16. Burn or bury - how rubbish is incineration?

James Piper: Hello. Welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast opening deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and one sided stories. In this episode we will discuss how plastic could replace wood, explore the incineration of our waste now that we know we're not eating them, our credit cards, rubbish or not. And I have a question about what to do with the film on plastic trays. I'm J. Piper, all author the Rubbish Book and I'm joined by Robbie Stanifforff, my far from rubbish friend. Hi, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Morning, James.

James Piper: We had m great feedback on our Halloween episode, didn't we? People loved it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, absolutely.

James Piper: A little spooky special.

Robbie Staniforth: Our, first ever special. That's exciting, isn't it? Yeah.

James Piper: It drove me to the pumpkin spice latte, I must admit. You were asking me whether I'd had any and I've had two since we recorded that episode.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. It was good advertising, clearly.

James Piper: I'll tell you what else people loved. They loved Finn with a bin. When was that? Like episode two? Finin With a bin.

Robbie Staniforth: With a bin. Oh, yes, yeah. Do we have a finish listener?

James Piper: We do have a finish listener. Quite regular now, yeah. And we did talk about Finn with a bin and then we talked about sorting at the curb with a serp. We had all these rhymes going on and we had robie. We had so many messages about the catchphrase in episode 12. Do you remember that one?

Robbie Staniforth: was that, what was that? The Capri sun one?

James Piper: It was the Capri sun one. Pierce the Pouch.

Robbie Staniforth: PCE the Pouch. Yes.

James Piper: So many people writing and saying, I love Pierce the Pouch. How has that not been taken? Well, I have the sequel to all of those.

We have had a review from Peru about our recycling episode

We have had a review from Peru.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, amazing. Was it a good review though?

James Piper: It was a good review, yeah. I won't tell you about the bad ones. Yeah, it was seen bad ones. It was a five star, review from Peru. So thank you to Ali all the way over in Peru, they said they were going to catch up on all our past episodes. So I'm sure they're listening to this one. I'm sure they've caught up and they're live now. So thank you to our reviewer in Peru.

Robbie Staniforth: That's not a very good joke w South America. That's great.

James Piper: Brilliant. I've been to Peru. I loved it. On around the World trip. I had a lovely.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, very nice. That's where you're obviously making the connections.

James Piper: Yeah. Walk the Inca trail, shouting rubbish or not getting people to listen. I've also been away this week. I it I recognise every time we come ono these recordings now I'm like, at this weekend I went away and it sounds like I went away all the time, but it's just like combining all my different holidays into stories about recycling. we went away to the Chiltons, so a bit of a staycation with Elie's family. It was s lovely. And we rented out a like a converted staples.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, nice.

James Piper: As always. I'm just interested to see what people do with their recycling when you. Particularly with like Airbnbs and these kind of, you know, staycations where people are renting out their house. How good are they at their recycling communication? This one was really interesting. So first of all, it had a massive recycling bin which was really good. So the recycling bin was bigger than the general waste bin and that's already a good start. The problem is that means you're comm mingle so you're not sorting stuff out, you're just putting it all together. And as we talked about in episode one, that makes it much harder to get high quality recycling out. Second I got there, I opened the big recycling bin to have a look at what was in it and the first thing I saw was a whole kitchen roll. So not like the inner of a kitchen roll, the inner of a kitchen roll and then probably three quarters of a kitchen roll.

Robbie Staniforth: like on soiled or whatever.

James Piper: Just soo look fine to me. I am slightly worried that Airbnb is so nice that they're like, everything has to be new.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, what a brand new role for every guest.

James Piper: You do sometimes see that, don't you, when you go into like a toilet in one of hisbbs they've got brand new toilet rolls. You're like all folded up and nice and you're like, did the guest exactly use a complete toilet roll as they left? No, I much prefer it when you see half empty stuff.

Robbie Staniforth: No, I know. Or you would hope that they use that role themselves or something. Take it into the main house if it's like one of these barns attached to where someone actually lives. But to chuck it straight in the recycling seems so wasteful.

James Piper: And then just on the instructions, just in terms of clarity, they said, on the instructions that cardboard goes in its own box. And they said there was a cardboard box and there wasn't. There was just a wheelie bin and all the cardboard was in the wheelie bin. So again, I think their instructions were sort of suggesting that they was separated waste. But actually what we had was comm mingled So I don't know whether they were out of date and the council had gone backwards and gone to comm mingle or whether they were just the wrong instructions for the wrong house.

Robbie Staniforth: Are, ah, you sure you were looking for the right thing? Were you looking for a cardboard box? For cardboard, yes.

James Piper: There was only bins, I promise. And the food waste was the one that frustrated me most. I hate not collecting food waste. It's like the easiest thing. It's really amazing because you can anaerobically digest it and it's obviously a big waste stream. It's heavy. So I'm all about collecting food waste and they. And they didn't say anything. Food wasting instructions. So we put it in the bin the whole time. Ye. Which was really frustrating. And then when I went to put the bins out at the end of the weekend,

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James Piper: I noticed that there was an outside and inside food caddy. Outside in the rain there was actually a separate food bin and next to that separate food bin was the thing you're meant to keep under a sink that would collect up the food bin. So I didn't think they did food waste. It didn't say anything in the instructions about food waste, but they definitely do do.

Robbie Staniforth: Food waste scandal. Piper, wastes food. Does not recycle food.

James Piper: Yes. And that's the end of Piper Reports Weekly. It's crazy, isn't it? Anyway, there you go. That was my lovely weekend Way in the Chiltons.

