows me away. That you will get this reaction that is completely different to sort of the usual corporate dynamic. But I think that's actually something where I think it it can mislead companies. Sometimes they think, oh, well, open source is just about giving things away for free. We're here to make money. That sounds, you know, um at odds with a sort of credible business model. But I've been very lucky that I've been working with Design Spark, which is part of the multinational RS group that ships a lot of electronics and other industrial um things to all sorts of different companies. And they've almost sort of treated me a bit like a sort of uh a patron of the technological arts, you could say, in that I've built air quality monitors, I've built flood alerts, and most recently, um, and I should hasten to add all of this as open source, and most recently working with NVIDIA um to basically see whether we can use AI to essentially reduce packaging waste. And um, if your listeners can imagine a box as they've probably experienced at home, that they order something and it's absolutely tiny and it's in a huge box. And for me as a sort of designer and engineer, I wasn't happy with just saying this sucks. I was thinking, well, why? Even if you have a very negative view of some of these big box, you know, distributors, surely they're not crazy enough to just waste money without any sort of logical reason. So that for me was the interesting rabbit hole, was the human story of why packaging is bad. And that in parallel was to also say, you know, I'm I'm extremely sensitive and in agreement with a lot of the environmental criticisms of AI. And maybe I'm giving away the punchline here, but hopefully you as view you know listeners will stick through it. Is that I think we did a really honorable service to using as little NVIDIA compute as possible. So so weirdly, it's sort of I know it sounds at odds with NVIDIA selling hardware and all this lot, but actually not at all because we're we're capable of running a multinationals inventory of components on basically a 200-pound microcomputer doing some AI. But for me, the proudest achievement is we're doing the absolute least amount of CO2 burning, creating uh computes, but getting a meaningful result that can help not just uh you know the planet, it involves keeping people's jobs, but it's also actually reducing packaging waste, which I think if you can't speak to a company to say you're definitely gonna make profit, then reducing waste is the next best way to be credible. So I would say, you know, if this is a sort of exec summary of the project, I've worked in sustainable design since 2020, and I've only ever seen the way you get traction is by combining the virtue with the value. So you have to be able to articulate you know, more often than not, the financial value. But yes, of course, there's brand equity and all those good things, but it still needs to affect the bottom line, the PL.

James Piper 20:24

And just to summarise the project, because I think there's a third strand to that, which is you say you've got virtue, value, and then policy, you know, and it'd be great for Robbie to give us a view on the policy of this as well, because we're getting to a point where this isn't voluntary. But just to give a quick summary to the project, you've described it as Tetris. You know, you you have a number of products to put in a box, and a human can make a decision of what size box do I need to fit these products. And humans, I guess, have a tendency to go, I'll go slightly bigger because I don't want to have to redo this work. Uh whereas a computer can say, no, mathematically, this is what you can fit in the box, and therefore this is the size of box that you could use. Is that a a fair summary of the project?

