22. Green Christmas - unwrapping festive recycling

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James Piper: Ho, ho, ho. Welcome to Talking Rubbish, our weekly podcast delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind festive headlines and yaw tide stories. In this Christmas special, we will discuss Christmas trees. Delve deep into those tubs of chocolate you might be eating right now. Explore whether Christmas crackers are, ah, rubbish or not. And we have been asked about the scrunch test. I'm James Piper, your friendly recycling Santa, and I'm joined by Robbie Stanifforff, my far from rubbish elf. Merry Christmas, Robbie. Do you know, after the Halloween special, I literally had people messaging and going, can't wait to hear your Christmas.

Robbie Staniforth: They were waiting for that.

James Piper: What'd you reckon?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, very good. And you actually stayed true to character all the way through as well, which I think was much better than, the Halloween special. So kudos to you.

James Piper: Well, I was practising it last night. I was like, ho, ho, ho. And it sounded a lot like my Dracula. So I was like, I've got to just try and work out how to make it a bit different.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, well, no, I think. Nailed. Nailed. Yeah. Very good. Yeah.

Robbie has a Christmas present for new listeners on Boxing Day

James Piper: So it's Boxing Day. How many listeners do you think we're going to get a Boxing Day? We, we get a lot of listeners on the day we launch an episode. Do you think this is going to be our big drop off?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, what, you think people are too busy to listen? No, I think, if anything, people have got a bit of time on their hands. We might pick up some more listeners on Boxing Day.

James Piper: Hello. welcome, new listeners on Boxing Day. That's exciting.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, very exciting.

James Piper: Have you had a nice Christmas?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, it's been fantastic. Thanks, James.

James Piper: How's it? Well, I got you a Christmas present.

Robbie Staniforth: What?

James Piper: I know, I knew. I said to Elie last night, I was like, should I have told him in advance so he could get me a present? And then I thought, nah, let's make him look bad. So, dir shop. I know. And we're a different. We record in different places. So I got to run this present over to you. So there'll be some clever editing now where I run this over to you and then, yeah, I'm going to give it to you now. You've got to open it now. There is a ribbon on it, which. And again, Ellie and I would discuss a sustainability of this ribbon last night, but this ribbon has been used for so many years, so, like, you have to give it back to me so I can reuse, very. I'm going to run this over to you. Hang on.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, I see James taking off his headphones. He's exiting his recording studio and head into min now. okay, he's heading back. He's handed me the gift and it is a very nice bow.

James Piper: Okay, I'm back.

Robbie Staniforth: So should I be unboxing? Is this like.

James Piper: Open it. Yeah, yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: YouTube, unboxing videos.

James Piper: This. Yeah, open it. Unboxing.

Robbie Staniforth: day itself. Oh, ribbons off. Okay. Oh, very neat wrapping, James. You're a good wrpper, good gift giver.

James Piper: Well done, Ellie. She's the wrapper of the two of us.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, fine. It's very nice. Okay, opening up the brown paper. Try not to rip too much of it so the sheet can be reused.

James Piper: Very good. I did think about using a reusable bag.

Robbie Staniforth: O wow, look at that. My very own what are we calling it? Shrinker.

James Piper: Yeah. Have you heard of it before?

Robbie Staniforth: I've only used a prototype. This is the full. Wow.

James Piper: Okay, now this is, just to be clear, this is not an ad. I have paid for this. I also bought myself one. so this is the. What's it? Holy Shrink.

Robbie Staniforth: Holy Shrink is the company and I think they call it a shrinker.

James Piper: Yeah. So it's basically, it's like recycled plastic in like a spherical shape, like a. I don't know, but how would you describe it? Like a little bin? Yeah, a spherical plastic bin. And at the top is like a plunger that you push down. And so the idea is you put your flexible plastics into it and then you push the plunger down and it squashes your flexible plastics into quite a joined up brick sort of shape that you can then take to the supermarket much easier. And so I took a whole carrier bag of flexibles last night and put it in ours because I bought one at the same time. And and yeah, I've managed to get a whole carrier bag into this tiny compact brick form that I can now take to the supermarket really easily.

Robbie Staniforth: When I've spoken to them, they use the term nugget, which I thought was a good. They get big nugget obviously if you're thinking chicken nuggets. but yeah, so it says on the side of the box, fill your shrinker. So that sort of stuff it in at the top, compress. So there's, as James says, the little plunger to push it down and then finally recycle. So you pull it out, tie the knot in the bag and youve ve suddenly compressed your huge bag into a much smaller bag. Because we know people complain, dont know about how much space it takes up to recycle soft plastic. So. Wow. Thanks very much, James. My very own shrinker.