When we talked about wrapping cucumbers in plastic, we were largely talking about supermarkets

So intoitionss and corrections. I've got an edition from Susan actually and we've had lots of comments on Insta about this's lots of emails. So it's not just Susan but Susan's was the email I found when I was trying to think about this edition and Susan said she recently you had a cucumber delivered in a veg box and it wasn't wrapped in plastic and lasted 10 days before going a bit soft. it was organic. She wasn't sure whether that made a difference. So, again I've had lots of emails about this, about the fact that we talked about wrapping cucumbers in plastic and lots of people saying, well, I buy mine and they're not in plastic. And so let's just clarify a couple of things here. So when we talked about wrapping cucumbers in plastic, we were largely talking about supermarkets. Supermarkets obviously are driving for the lowest cost. Whether we agree with that or not, that is what is happening. And I had a quick look and the price paid to growers actually has dropped from m28p a cucumber 5 years ago to about 22p and production costs are usually 20p.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh my wor.

James Piper: I know you've gone from like an 8p profit margin to a 2p profit margin and the reality is that means UK growers will stop growing cucumbers. And I was reading stories about UK growers stopping growing cucumbers so I had a look on the supermarket website to see where they were getting their cucumbers from. And Tesco said they were getting theirs from the Canary Island, Spain, Greece, Morocco, Netherlands. they did also save the uk but UK was not top of that list. Canary Islands was, Sainsbury is similar there. Said growain in Greece, Neverland, Spain and then the UK was bottom of their list. Morrisons S didn't say. But interestingly on the Morrison's website it said these cucumbers will last two days.

Robbie Staniforth: Whoa, that's pretty short.

James Piper: Feels like theirs are coming from quite far afield or they're just a bit worried about them. And I couldn't find anything about Asda I showdown. And just in terms of the big thoughtt the reality is supermarketts'are driving cost down. It's turning UK growers off producing cucumbers which means we have to turn abroad. Once you start bringing things in from abroad, it's got a much longer supply chain. Longer supply chains means you need to keep it fresh for longer, which means that plastic is needed. So just to tell my story, I mean I get my food delivery from Mindful Chef. I think we talked about this before. It'a it's a food delivery box and we're definitely going do an episode of Food Delivery Boxes because I think they're fascinating but they deliver ingredients and I cook with those ingredients. My main reason for using that is because I create no food waste. It's quite hard to cook for two and shop in a supermarket. So this allows me to create no food waste. Now when they send me a cucumber for a meal, they send me a tiny little cucumber like a third of the size of a normal one I suspect comes from the uk.

Robbie Staniforth: But it's a whole cucumber. It's not like it's a choc one.

James Piper: Yeah, ex.

Robbie Staniforth: It's just a small grown one.

James Piper: I suspect it comes from the uk. It's not wrapped in plastic. M and I use the whole thing for each meal. Now I was thinking about like Able and Cole because Susan's obviously talked about a veg box and I'm not sure which one she uses. So I went and had a look on the Able and Cold website for cucumbers. I think I could find that theirs came from Spain and they typically don't use plastic. But if you look, they have 220 reviews, and 30 of those reviews were one star. And if you go into the detail on those, it says things like, well, the top one said, suffering from a lack of plastic, and the next one said, very soft and bruised. and there were quite a few reviews about the fact that the cucumbers didn't last very long because they weren't wrapped in plastic. Now, this is the important bit. I wasn't saying every cucumber will be wasted if it's not wrapped in plastic. What I was saying is it's five times more likely to be wasted than if it is wrapped in plastic. So that obviously means that there's lots of people who are going to eat cucumbers that are unwrapped, that are fine. But what it does mean is that if you're unwrapped, you are five times more likely. So more likely than a wrapped one for that food to go to waste. And so, of course you're going to get some reviews saying, hey, this didn't last very long because some cucumbers just won't last very long. So we just need to remember that it's all about likelihood. It's not about quantity. it's five times more likely. And I think we said the plastic wrap is like the carbon equivalent of 93 cucumbers. So you only need 1 in 93 to be wasted for that to be better. And I think, judging by these reviews, it seems to suggest about 10% were wasted.

Robbie Staniforth: So what are we saying then? It's complicated.

James Piper: Yeah, that felt really complicated. As I said, it was like, okay,

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James Piper: yeah, no, sk. Great. Okay, cool. There you go. That's cucumbers. We've done a part 2 on the cucumbers and thank you, Susan, for writing again. And everyone else has s commented on that. Reality is your veg box is more likely to have a cucumber that's come from the UK or locally. They're more likely to be paid more. But ultimately, judging by the reviews on the website, some of them are still wasted and some of them still don't make it into your food. in terms of corrections, I had a few people emailing me on this one. I knew I'd made a mistake in episode 12, so I'm correcting here. I knew I'd done it. I said, an item can't be compost and recyclable.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes, I remember you mentioning afterwards.

James Piper: I knew it and I couldn't edit it. It was really annoying. I was referring to the coffee cup and I was talking about the plastic lining in the coffee cup. So, again, let's not spoil, our compostable episode. But plastic cannot or should not in the main. I'm going to be so careful now because I think there are some plastics that maybe you can. But most plastics, they're either compostable or recyclable. And certainly when you're talking about a coffee cup, it cannot be compostable and recyclable. So I stand by what I said. I just wasn't clear enough in my words.

We have decided when the Compost Possible episode will land

Luckily, we have decided when the Compost Possible episode will land. I think, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah, Okay.

James Piper: I think the plan at the moment is for it to be episode 19. So if you're thinking, when's this compos episode going to happen? We're like three episodes away.

Robbie Staniforth: Stay tuned, guys.

James Piper: Yes, and that's because for episode 20, we're expecting to interview Pierre, who's one of the founders of Not Plot. And they are really interesting because they make a compostable plastic and won the, earthshot Prize a couple of years ago. I think they won the first earthshot, prize.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. It was big news at the time.