Jude Pullen 21:04

That is completely fair. And I think one of the sort of existential and ethical, you know, things that's been running through the I mean, I've I've written almost close to 100,000 words now for the Design Spark blog on, you know, various things around technology. And one of the things I keep coming back to is, you know, essentially the the Luddites Revolution, right? And and for anyone who's unfamiliar with that, people smashing up all the sort of looms and weaving technology in the Industrial Revolution wasn't because they hated technology, it's just that they didn't want to starve to death, which I think is a completely reasonable rebellion. And so I think um, you know, I actually noticed Grayson Perry skewer this point uh on a recent documentary of Grace and Perry Sees the Future, which I think is a a reasonably good overview for anyone new to AI. And he makes the point that perhaps this is the first time in history that. the middle classes have actually felt like Luddites as opposed to the working classes. And so maybe that's why we have this palpable fear permeating all the sort of the journals and uh you know media outlets is because it's not just the great unwashed, you know, in quotes. It's it's actually affecting the next level up in societal structures. And so I think that is for me one of the one of the things that often gets referenced in industrial work is you know the 4Ds. So dull, difficult, dangerous and dirty work. And I think you can obviously debate some of those, but I don't shed any tears for removing, you know, dangerous and dirty. We can decide whether difficult is fun. And some people might actually find dull work is less cognitive load. So you can debate those things. And I think this project is essentially trying to make the human experience better by removing some of the guesswork, in other words, difficulty. But I I I think the most obvious play is is to make sure that you can you're involving the humans in the transformation rather than just saying we're here to have robots take your jobs because A, I think that's a total fallacy. It just never plays out that way. And I think the media would do well to not necessarily doomstoke, as they say, about these things and give a slightly more nuanced view. But most certainly I think any company not asking these questions about AI and how it can give a benefit not just to to their workforce but also to the environment now just seems like the the best opportunity in in a generation. As without sort of plugging the NVIDIA system too much. But it's just genuinely mind-bending that you're running stuff that is outrageously impressive in terms of compute for 200 quid. You know, this is stuff that 10 years ago probably only the military could afford. Do you know what I mean? And and yet we're able to just tinker with this and build something over the course of like three months as we did on this project.

Robbie Staniforth 24:12

I was very impressed when we were preparing for this and you were talking about um going in and being on the shop floor and just understanding the the the trials and tribulations that lead to in inverted commas over packaged goods. Is it as simple as we say of just a human is erring on the side of caution and choosing a bigger box than needed? What's the reason that we're ending up occasionally and not always but occasionally getting stuff delivered in a box that's just simply too big. What is the reason for that?

Jude Pullen 24:47

Well I think I think sort of you know obviously for the supply chain heads they'll have already guessed this but you know having worked in these sorts of jobs growing up myself it's it's always a bit of a sort of you know two-way street right so you're gonna have a person working at a packing station they're gonna have a load of different size boxes all flat packed and they've got to make them up or if not a machine makes them up. At some point you're gonna look at a box and go, ooh, that might be a bit of a tight fit and I'm gonna feel a bit of a Charlie and waste time if I build something and find it too small. So to you as your point Robbie you err on the side of caution and there's there was actually a rather perfect example when ordering the Jetson nano which is the little bit of hardware it actually came from RS rs doesn't mind me shaving them slightly but but it actually came in a box that was like too big. And the next size box down genuinely it did fit but it had 1.5 millimeters clearance now no human would be able to just eyeball 1.5 millimeters and be like yeah that's gonna fit right and so this is a 200 plus you know with some peripherals bit of kit you don't really want to just jam it into the box and it turns up all like you know looking maltreated you know so so the packer I think the human did the most reasonable thing within the bounds of human eyeball tolerancing right and that's where our system can just say hey guess what it'll totally fit in that box. I know it's tight but it will and that's as simple as just when the pack is presented with it on the on the little piece of printout paper or on the screen it'll just say this will go in a B1 box or a C3 box or all of these little categories that you get. The other side of it is is that when you order something online you actually have in terms of AI compute a vast amount of time between when you click purchase and when someone puts it in a box. Now when we're on you know Google or whatever we're seeing results come up in like 0.5 of a second you've got like half an hour minimum you know which is which in an AI compute world is an absolute eon to get the job done of this little Tetris you know program. And so we're actually using the fact that not only are we doing the compute in what is downtime effectively and so that's really efficient so that we don't boil the ocean in terms of CO2 we can run very elegant minimalist but also strategically timed uh AI. But also the other point is if you're working at this packaging station what happens when you start the day with a hundred B1 boxes and you get through them well hang on a minute someone hasn't restocked them so you're gonna have to put it in a B2 the next size up and so now you're actually able to go well back up a minute if you realize that you can work out the day's orders up front you can actually control all of that stock management in terms of making sure that that person never runs out of a particular box size so this doesn't even become a problem. And that may sound like you know to some of our viewers who've never worked in a warehouse or whatever they think oh surely that that just sounds obvious. Why would you not do that? And you're like this is like telling a chef like there's a little bit of dirt on the floor why didn't you clean it up and it's like have you worked in a kitchen come on now it's it's really hectic. It's really crazy. You've got to be reasonable about the pressures of the job and again I always want to be unequivocal on this is I am on the side of the people working in these environments. I think you know genuinely I was amazed at how upbeat and friendly and happy the workforce was at RS but I've also worked in those positions it's full on you know you're pounding out hundreds of these things in a day um let's not pretend that you you have time to sort of pontificate and get out a little tape measure you don't so this whole thing of having the AI do the cognitive load and just make it easier for you I think that's helping the human. I don't think that's about replacing the human. Is it inevitably going to be in like you know 20 20 years time or whatever it's all roboticized? Yeah of course it is those things are going to move in those sorts of directions but I think the idea that you know dare I say you know I don't want to get distracted with a discussion of Elon Musk or Sam Altman but the amount of hype that somehow these things are just going to like happen tomorrow like really it's just it's just it's just such barefaced hype that whenever you work in an actual boots on the floor situation that there's just it's going to take decades to do all of this as much as uh IoT or any of these big tech transformations. So I would honestly say to people you know worried about their jobs in AI, I think take an interest and actually what's been really exciting is seeing people get enthusiastic about the change and wanting to be part of it but not feeling kicked to the curb. So yeah for me I wouldn't want to do a project where I just thought I was running roughshod over livelihoods. That's completely antithetical.

