If anyone still thinks of Biffa as that local bin collection and landfill business, the huge price paid by investors when it went back into private hands in 2023 ought to lay that image to waste. The £2.1bn deal completed by US-based Energy Capital Partners proved it was the very definition of “investment grade”, even if a decade earlier it had courted disaster after going into bankruptcy.

Now, CEO Michael Topham, who took the reins in 2018 after being promoted from CFO, uses that phrase as the guiding mantra for a company with fingers in so many pies in the circulatory realm, it has data Defra would die for.

But Biffa and Topham also know what it’s like to get their fingers burnt, most famously after losing millions following the collapse of the Scottish government’s deposit return scheme (DRS) in 2023, which sees the company awaiting the outcome of a court claim for £166m in lost profits.