James Piper: Yeah. So we're super excited to interview Pierre and really get into the detail of compostible plastic. But before we do that, we sort of need to explain what it is. So our aim is to have the compostible plastic land about episode 19. So remember, if you want to contact us like everyone else is, you can contact us on socials where we can be found rubbishpodcast or email talkingruubbishpodcastmail.com and as you know, we have Linktree, which is in our show notes, and WhatsApp, which you can get to from, our Instagram and Facebook, which people are increasingly usinguse. It's the quickest way of contacting us Rubbish process. I was anticipating that we would be done with plastic, Robbie. Yeah, I thought we were done. We've done the sorting, we'd done the recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Feels like it's gone on for weeks, but it is complicated.

James Piper: To be fair, it has gone up for weeks and I'd actually written the notes for wood as I was writing the notes for wood. So, like pallets and things like that, I realised we talked a lot about plastic being downycled into a wood Alternative and bored. We haven't actually explained how that works. So I've shifted the wood packaging episode to next week and we're going to do how could plastic replace wood as today's process?

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. And that's definitely. There's plenty of that going on around the UK and around the world, to be fair. So it is what a lot of the soft plastics are ending up becoming, these alternatives. So definitely worth taking people through.

James Piper: Absolutely. And they used as boarding at construction sites to hold things like concrete. I was watching Grand Designs last night, actually. it was the one where they were doing the water tower refit, which is just, I mean, the most ambitious project for the least amount of money I've ever seen. You know how there's all these memes about groundand designs, about how people go in and they're like, my wife's pregnant and we've got a budget that's half what we need, and we're going to do it in a timerame. That's half the time that it should take. And you just watch it all happen, like, you know, eventually.

Robbie Staniforth: And their contractor walks off after the second week.

James Piper: I think their child was like three by the time. Grand as I just gave up on this episode. So having been born, like quite late into the episode. So, yeah, it was a long one and it was difficult, but they were using a lot of wood to, like hold concrete in place. So they were creating these fantastic shapes out of wood and then pouring concrete into it. And I was just thinking that's exactly what these plastic wooden boards could be used for. Plastic boards could be used for. Because when that wood is used to pour concrete, you're going to definitely landfill that or incinerate it. it's covered in concrete. It's unusable. Whereas with the plastic, you'd be able to recycle ``le that back down. You'd be able to remove the contamination. So it's a really interesting way of using waste plastic. We've also seen it made it into benches, tables, chairs, countertops. We have some chairs in this office actually made from recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah, they're very cool. Actually, at my daughter's school, I noticed, one of their planters, you know, they've got one of those little veg gardens, so the children can see the kind of herbs growing or whatever. And one of the planters is made from this recycled plastic. You see the little flecks in it, don't you? So you can kind of tell that it's, or recycled plastic board And.

James Piper: I think Nick mentioned that his pouches went off to Stormbboard, who are one of the companies who do this. so we mentioned that in episode 10. And just to explain the process, basically, the waste plastic, certainly with Stormbboard, the waste plastic has to be granulated, so cut down to about five millimetre chunks or it can be just smashed into a powder to be put into the process. The advantage to turning

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James Piper: plastic into board is it does not need to be sorted, you're just melting it down and squishing it together. So you can have lots of different types of plastic in there and it does not need to be pelletized. So you're saving quite a lot of the process that we've talked about before. You literally could just take loads and loads of plastic, granulate it up to 5 millimet chunks or pulverise it into a powder, but you're basically just going to take it and, melt it into a board. So this reduces the energy use complexity, cast lots of things like that and basically you're melting it and putting it into a mould. So with Stormbboards process, they will put it into a moldd, and it will get made into sheets.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, and those panels, presumably they've got moulds of different shapes and sizes and et cetera, so you can do various different things with it.

James Piper: Yeah, And I read a stat that every board made contains about 30 kilogrammes of plastic. So that's quite a lot that you're recycling per board. it's about 1 16, 600 yoghurt pots, just in case you're interested. And we should always do things by yoghurt pots rather than weight, shouldn'we?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's a fair few years supply of yoghurt pots in my household for sure.

James Piper: And an LCA was done on the process, which proves that because the boards are long lasting, reusable, they have lower carbon footprint than single use ply, which typically will break down in weather and you'll have to replace it much faster. Whereas the plastic can last a lot longer in, in the British weather.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure, yeaheah. The rain and the wind and I imagine they break down. You can, I mean, everyone can picture, a soggy piece of, plyard, can't they?

James Piper: Yeah, and we import a lot of wood at the moment. I mean, on the Stormboard website they mentioned that the UK imports 1.4 million metres cubed of plywood each year, which is just so much. So this is a great route for those kind of unrecyclable plastics'really. Hard to deal with. The flexibles, the things we've talked about. Turning them into board and stopping trees being chopped down is actually a really good option for this plastic. I actually saw a different process to a Stormbard one. I went to Milan back in 2019 to see this happen. A company that was starting up doing this.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, lucky you. I don't think I've ever been to any of these plants. How come you get all the good field trips?

James Piper: I know, it was nice. And Ellie came out. Actually, afterwards we went to Lake Como. So it was like, it was a great holiday actually.

Stormbboard uses two different methods to turn recycled plastic into board

A little weekend away. All because of waste plastic. Lovely. and the machine, the way it worked, the machine extruded the plastic, melted it along the tube and it went through a diee. But the dye, you know, we talked before about the dye being the size of a pencil back when we talked about melting plastic. But this DY was the size of the board. So it literally was a hole that looked like a letter bo. You know, like a post office letterbox, but longer. and the plastic just came out melted, in the board.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes, I remember this. Yeah. And it's sort of the sheet comes out of the letterbox, so to speak. I remember seeing your photos from this.