James Piper 29:54

And how does it work in terms of bringing it to the real world? Because you're talking about companies that have tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of product lines how is the system working out how big something is before you start calculating what can get in a box?

Jude Pullen 30:11

So that's where this gets really interesting and you have to you know really speak to the people who are doing the job. Because what you realize is you know let's say that a a screwdriver pack is coming down the line and you know it says its XYZ dimension is this and you look at it and you go hang on a minute that's wrong and you go well why is it wrong? Whose fault is it? Is it the RS in this case didn't enter it in correctly it's actually probably something more convoluted that well actually the company that made the screwdrivers changed the packaging because they hired a really nice branding agency and they made it you know whatever 10% smaller great or they added a different dimension so it's 10% thinner but 5% longer and that completely messes everything up. But whose responsibility that is of data truth is a very sort of complex and gnarly problem because that's the thing everybody thinks that there's just this great big one unifying Excel spreadsheet in the sky and there isn't there's thousands of data cluttered around all over the place. So whenever you hear people saying like oh the AI transformation and all this lot go speak to the person who's called the chief data officer or something of that title and they'll just you know be looking bloodshot eyed with a lot of grey hair going I'm trying to herd cats in terms of data. And that's not me sort of going like oh RS hasn't got its act together. This is this is every company on the planet is figuring out how to get data truth. And you know I can say that with some authority in that I've been out to um a data IQ conference which is with some of the biggest brands in the world and they were most certainly all saying the same thing that this is this is incredibly difficult to get an absolute truth. And so the reason we also were excited to design this thing is that it's also about building in a corrective feedback loop that we can say hang on a minute we did have a problem here's the correction update the system so that that is also the need to sort of purge the errors which I might add nothing to do with humans. It's just system architecture you know which is going to take a long time for everyone to figure that stuff out.

