Wealth & Money Quote by Tom McMillan

McMillan’s line is policy-speak with a moral edge: it doesn’t just propose better trash habits, it tries to reframe waste as a political failure. “Throwaway culture” is a deliberately loaded phrase, less about litter than about a whole economic temperament - the cheap convenience that lets voters feel modern while costs get exported to landfills, oceans, and poorer communities. By naming it “culture,” he shifts blame from individual consumers to systems: manufacturers designing for short lifespans, retailers normalizing disposability, and governments subsidizing extraction while treating disposal as an afterthought.

The pivot to “circular economy” does a different kind of work. It’s aspirational, technocratic, and, crucially, non-punitive. Rather than telling people to buy less (politically toxic), it promises the same lifestyle with smarter loops: reuse, repair, recycling, redesign. That’s the subtextual bargain offered to a public wary of sacrifice. The phrase also smuggles in a regulatory agenda without naming it: extended producer responsibility, deposit-return schemes, right-to-repair rules, procurement standards, and infrastructure spending. “Values” is the tell - this isn’t just engineering, it’s incentives and enforcement.

As a politician speaking in an era of climate targets and plastic backlash, McMillan is threading a needle between environmental urgency and economic reassurance. “Waste and consumption” are framed as the problem, but the solution is pitched as innovation and efficiency, not austerity. The rhetoric is meant to build a coalition: environmentalists hear accountability, businesses hear new markets, voters hear cleanliness without deprivation.