James Piper: Yeah, that says. And then it's got like rollers that are heated that then it pushes through to get the exact thickness that you're looking for. And then what they do, and stor boall will do the same is they put virgin plastic kind of either side of that extruded plastic. I think they use pp. I think that's true. Because it needs to be quite rigid. And so they're creating like a sandwich of plastic. So in the middle you've got the recycled plasticeah.

Robbie Staniforth: That's all the fleckxed stuff and little colours of plastic in.

James Piper: And then on the outside you've got a skin to create this kind of sandwich and that will allow you to put colour into it because obviously that's the bit people can see. It allows you to keep the finish really clear because again, it's the bit people see very smooth. It provides that weather resistance. and then at that point the plastic was then compressed using more rollers and cooled down. And then there were like saws or knives on either edge of the, conveyor belt which were then chopping it into a neat square and it passed under a blade. That blade came down and chopped the ball.

Robbie Staniforth: The guillotine again, we've always got that guillotine with the plastic. Ye.

James Piper: That's it. So it was an amazing process. So I've kind of seen two different methods. You've got this kind of vacuum moulding process, which Stormbboard very much do. And then I've other processes where they do this extrusion and just literally make it the board live as it comes through that process. But whatever you're doing, those are the. Those are the basic methods for turning unrecyclable waste plastic into board.

Robbie Staniforth: And the ones I've seen, they're usually sort of grey. They're quite a dark colour, aren't they? Do you know why that is?

James Piper: Yeah, well, basically, when you mix coloured plastics, you're going to get a grey or black. When you're melting stuff down, typically you'll be putting black plastic into the process because it's quite hard to recycle. So the predominant colour is normally black or grey when you start mixing colours together. Maybe we should introduce the concept of what colour plastic is called, because it's called jazz.

Robbie Staniforth: Jazz. Yeah. It always makes you think of jazz hands.

James Piper: Ye. Whenever people talk about, like, a mix of different colours of plastic, they talk about jazz.

Robbie Staniforth: Jazz. Yeah, that's right.

James Piper: Y Trash talk. Robbie.

We're going to ask the question, how bad is incineration

We're going to ask the question, how bad is incineration? There's been quite a lot of media reports in the past few weeks about incineration, possibly more than I expected. I thought the flexible plastic would be the big topic of the month, but actually incineration

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is sort of overtaken it, I think. And we've kind of been alluding to it in various episodes. We talked about it in episode five. We talked about the fact that incineration might not be as good as landfill. And I mentioned that in episode 14, when I did my Guardian article, I got a lot of emails from people in the UK without incinerators network. So I'm really hoping those guys are listening to this episode because we're going to go into some detail.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm sure they will be, James. They're really keen to make sure, you've got all the facts to hand. But, yeah, I think it's maybe a product of just the fact that, you know, people are now becoming more carbon literate as time goes on. Thinking about climate change, Net zero and just the idea of, like, burning stuff that's quite tangible for people, isn't it? Like, you know, you see less open fires and things, because people understand that that's burning coal or wood and releasing carbon and so the idea of like burning waste has now sort of got to the top of people's minds as we just shouldn't be generating less electricity by burning stuff. And, I think that's probably why it's so prescient at the moment.

James Piper: Yeah. And we said we'd do a talking rubbish debate where we would try and bring some pro landfill, pro incinerated people. So look out for that. We'll do that in the future. But for now, let's cover off some of the basics of what we believe. I mean, and I think we said in that episode A you, like two episodes ago, the reality is we don't really know which is better because it depends completely on what you're measuring. And what we will do is what we promise to do in the introduction, try and bring balance to all these things because there's been a lot of, report about incineration. And I would say that has been fairly unbalanced. And so there's an opportunity for us to just provide a bit of correction to that. And then at some point in the future we'll get into a debate about whether which is better, which isn't better. But I think for now, let's just try and bring some balance to the story.

Nearly half of all Australian rubbish is incinerated

Now the reality is, at the moment, nearly half of all our rubbish is incinerated.

Robbie Staniforth: It's crazy, isn't it? It's big.

James Piper: It is big. And it has increased significantly over the last few years. it's fair to say that. So I believe there were only three incinerators in 1990. Just in the last five years we've gone from 38 to 52. I read some stats that said 57, but somewhere in the mid-50s, from 38 just in the last five years.

Robbie Staniforth: It's crazy how many of them there are. It's been a huge topic over the last 10 or 20 years in waste management. They've just blown up with all these sort of public private finance initiatives, getting them. Bu.

James Piper: So go on there, Robbie. As our legislative. What are you? Our legislation guy. Noy Policy.

Robbie Staniforth: Policy guy.

James Piper: As our policy guy, what would be driving the increase in incinerators?

Robbie Staniforth: Well, it's all about the landfill tax that got introduced in the 90s. And basically the landfill tax meant that, councils, with waste management companies would be paying per tonne of waste that they put into the ground. So it was meant as a disincentivization to put stuff in landfill sites. you know, and all the environmental issues of just burying our waste we've only got a fixed amount of land on this planet, so should we just be shoving it in a hole? So the conventional wisdom of the day was to try and put in this tax. That meant it drove councils hopefully to find other solutions. And that was part of the reason why, they're started to become more widespread collections of some of the materials we've talked about in the podcast, things like plastic bottles, aluminium cans, paper, to try and get all that material out of the landfill and avoid paying this tax. However, there was also another option other than recycling, and that's incineration, because it became one of the cheapest ways of dealing with waste. and the landfill tax increased over time. So increasingly as time went on, it became, more economical to burn waste rather than landfill it. And, landfill tax was around 10 pounds, I think in the 2000, early in 2000, and now it's jumping up to 120 pounds per tonne. So you can see that it's gone way above inflation, and it's at such a high rate that, it makes incineration much more likely. So really when people are talking about landfill sites and seeing the seagulls flying around landfill sites and things, they are way less prevalent now than they would have been in the 90s and Zerougties. Just as the populations expanded, waste has increased. much more of it is going to incineration rather than ampfilll.