James Piper 32:30

Yeah I once went to a company that supplies building equipment and we were doing their data in on packaging and looking at how much packaging they use and they had been using um a kind of approved ready reckoner. So an approved system where they would say we've sold a plank of wood and the system would have in it based on that this plank of wood had has this much packaging. I said look just give me a day in your warehouse to test some of these theories that you have because as an example they said that every plank of wood they sold came in a cardboard box. So I went into the warehouse and went to their plank of wood aisle and said well they've all just got a label, a sticker with a barcode, soon to be QR code. You're saying they've all got a cardboard box. And so I redid all of their data you know I went through all the top lines of data redid it all worked out how much packaging they had and it it the saving was unbelievable. I'm I I won't give the detail but it was huge in terms of the amount of packaging they thought they were using as a company and the truth so much so that their board had to call me in to say we're not willing to report this to the environment agency because it's so different and it's going to cause questions. And I said yeah it's gonna cause questions but here's all the reasons why it's right and I personally think you should just pay a lot less than you are paying. And when the environment agency come and ask questions, actually we've got all of the background here to show why that's happened. But ultimately it's about and we find this all the time in the work we do every day because we do a lot of this with EcoSurety this data stuff. Ultimately it's about spending time understanding a specific client rather than trying to you know get into this world of we we can just mass balance this we can just get one company and extrapolate that across lots of companies. It doesn't really work like that because companies are so different in how they do stuff.

Robbie Staniforth 34:17

In the packaging and packaging waste regulation there's a couple of key changes that are coming up with the first is a ban on misleading packaging. And I think this I mean it's crazy that this is allowed at the moment. So these kind of techniques that give that false impression of volume you know beefing up the product making it look bigger than it is and uh things like double walls or false bottoms or unnecessary layers these are going to be restricted. So but that's not really I don't think what we're talking about so much here the the deliberate sort of overpackaging um of these goods. But then there's two steps in what they're talking about in the the minimum sort of necessary space. So from later on this year 12th of August operators must minimize and they don't the the definition of minimise and the minimum necessary space is going to be one that's open to conjecture and I'm sure environmental enforcement agencies across Europe are going to be scratching their heads uh to work out what this is but they need to use the minimum necessary for the product protection, the functionality and the hygiene reasons. But it's really that date of the 1st of Jan 2030 that everyone's looking towards so we've got what's that three and a bit years now where there'll be this 50% uh void fill cap I think you would call it and that's for all e-commerce and transport packaging and so that void cap basically will include these filler materials like air cushions paper foam I presume these are the things are they that you're trying to get rid of and just make the box fit exactly right or am I wrong? Is there still a place for things like these cushions and ends and things like that?

Jude Pullen 36:12

Not only are we reducing the materiality of the box that it's being shipped in but if you don't need as much packaging filler so scrunched up paper, beads whatever it is that you're using then that's saving you money on the fillers and then you're saving money on the fact that the the your you know your courier your your your distributor DHL or UPS or whatever you're not paying as much because it's a smaller lighter item and then to your point you're not being fined because because the thing isn't extravagant. So all of those things are you know let's just say for easy maths let's say all of those is like a five percent saving suddenly you realize that's adding up to maybe you know 15 20 and so of course the avoiding penalties is a sort of moot point of did did we did we save money or did we make money? It depends how you want to but I feel that you know to to your point what I think is referred to in the industry as PPWR uh legislation which is exactly the the thing with the you're mentioning with void fill the general statistic I heard from RS's uh head of packaging uh Liam Dowds was that it's it's basically aimed at 50% you shouldn't have and so we ended up having a few whimsical but actually kind of good provocations about saying does this mean crisps are dead? Does this mean Easter eggs are are gonna have to have a radical transformation but but on a more serious note this is a really useful galvanizing nudge for companies to reappraise their systems and if you were going to have to do a logistics data systems overhaul before 2030 is a very good time to do it and how you want to find out where the most meaningful places are to start in your company are quite interesting. I I would also just say speaking as someone who enjoys you know innovation in a creative pursuit of interesting things I I happen to have just um got a source pan recently and technically it's a it's a saute pan uh so it it's kind of almost like a tennis racket really so it's got quite a long handle and uh obviously the the the flat sauce pan bit and it occurred to me ah this is probably not going to be compliant in 2030 does this mean that it's gonna ship with a screw on handle that has some clever little widget on nut that you screw it in as a user with a a screw you know screwdriver and then it goes clutch and then it locks in and it won't come off again or you know what what are we going to do? Does it because because obviously shipping a tennis racket versus a circle with the handle inside that radically changes your packaging footprint it changes how many you can put on a Euro palette it changes how many you can put in a in a in a you know a shipping container and of course it it changes the experience with the user we've now got this like IKEA situation whereas usually when I bought a source pan I've never had to like IKEA fire it. Do you know what I mean? And in case anyone I should just explain that the IKEA effect is a term dubbed in psychology to say that if you have assembled something you tend to put more value and ascribe more meaning uh emotionally to it. So you're more likely to care for it, maintain it, not waste it basically I do believe in this thing of sometimes you have to put an idea and a provocation out there but at the same time back it up with capability um and and showing that you can connect with the right people. I don't want to miss a trick that we can maybe talk about how we did this but I'd have to also bring in my uh to the best of my ability the credit to Brian Schwab who's uh good friend of mine at Lego who does all sorts of clever clever things with technology.