James Piper: Marry Christmas this week, Robbie.

I went to the cinema to see Wicked over Christmas

I went to the cinema. Lots of people go to the cinema over Christmas, right? So

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I'm sure lots of people have done this. And I went to go and see Wicked.

James Piper: Oh, it was amazing. So good.

Robbie Staniforth: So that's the one. It's something to do with the wizard of Oz. I've never seen the stage show, but it's an adaptation, it.

James Piper: Oh, yeah, the stage show is excellent. I've seen the stage show a couple of times and the film was brilliant. So fully recommend Wicked. I went to go and see it at View. I'm a bit of CEA cinema, recycling and all that kind of stuff, because there's lots we can do there because it's just a contained environment, it's a closed environment. And, I wanted a coffee and I thought, well, I'll get this in a mug or something. You know, when I get. Interestingly, if I go to, like, the Everyman or a different cinema, they will often provide it to you in a mug. Well, V provided it in a paper cup, which was frustrating. But I noticed they gave me two cups and I thought, oh, maybe that was a mistake. I'm guessing because it's really hot. So they put two cups inside each other, filled it with coffee, gave it to me. I thought maybe it's a mistake. I was hoping it was a mistake. And then I noticed Elise tea also had two cups. So between two of us, we had four disposable cups. I just thought, this is mad. So we have to, you know, just to call out to stop doing that. We don't need double cups. And then also the recycling bins, as I left, I mean, they weren't recycling B. It was just a row of green bins. There was no signage on it, just, plain green bins, all sorts of things going in each of those. And it's like when you've got a row of six bins. First of all, don't make them the same colour. Second, put some signage on them. At least then you're getting people to separate. I mean, just having a row of green bins with nothing on them is just madness.

Robbie Staniforth: Who knows? Shame. Bit of an own goal there.

James Piper: Ah, there you go. That's my Christmas cinema trip. and I also went to a cafe this week and I noticed the cafe had wooden cutlery. And we'vet of said, we'll talk about wooden cutlery in the future. Which we have to make sure we do. But they also had metal cutlery. So they had like both options, which I'm interested in what you think. I thought that was probably quite good because if you're eating in, you're going to pick the metal and if you're taking it away, you're going to pick.

Robbie Staniforth: The wooden Y. Yeah, no, it must be that. It must be that. And then as long as everyone that eats in gets the metal one that gets washed and reused again. That sounds fair. It puts me in mind of, the straws, the ban on the plastic straws episode where maybe the wooden fork has to become illicit material that you need to, ask for in order to get, a takeaway building.

James Piper: Yes, very good. but the challenge with this, because I thought it was probably quite a good thing having a takeaway and an eat in option challenge with this was there was loads of wooden cutlery. Like it was full to the brim of wooden cutlery. And there was one metal teaspoon and three forks.

Robbie Staniforth: And so they hadn't quite stayed on top of their washing.

James Piper: No. So again, thought it was a good idea, but this was quite early in the morning and they were already running out of metal cutlery. So again, I would urge cafes, if they're going to do this, to make sure they have enough of both corrections and editions. I didn't have any Christmas themed corrections and editions. I mean, not that metal and wooden cutlery has been particularly Christmas themed, but trust me, guys, the Christmas stuff is.

Robbie Staniforth: En route near nearly since Anda Sleigh. It's coming. It's coming over.

James Piper: ###Ly pass the introduction. It is very difficult to make Christmasy.

Robbie: We ordered reusable wipes after discussing disposable wipes in baby episode

I'm really sorry for this pun, but I'm trying to get to the bottom of wipes. Is that a pun?

Robbie Staniforth: You are not sorry about that pun. You are loving it, Robbie.

James Piper: As you know, we've had a new baby and episode 21 is all about our new baby. And that's super exciting. And we ordered reusable wipes. We are successfully using those, but obviously we talked a lot about disposable wipes in that baby episode. And I actually emailed that episode to Matt, who was the guy who helped me out on the nappy recycling. I actually emaililed it to Matt to get his feedback on the nappy recycling, but he could not help himself. He had to listen to the whole episode and then sent me a huge email about wipes.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, wow, okay, so you about to read out this whole email verbatim?

James Piper: No, I think I'll just pick some things out that I thought were interesting. But, it was quite funny because I was like, no, I didn't want your opinion on wipes. I wanted the nappy recycling a bit. But, hey, it's great, it's really good. Thank you, Matt.

Robbie Staniforth: We'll take what we can get.

James Piper: Thank you, Matt, for giving us your views on this.