James Piper: Yeah, so the debate, as we've said, we're kind of ignoring recycling today, although we will come ono it a little bit. But the debate really is landfill or incineration. You've got the landfill tax on one side and you've got the risks and hazards of incineration on the other side of the carbon that's releasing. The reality is this is what brings imbalance to it. Whatever report you're reading, whatever side, whether you're reading the pro incineration side or the

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James Piper: pro landfill side, those reports can be heavily manipulated as it completely depends on what is in our bin. Okay, so the composition of waste in our bin that's getting sent for incineration or landfill will dictate what the emissions look like. If your bin has lots of food wasting, that will make incineration look good because it doesn't create huge amounts of carbon when it burns. If your bin has lots of plastic in, then the opposite is true. Very carbon rich, it's going to create lots of carbon when it burns. So depending on what you're trying to say, whether you're Trying to say incineration is good or landills good. You can just say, oh, well, the average bin contains this and you could just slightly adjust it so that more plastics'in it or more foods in it, depending on what you want your story to. And over time, local authorities have been more likely to collect food waste and plastic has become more prevalent, which has led to, for the first time, a situation where landfill could be better than incineration. Because if your bin has lots and lots of plastic and no food waste, it's going to create more carbon than the reports would suggest, than the government would suggest when they set out all these targets. And it's worth just noting the government data at the moment assumes we send the same rubbish mix as back in 2017. So the government have not updated their figures. They just did a sample in 2017 and said that's how much food, that's how much plastic. Since then, loads of local authorities have started collecting food. Lots of them have changed the plastic that they collect or we've bought more plastic, because of, what's happened to our packaging. And so the government UPD data really needs updating, doesn't it, Robbie?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, sure. And I think this is something that we find in all sorts of, policy decisions that governments are making. No matter what colour of governments in at the time is that there's always a big lag in waste data for policy making. It's been the same with many of the recycling, policies that they've made where there always seems to be like a 5 plus year lag in data, and that makes decisions actually really hard to support. And lots of the, consultation feedback they often get is we need more up to date data, in order to give a view on whether this policy can be backed or not.

James Piper: Yeah. Thank you. So the report from the BBC basically hinged on the fact that as coal plants have closed in the UK and we've now lost the last coal plant, incineration is now the dirtiest way of producing power because it's quite carbon intensive and 3.1% of the UK energy comes from these Waste Inc incinerators. So 3.1% of our energy comes from waste incineelerators.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. I didn't realise it was high as that. I sort of thought it was a niche activity. Once you get into sort three plus one, two, 3%, it's actually significant, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm not sure it's niche.

Robbie says incineration releases twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as landfill

And we talked a bit about the Waist hierarchy. Everyone keeps saying you need to keep talking about the wasist hierarchy. So we are, we are, we are. We may not always say waist hierarchy but we're always referring to it, which is the order that waste should be dealt with. So at the bottom of the waste hierarchy is landfill. So landfill is like what we shouldn't be doing. Then it goes to incineration, then it goes to recycling, then reuse and then reduce. Yeah, that's the doing that all from.

Robbie Staniforth: Memory, but I think that's very good. That's the basic five step version. There's some that are like 10 steps which maybe one day we'll go into.

James Piper: We'll definitely do a trash talk about waste hierchy, but basically it's the order of waste. And what. And the argument is now with a decarbonized grid. So with a grid that is more likely to get its electricity from solar and wind and tidal, you do not need to get energy from burning waste. And the energy you do get from burning waste is significantly more carbon intensive than those other methods. Which is why the BBC have said that with the closure of the last coal plant, incineration is now the dirtiest way of producing power.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, sure. And so the question then becomes cool, we shouldn't burn it, but what are we going to do with it?

James Piper: Absolutely. And there is another flaw in this argument, Robbie, that you're talking about an equation. Okay? So there is an equation which is.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, you're about to lose me here, James.

James Piper: I promise I'll keep it nice and simple. So the car, it's quite early in the morning, isn't it? So carbon, you've got the carbon cost of the energy which is what we're talking about. So how much, how carbon intensive is the electricity they're making versus the carbon cost of the process. And this is where the BBC only gave half the story because what they talked about was the carbon cost of the energy that's created. So they didn't talk about the carbon cost of the process. And what we have to remember is that landfill is the alternative to incineration. And the ESA did a report on this that showed that the net greenhouse gas emissions of sending one tonne of typical waste to landfill, question mark over typical. This is where everyone can

00:30:00

James Piper: manipulate their reports, okay? And the ESA have a vested interest in making its innovation look good.

Robbie Staniforth: I don't know whether they use the 2017 statistic or 2017.