James Piper 40:08

So many things to talk about then let's not delve into Lego. That's going to be a massive mistake for me. James will be here all day. Yes. IKEA's an interesting one though because I heard a fact yesterday completely unrelated to what we're discussing but just an interesting fact that if you're right-handed you like putting together IKEA furniture because of the way your muscles work and if you're left handed you like taking it apart because your major muscle is being used depending on which way you're rotating that screwdriver. And so uh as a lefty I love taking apart furniture but I do find it harder to put it together and I was reflecting on it and that's why IKEA's been in my mind for the past 24 hours. Jude you mentioned there you could go into detail on how you did it. So how did you do it?

Jude Pullen 40:56

I did actually do quite a bit of research and on the blog series you know I even mentioned uh visiting the Dyne Museum and seeing a recent graduate uh Eva Yin who had been using uh 2D AI systems to uh work with textiles to figure out how many of the little patterned pieces for a garment can fit on a roll of fabric obviously paying attention to the fact that fabric has a directionality to it a warp and a left and so that sort of gave me confidence that well if we can do that in 2D we can probably do it in 3D but it's probably going to be more complex. So trying to trying to sort of say this as concisely as I can to what Brian was doing at a much more complex level and we did a YouTube video to explain the details for anyone who's interested but um essentially what we were doing is is something called heuristics which in the industry the tech industry essentially means trial and error and interestingly in uh pedagogy and child child development heuristics also means trial and error so if you've watched your kid try to figure out something putting blocks in one of those little boxes square peg and round hole type you know conundrums then essentially we're doing exactly that with the AI. The AI is going I've got these dimensions let's try it this way did it work no try it again try it again try it again try it again and so you actually see Brian's screen of going tried this failed new line tried this failed da da da da da da the the trick in terms of the environmentalism is to say how can we make that as efficient as possible and so some of the things we were doing didn't use AI at all they simply just used basic logic. So we said you know if you've got a big long broom pole don't worry about putting that in a box with something that's like a tiny little bag of screws you know or or if you did realize that you're going to be able to put it in there for free because there's going to be some slack in in whatever box you're using. So we tried to write things that were just what you'd call common sense to a human but actually you realize as soon as you work with AI it is like teaching a baby there is no common sense. It will put a hammer with light bulbs unless you tell it why that's a bad idea that a big heavy thing like smash against a fragile thing you you need to create rules that say you know don't put magnets with things that don't like magnets don't put extremely uh heavy things with extremely fragile things don't put things that have solvents in with things that would be very problematic in terms of shipping even things like batteries you might make an intelligent decision to say well let's put all the battery stuff in this order in this package because then customs will deal with it in a one and then we can put all the other non battery stuff and it'll fly through and get through customs without any Problems. Whereas if you just put it higgledy-piggledy, you might end up checking everything because it all has a battery in it that needs to be checked. So all of that stuff seems like no-brainer. Why wouldn't you do it? I can't believe they're not doing it. But we were trying to basically say, let's not overlook the cleverness of human thinking when we design these systems. Don't just use dumb brute force as it's referred to, of just assuming that the AI is the most genius thing in the world. Actually, humans have incredible knowledge. And we need what we need to do is codify that. So again, to your point, Robbie, and indeed James as well, it it's all about going back to the floor and talking to people and getting their opinion because they are infinitely knowledgeable. Whereas, you know, it's not it's not being uh deliberately, you know, sort of uh flamboyant, but but genuinely the AI is like training a baby, it knows nothing. So you have to, you know, within three months, you have to focus on something which is credible that you can get it to do a decent job without trying to teach it the entire human experience of packaging and logistics, which is just impossible.