James Piper: We will beeptical. Yeah, we need to be sceptical as number but the greenhouse gas emissions of sending one tonne of typical waste of landfill is 432.7 kilogrammes CO2. So 432 kilos is landfill and 231 is incineration. So basically what the ESA are saying, environmental Services association, you basically create twice the number of greenhouse gases with something going to landfill versus incineration. Now this is not in any of the reporting. They don't say. What they say is when you incinerate something, the electricity you create is carbon intensive. What they don't say is, but if you sent it to landfill, it would create twice the number of greenhouse gas emissions because it's degrading over time, it's releasing more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. And if we ignore the ESA who have a vested interest in incineration, looking good. Scotland, who have banned incineration back in 2021, also reported this and they said it was 250 versus 345 kilos. So they said it was 250 kilos for incineration, 345 for, landfill. So even the people who were writing reports in we should ban this, accepted that incineration has fewer greenhouse gas emissions than landfill.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, fine. And this is where the context is so important because I think a lot of people get, upset about, incineration, energy from waste being put in a positive light ever. Because then the debate shouldn't be just incineration versus landfill. It should be let's not have the big old pile of waste that we can't do anything other than incinerate or landfill it in the first place, isn't it? I think that's where they're coming fromou.

James Piper: Yeah, that's rightou. So hopefully this has all made sense so far. All the report that said incineration was bad said, well, it's the worst form of electricity. That's true. I don't think anyone's debating that. ##so we have got a very decarbonized grid now. So burning our waste is going to be a low form, of electricity. It's not going to be the best. So that's true. What none of the reports said was, but if you landfill it, you create more greenhouse gas emissions. So it's better to incinerate it, the landfill. If you're just looking about greenhouse gas emissions that are released into the atmosphere.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And if you're just looking at those being the only two options.

James Piper: Yeah. Now what's interesting is that Scotland report that I mentioned which demonstrated that it was better to incinerate. That was based on 15% of the waste being plastic. if it went to 20%, then landfill became the same as incineration.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, wow. So a, plastic rich mix of waste would mean you've got your carbon emissions go up through incinerating the stuff.

James Piper: Because it's oil corct. So as councils move food waste out, or as councils move other organic waste out of your waste stream and your plastic percentage increases, so does that risk of emitting greenhouse G gases and you start getting into a situation where it is better to landfill quite quickly. You know, we're only Talking about a 5% difference in plastic and Robbie, that is why, without wishing to blow our own trumpet, that's why this podcast is so important, because we've got to help people recycle plastic better.

Robbie Staniforth: Absolutely.

James Piper: If you're putting plastic in your general waste bin that could be recycled, then you are contributing to that mix changing and you are contributing to incineration being worse than landfill. So we need to be really clear on that.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And we don't have time to go into it today, but the admissions trading scheme in the UK is being expanded, to include, energy from waste incinerators. And so what that's going to do is provide an incentive to get all that plastic out because effectively, for every, tonne of CO2 that's burnt through the incinerator, there's going to be. It's not a tax, it's a trading scheme. But effectively think of it like the landfill tax and it's going to be a version of that that's expanded to incinerators. So it's going to become more costly to have lots of plastic being incinerated.

James Piper: Yeah. That's super interesting, isn't it? That is going to make a difference, definitely. I guess the thing that shocked me is that only four out of the 50 plus incinerators had approved plans to capture their emissions. I thought it was much higher because obviously one thing you can do when you're any was is then capture the emissions and stop them being released into the atmosphere. And I just think that should be a requirement of building an incinerator, that you have to capture the emissions.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. It's crazy to think that they're still being commissioned at the same time that another policy measure, the Emissions Trading Scheme is trying to cap much, gets burnt through them.

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Robbie Staniforth: There sot of appears to be like a disconnect between those two things. And certainly you're right.

Wales and Scotland have banned new incinerators being built

If they are going to be built, let's Try and make sure they give out the least possible emissions that technology will allow.

James Piper: Absolutely. And we're not clear at all on the government policy on this, are we? I mean, Wales and Scotland, to be clear, have banned new incinerators being built. the government has just approved a site in Dorset that was, not approved by the council. So the government have overturned the local council decision. So we're in a position where you've got Wales and Scotland banning them and England kind of promoting it. And I think it's fair to say that we probably have too many incinerators, you know, because the challenge. So if we talk about contracts, the challenge is that the way these contracts are worded for incineration is councils have to keep feeding the pl, the incinerators with waste. Okay. So obviously incinerators can't really have downtime. They need to constantly be burning to remain efficient. So they always need waste coming into them. So councils will have contracts that say, you need to keep feeding us waste. And that's going to mean that councils are disincentivized to improve recycling. Because why are they going to want you to take that stuff out of their bin if they've got to send it for incineration? And the more incinerators we have, the more waste needs to go that route. This isn't, okay, nice to have if we can, we'll use it'a no, it has to carry on being. Once you've built one, you've got to keep putting waste into it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And this feeds in nicely to your previous comments about the economics around waste and recycling dictating what happens. And this is one of those things where clearly, waste management company has built one of these incinerators. And the economics say it's only worth building it if they can keep burning all day and all night. And so that locked in economics mean it's very hard to change things and say all of a sudden, no, we want much less being fed into this incinerator. And I think having these contracts where, where a specific council is locked in with a specific site and there's not much dynamism, if you like, to where the waste goes kind of locks in for a long time. I'm talking like a decade or more where the waste ends up going and kind of means you can't make a change and introduce more recycling services, for example.

James Piper: That's it. And they call it lock in. Lock in is an issue BBC found through Freedom of Information requests that £30 billion worth of contracts had been signed by local authorities and some of them lasted over 20 years. So even if these reports were absolutely damning and we were like, we shouldn't be doing consideration, we actually can't change it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Gosh. Thinking about doing something now and what the state of the world is going to be in 20 years time is, so difficult, isn't it? It's like you can see how the councils think they're making the right decisions at the time because they've got this waste issue. There's a landfill tax. They need another option for half of the UK's wastes. Got to go somewhere. So you can see why these contracts got signed. But 20 years later, it starts to look, not quite so logical.