James Piper 45:14

Yeah, that's super interesting. Uh trial and error is definitely my parenting style. We went to a zoo the other day and we saw a bear, and the bear was in water. The bear got out of the water and shook, you know, shook the water off. And I said to my son, Oh, look, a bear, and I shook my head. And now, anytime he sees he's really good at signing, right? Except for bear, which is now shaking his head. And I picked him up from nursery the other day and they went, God, he really hates bears. I said, He doesn't, he doesn't. It's just I've accidentally taught him to shake his head when you say bear. And they were like, Oh, we just thought he really hated bears because he's constantly saying no every time he sees one.

Robbie Staniforth 45:52

So if the AI is is really dumb at the beginning, what we hear, Jude, is that it just gets better and better over time. So you've put all of that work up front, the logic around don't put hammers with light bulbs. I like that example. Um did you find that over time, you know, what was it learning? Is it is it learning as it goes and improving over time? And is it able to do that itself, or are you still relying on humans to then say this did work, that didn't work, uh, and and to correct it? So to to what degree, I suppose, is it is it self-learning versus having to be managed by a human now that you've got it up and running?

Jude Pullen 46:37

What what you're sort of describing at that latter point was where the computer is essentially able to understand what, should we say, the North Star is and iterate and keep self-improving. That that I would say is an extremely complex and should we say top-tier level of what we would describe as sort of AI, but I think we're actually trying to do something unapologetically much more simple. So we're we're trying to do rules and pre-filters, and then we're trying to say, can you do a bit of heuristics? But actually, you know, to use the Pareto rule, the 80-20 rule, we're trying to do 80% rules and 20% AI heuristics because that's the in quotes expensive bit. And also the good thing about rules is you don't need to spin up an AI engine because the rule about hammers and light bulbs is true today as it is tomorrow, as it is in a hundred years, you know, with the exception of unless you make a plastic LED one, but you take my point. And so where where I'm kind of going with a lot of the AI is I think almost like the thing that I've realized when speaking to a you know a company at various levels is never underestimate how much ambiguity and confusion there is around this term AI. And and often one of the points I sort of bring home is that you know, I'm sure some of the purists would disagree with me, but I actually grew up in Cumbria in in the 80s, and they built a supermarket and they had automatic doors which didn't slide, they would actually open like doors. And it absolutely befuddled a lot of the older generation who would approach the door and then nearly get hit in the face with it. And these doors would go at a good clip, you know, they could do you damage if you were a pensioner or something. And my point is that even something as like, how could you not understand an automatic door? I mean, you can't have that conversation with a teenager today, but that's what all technology feels like. You have to have that humility to realize everything new is weird and scary to someone, and I would still describe that automatic door as AI, it is something given a task which it performs with an artificial intelligence, which is I see a moving thing, I will open this door. But it is not intelligent enough to say, should I open it a little differently because that person is 65, as opposed to that person is actually a 20-year-old pushing a trolley at speed at me, I better open it real quick. But that is that is a different level of artificial intelligence, and what we're often describing when we you know vent our frustrations with technology is that we haven't fit the level of capability to the situation, right? So that that's why we get angry, not because things aren't sufficiently intelligent, it's that we have a mismatched expectations. I mean, case in point, people have all these home assistants like you know, Google Home and Alexa, to give the point of Alexa, which has a female name and responds with the tonality of a voice of an educated 30-something woman, it isn't a 30-something educated woman, right? You can ask it maths questions, which savants could answer, and at the same time you could ask