James Piper: I guess we do need to remember that incinerators are there to sort out the unrecyclable. There is a balance here. There's always a balance where you're like, okay, there's lots of stuff that's heavily contaminated, know nappies, food packaging that couldn't get washed, or didn't get washed. We should say everything can be washed. But food packaging, but didn't get washed. Things that have ended up in your general bin. What we are saying is actually, from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective, it is better to be incinerated than landfill. A. Stand by that comment. Everyone acknowledges that comment. As long as the mix is correct. As long as the mix is what we expect and there's this kind of balance between plastic and other materials.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And sor. Don't put cardboard in your general waste bin. Come on, that's like basics.

James Piper: Exactly. And incinerator should be managing that mix, in my view. But we do need to remember that they have a purpose and if we didn't have them, we would be sending a huge quantity of waste to landfill and that would be really damaging. So we shouldn't be doing that. So we should recognise that there is always going to be waste that can't be recycled. The challenge is when you've got as many incinerators as we do now, with the potential for more, you're going to start diverting stuff is that can be recycled and wants to be recycled into those material, into those waste streams because they need to be full. And the ciwm, the Chartered Institute of Waste Management, has actually said it's a transitional technology. It's got a lifespan of 20 to 30 years. And the reality is it's transitional as we move to more and more recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure.

James Piper: Now,

00:40:00

James Piper: I am a bit sceptical of that because I Think, you know, there's a huge investment in these incineration plants and can't imagine in 20 years they're going to be like, okay, let's switch them all off. But I do think there's an argument to say, well, government legislation needs to come in that stops new incinerators getting built. Definitely, we utilise the old ones and we put in really strong legislation to encourage more and more recycling so that it stops being about commercial activities and starts being about actually what is the right thing to do, which is to recycle more.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, exactly right. And with new legislation about, producers of packaging making stuff, recyclable in the first place, there should be a declining need for incineration because there should just be less in the bin. So the whole thing needs to work in tandem, doesn't itoul?

James Piper: So reality is recycling is. Just to summarise, to end this section, the reality is recycling is often contaminated, can't be recycled, and incineration is a good route for the stuff that has not been correctly managed. Please listen to this podcast to improve how you recycle, to make sure that stuff isn't heading off to be incinerated and is being recycled. That's tell your friends. That's the main part of this trash talk.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Piper: And energy from waste is an important process to treat the leftovers. I think we potentially have too many incinerators, so we end up with not just leftovers going in and, potentially desirable materials going in. So I think the government needs a strong policy on how much incineration it's going to allow in this country. And if they had a strong policy around that, that would increase the amount of quality recycling for sure. Rubbish or not.

MasterCard have created a blueprint for card recycling, um, which they're sharing

So we had Mike, who had been listening to episode 11, which was about whether we eat a, credit card sware of microplastics. And that got Mic thinking. What do I do with my credit cards? Are they rubbish or not?

Robbie Staniforth: Ah, ah, good link, I think. yeah.

James Piper: What do you reckon, Robbie? Do you know what a credit card is made of?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, I don't, but I've seen that there's like crazy. There's wooden ones, aren't there? And there's all sorts of different types. But I presume he's thinking about the plastic one.

James Piper: Yes. So credit cards are made of lots and lots of laminated plastic. Usually, they use pvc. Interestingly, we talked about the issues with PVC because the chlorine, sometimes they use pt, sometimes a bio source material, but basically it's layers of plastic that's then been laminated. They will use inks for printing on credit cards that have like a magnetic stripe and there are metal oxide particles with solvents also used for the inks. So it's a bit of a combination of materials in a credit card, to be honest.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And there's the chip in there as well that must have. So what's that got on it? That must have some metals or something.

James Piper: Yeahal. And there's a little metal antenna that runs round as well for when you do your contactless payments read. So there's a bit of metal throughout the credit card. So, I found some interesting things about recycling credit cards, MasterCard. So I mean, the first thing is it's rubbish, right at home. If you're at home, don't recycle your credit card.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Don't put it in the plastic bin and assume it's getting recycled with a bottle or a tray or something.

James Piper: Yeah, it's a horrible plastic. I wouldn't be putting that in the recycling bin. So what's happened is MasterCard have actually created a blueprint for card recycling, which they're looking to share with the world. And interestingly, in the uk, I think they've started with HSBC and there are some branches where you can get, card recycling. Now, I couldn't find a map or anything. I was trying to find online which branches. Maybe someone else will be able to find one. But, if we do find one, I'll share out in our link tree. But basically you can drop off expired cards into dedicated collection boxes, secure boxes, I hope. Well, the boxes actually seem to shred the cards. So as you put it in, it's like a shredder, basically, and it shreds it. and the chip is destroyed as well. So. So that shredded waste is then shipped. So MasterCard said they ship that to TerraCycle. We've talked about Terrorycle. We'll do a deep dive in the future on them. and that card waste is then separated and the plastic can be turned back into pellets and powders to be reused. And if it's going into powders, it will probably end up being a bo like we talked about earlier, back to.

Robbie Staniforth: Earlier in the episode. So there could be credit cards in that planter at my daughter school maybe.

James Piper: I suspect if it's pvc, it's all organised up back in boards. I don't see what the market would be for that to be turned back into pellets and recycled yeah, well just.

Robbie Staniforth: On that sort of card shaped thing you know in the hotels when you deposit it at the end, don't you? And they reuse those cards. Now that's quite a cool bit of technology where they programme them to open various hotel. Well hopefully the correct hotel door, room, room, door, door, room. and I wonder. So they're clearly not minded to make a reusable credit card though because one would have thought that couldn't have been too difficult.

James Piper: O that's a nice thought.