it something that my five, you know, you know, a five-year-old could answer and it can't. And so the point is, even Alexa's voice is somewhat misleading. Not it's not intentionally trying to mislead. I'm sure it's just a a marketing thing about you know, all sorts of research about what sort of voices we find friendly and less scary, but it actually mismanages a lot of the interaction. Whereas I think weirdly, we the reason mine hasn't gone off is we've renamed them to be like computer and stuff like this. Uh, because actually I think calling it computer sets your expectations much better. And because I've got a young son, I want him to think this isn't a woman, but you know, for a multitude of feminist and humanist reasons, I want him to be like, this is a computer. This is not this is not how I would subconsciously speak to a human, let alone a woman. And so I think all of these things we're sorry, I appreciate we're going off on a rabbit hole here, but I think even when you're sort of coming back to working on a factory floor, not confusing people with what the reality of the AI's capability is is really important. So you were starting to verge into sort of general intelligence, but we're calling it a Tetris machine because that doesn't sound very smart. It sounds I should I should use my words carefully here. It sounds it sounds clever, but it doesn't sound smart, right? It sounds that it's got clever processing stuff, but it's not holistically understanding the world. And so I think the more you can reassure people that that is actually the ground truth of most AI things that we're gonna be working on for the next five to ten years, then suddenly this idea that you're gonna lose your job overnight, you're just like, I think we can relax. That thing is dumb as a bag of spanners, and you're kind of like, it is, it's dumb as a bag of spanners, unless you want to undo a lot of nuts, in which case, spanners are great. And and I think that's kind of how we're seeing it is that little 200 pounds you know worth of hardware is absolutely awesome at rearranging stuff in a box, but it cannot give you a recipe for quesadillas, it cannot tell you when you should pick up your kids from school and take them to whatever club. And that's the point. It's not trying to be a general AI, it's not trying to be a gentic AI, it's not generative, it's not self-reinforced learning, it's none of that, it's it's a Tetriser. And I kind of think the dumber, the dumber sounding name that you can give it, I think would probably all get along with these projects a little bit better, with a sigh of relief that that's what it's doing, you know. And so I think maybe that's a good point. The the the Alexa point is what we want to avoid, and we want to be calling it, you know, a a thingamajigger, basically. It does a certain thing really well, but don't be asking it about you know politics and philosophy. It's not what it was designed to do.

James Piper 53:17

When we were setting up this session, we talked about Amazon and we mentioned, and I said, let's give some examples around Amazon. I think you know, they would talk about not using packaging on 12% of their product, and they would talk about packaging only in bags rather than boxes. And I said, How does this kind of fit into that system? And I think rightly you came back and challenged me and said, This isn't for Amazon, this is for everyone else. And I'm quite interested in how you see that. How do you you've created something here that's open source that people can use, that any company can use of any size? Was that intentional when you were rather than going to Amazon and saying, Let's solve that, they're already working on that. How do you get everyone else into this space?

Jude Pullen 53:55

So, yeah, that's a really great point about the the open source nature of a lot of the work I do is that firstly I don't presume to know everything that I could know about where a project's gonna go to and evolve into. And so for me, it's you know been really exciting, you know, with Radio Globe to see other people remix it. And again, um, it actually feels like this is something that I would like companies like Amazon, as you mentioned it, to take it into their RD teams and go, oh, this is this is very basic, this is very trivial stuff, but actually maybe there's a couple of things we did in there that were kind of clever, and they think, oh great, we could we could use that to improve our systems. And as far as I'm concerned, you know, rising tide lifts all boats.

James Piper 54:39

On this podcast, we like to offer the opportunity for our listeners to win a gift, so one of our influencers to get a gift, and we like the guest to recommend said gift. Jude, do you have something that you would like to recommend to one of our influencers?

Jude Pullen 54:52

So um, yeah, it's funny. The the gift that I think I would like to sort of recommend is in some ways, I think, appropriate uh for this whole lobbying to basically reduce waste. And I ended up creating this um game, board game called Goats versus Llamas. Um with a guy, a guy I met on LinkedIn, um, and basically what you do is you download some PDFs uh with all these great designs and illustrations, you stick them on all the boxes which you've acquired through all of your purchases online, you cut them out, you glue gun it together, and you basically build this Aztec temple with lots of booby traps and crazy stuff. And the point is, I we sort of dubbed it downloadable play, because you don't actually need to buy a game necessarily that has been you know designed in California, manufactured in China, and then shipped all the way back to the UK. You could just make this and use it by upcycling the boxes you got at home. So I think that would be my gift. I don't know whether that doesn't qualify because technically it's free.

James Piper 56:00

It makes my life a lot easier. So every BIMFluencer has just won that. So if you want to download GOATs versus Lamas, I presume they just search that in their chosen search engine and they will find the instructions to download and print the board game. That's awesome. Thank you, Gee. That's a great one. And the second question we'd like to ask everyone is if you had an environmental superpower, what would it be and how would you use it?

Jude Pullen 56:24

So um I deliberated on this for a long time, and I think I I'm showing my sort of engineering Dr. Spock nerd quality here of going, hang on a minute, all these fables where someone's, you know, wished, you know, King Midas wished he could turn everything into gold, they always have a kicker, which is their downfall and undoing. So I I I worried that essentially if I said something like, you know, we would stop consuming, then the trouble is with that wish, is that I realized we haven't actually got a convenient replacement that would make our society function. So I guess actually, what what I felt was almost the interesting counterpoint, which is maybe less sexy and mess less bombastic, is rather than just saying, should we have instant utopia tomorrow? I think the superpower would be to help people and indeed companies reduce their wastefulness in whatever guise it is, by let's just say, you know, five to ten percent every year. Because I think that's the bit that means people aren't upended, they don't instantly lose their jobs, and it's everything that I've been saying is that I think it's almost a bit like health, the incremental gains you do consistently are actually what get us there, rather than a sort of crash diet which we give up and go out in a sort of flaming disaster. So I think you know, weirdly, that would be my gift is you know, credible incremental change at the most ambitious level that we can get, which I think weirdly is probably 10% change. But but I think if you look at the cumulative interest over the years, not just in terms of economics, but also the personal and societal change, I think that would be a pretty cool superpower to influence. And indeed, maybe I'm doing a minuscule version of that superpower in the work I do with companies. So that's why I sort of think maybe this would be fun to see more of.

Robbie Staniforth 58:23

Oh, that's brilliant. So it's like the environmental superpower is like an evolutionary type one rather than a big revolutionary power that suddenly changes everything overnight. That's very well thought out, I must say.

Jude Pullen 58:38

Yeah, got I got too into it, but yeah. I mean, obviously, it you know, the the one you'd want is world peace and harmony and everything. So, yes, if if if that doesn't look like a genie in the bottle with a kicker, then yeah, do that. But I think in in in prosaic real world terms, I think I think that's actually what we could do, you know, as as society, is the incremental interest of sort of improvement. So, yeah.

James Piper 59:04

Dude, thank you so much for coming up to the podcast and and giving us all of your expertise and thoughts. It's really helpful. And I know overpacking is something that it gets people talking. So I'm sure us delving a bit deeper into that as well as the episodes we've done in the past is is hopefully quite useful to people. And as always, thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We love getting the opportunity to do this podcast. Join our Discord, follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. And everything we have discussed today can also be found on our link tree. The details to all those things can be found in our show notes. There is nothing left for me to say other than see you next bid. Bye. Bye. Bye.