00:45:00

James Piper: Yeah, yeah especially there is a bit of a trend isn't there for credit cards that don't have numbers printed on. They're just a blank card.

Robbie Staniforth: Maybe I've just come up with something there. You can have that one for free. Who was it? HSBC and MasterCard.

James Piper: MasterCard, yeah. So I also found, let's not just focus on hbc. I also found that west have reverse vending machines and Santandea also said they had dropp off points. Again haven't been able to find maps. If I find them I'll put them in linktree. But it looks like you've got three banks that you could potentially approach to try and find out if they'll recycle your old credit cards. I guess we should say we recognise that you know, bank branches are closing in my village. I mean I've only lived there for a year and we're down to the last two and I think there were six banks when I moved in which is just unbelievable in a year. so if you can't get to a branch which is completely understandable, then obviously the main thing to do is cut it up and put it in your normal bin. And while we are not a security podcast just to provide some security advice, make sure you cut through the chip and cut through the numbers so that only two numbers are ever together and spread the pieces across different bin bags so that people can't piece it together.

Robbie Staniforth: So if you're listening to this really security conscious.

James Piper: I know well I would have cancelled the card at this point so I'm not really that worried about it but I'm just, you know.

Robbie Staniforth: True.

James Piper: It's important that we make sure that we're giving the right advice to people. Right. And from the 1st of January 2028 all new MasterCard plastic payment cards will actually be made from sustainable materials. So they're looking at recycling and bioso source plastics such as r, PVC r pet we talked about the r just being recycled. MasterCard are looking from 2028 for all cards to be made from recycled materials. Yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: Great use for waste plastics, isn't it? Smushsh them up, make a card out of it. Sounds quite cool to me.

James Piper: Rubbish question.

Robbie asks what to do with film on top of plastic trays

So Robbie, we had an email in from Astrid. Thank you Astrid for the email. she was asking what to do with the film on top of trays. Interestingly, I was thinking of two types of trays. So there's kind of two, aren't they? You've got like peelable, which is like, if you buy like a punnet of grapes or strawberries.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh y common in my house, you just rip it straight off. They're quite good those ones.

James Piper: Yeah. And then there's welded. So if we think about like bacon or meat. Ah, y the film isr much more firmly attached to the plastic tray.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, sure.

James Piper: So what do we do with those?

Robbie Staniforth: well there's obviously where you can remove them. you can use those supermarket collection points that we've discussed, ah, at length I think, back in episode, 14. So that is recyclable, plastic, just like any of the other, flexible plastics that you would drop off, if it's difficult to get off, take a look at the label. Because sometimes, the recycling label, that is sometimes the tray and the film that's welded to the tray is made from the same material, often pet. So there's been a trend for supermarkets to try and use the same material so that you can actually leave the tray, with the film and recycle it as one item.

James Piper: Yeah, that's it. So if the tray or the film has recycled written on them, that means they're made from the same material. That means it will be a pet tray and a pet film. most of the time they do use multi layer films for these kind of seals. And that's because to create a proper seal, the film needs to be made of multiple materials and that will not have the recycle label. So you've got two options with that. If you're collecting up your flexibles, they can go back to a supermarket collection point. If you're not collecting up your flexibles, then it should go in the general waste bin. The reality is if you leave films on trays they are extremely likely to be removed and could go for incineration. So there's not a huge amount of benefit for leaving flexibles on the tray. It's much better to take them off and put them into a flexible collection scheme at the supermarket.

Robbie Staniforth: Absolutely. So unless it specifically says, recycle this film on the top with the tray itself. That's what you're going to be doing.

James Piper: We've talked a lot about incineration. I feel like I should do like a Mission Impossible style end where I say, like, this podcast will self destruct.

Robbie Staniforth: In and not be incinerated for sure.

James Piper: Anyway, thank you so much, everyone for listening. It's been a really fun episode. There's lots of detail, in these reporting episodes. I hopefully everyone's still with us and it's not too heavy and.

Robbie Staniforth: No, it's interesting stuff. It's good to get the stats.

James Piper: Yeah. And we're going to have loads of episodes on these topics. So we're just sort of giving the baseline for us all to start with and then we can start delving more into these issues and look and see if we can have debates about innovation in landfill. So thank you all for listening. Thank you, Robbie, for joining. Remember to get in contact with us. You can follow us on social media, which is rbbishpodcast, or you can email talkingruubbishpodcast gmail.comt we're also on WhatsApp, which you can get from our Facebook or Instagram, or you can contact us through our website. I don't think I've said that one before. Talking rubbish. Poodcast.com we have a Contact Us page. I sort of just look at everything. So wherever you try

00:50:00

James Piper: and contact me, I will get back you. And we.

Robbie Staniforth: People can't get hold of us. It's their fault, not. James, you're doing an exceptional job of making us available.

James Piper: Yeah. And I apologise if I've missed anyone. There's so many things for me to look at. I think I've responded to everyone. I think I'm live at the moment and up to date. But, I must admit our question bank is getting very full.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, great. well, that just means we can keep going, keep rolling with this podcast.

James Piper: Years ahead of us, I think. I'm just looking at it now. I think we've still got 30 outstanding questions. Maybe we're going to have to start doing a question we would. Do you like. The rest is his entertainment Q and A edition.

Robbie Staniforth: The Questions episode. Wow, we've got some great ideas here. The debate episode, the Questions episode, the themed episodes, like the Halloween one recently.

James Piper: It's good, isn't it? It's building into something I never imagined when we first started and we were like, to bowl caps.

Robbie Staniforth: It's going off in all sorts of directions. Ideas are plenty.

James Piper: Well, thank you all so much for listening. Remember to leave us a review if you get a second and we will see you all next week. Bye.

00:51:04