Matt says wipes contain plastic and therefore they're difficult to flush

So we talked about, wipes in this fine to flush standard and he was saying, actually there is this error that the government makes time and time again and I think he's suggesting we made it in the podcast as well, that I can't quite remember, which is when you combine like plastic and flush ab. He was like, the government have a tendency to go, wipes contain plastic, therefore they're really difficult to flush. No, no, wipes are really difficult to flush. Some of them contain plastic. It doesn't matter whether they contain plastic or not, they're difficult to flush. They're made of fibres that don't necessarily break down. so I thought that was quite interesting. We have to be careful not to link those two things together. and just the incorrect disposable of wipes in general, whether they're plastic or plant based, will contribute to fat burgs if they're not dealt with correctly. So he was just pointing this out?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, so just saying, don't worry about what they're made of, don't be using them, don't be flushing them. It's as simple as

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Robbie Staniforth: that.

James Piper: Yeah. And then we talked about the removal of fine to flush and he was saying, well, there's various standards for flush AB in the UK and globally and actually the fine to flush one is one of the more stringent. So if you remove fine to flush, which we deemed as like a positive thing because it's like, well, we'd rather wipes weren't flushed. He's like, if you remove find to flush, the reality is people will turn to these less stringent schemes, and you will end up with a market where brands will certify under a lesser accreditation, and market the product as flushable. So he was like, actually, the removal of flying to flush is probably not a good thing, and it's going to create more confusion. So again, I thought that was a really good call out. In his view, we need legislation around what can be marketed as flushable, with clear labelling. And, you know, this is how it's handled in other parts of the world. So there's no reason not to do that in this country, so really, really good call outs and something I didn't actually say in the episode, which I was annoyed about because actually we had talked about it, Matt, and I was, Wipes, you know, if we've got nappy recycling scheme, you can actually put any absorbent material in that nappy recycling scheme. So you could put things like, tampons or period products, all sorts of things. Anything that's absorbent can go into a nappy recycling scheme and that would include wipes. So again, if we get good nappy recycling in the UK and we do what Wales have done and, we bring that to England and potentially to Scotland, then we're in a position where actually lots of things could be recycled through that method and that would be really positive. And just a reminder, we have our survey ongo. We're going to keep that open. So if you want to access the survey, it's on our website, which is talking rubbish. Poodcast.com and you can contact us on socialswitch is rubbishpodcast or you can email us at talkingubbishpodcast. Atil rubbish process.

Robbie talks about how to recycle Christmas trees after Halloween special

Robbie, let's get Christmasy. It's time we've moved off the introduction. We've got to do some Christmas stuff.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, great.

James Piper: People kept messaging me again after the Halloween one, going, you're going to do Christmas, right? And you're going to open it with ho, ho, ho. Right? Yeah, absolutely, for sure, like. And you're going to do how to recycle Christmas trees. Yeah. And I was like, yes, that's what we're going to do. That's going to be our rubbish process. So according to the British Christmas Tree Grower Associate. Oh, I don't know why I say Christmas like that. According to the Christmas tre. According to the British Christmas Tree Growers association, they estimate that around 7 million trees are bought each year in the UK and most of the real ones are Nordman furs.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm a Norwegian spruce man myself. In fact, I don't buy a cut tree, so I don't know why I'm saying that.

James Piper: Oh, well, this section's for you then.

Around £3 million worth of Christmas trees were imported into the UK last year

Let's discuss that. So most trees in M sold in the uk. UK GR own, which is great. and around. it's annoying because there aren't figures here. They just sort of said around £3 million worth for Christmas trees were imported into the UK. So I'd have to. What's an average price of a Christmas tree? Like 50 quid?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, probably.

James Piper: These days, I reckon what's that going to be? 300,000. I'm doing this live. 30,000. 60,000 Christmas trees imported in the UK compared to 7 million trees.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so there's not that many imported then?

James Piper: Correct. Have I got my mapss right? Yeah, 60,000. Math sounds right. The trouble with this is I can only talk about our Christmas trees because every council will do different things and there's loads of different, options for a Christmas tree. But for Bristol, they collect them at curbside and sh.

Robbie Staniforth: Cora, Robbie and James talking about how much they love Bristol.

James Piper: I know, well, it's just helpful, isn't it? And we've, I mean we've had loads of WhatsApps from people. I got WhatsApp last night from someone in Germany saying, oh yeah, you know, can we do more specifics around Germany? So we're going to have to work out how we expand from Bristol, but hopefully it's a useful example in case study for people then to go, oh, I wonder what happened to mine, you know. But I can't talk about every location and what they do with their Christmas trees. and if they collect them at curbside, if you have your Christmas tree collected at curbside, this is probably what happens. We have curbside collection in Bristol and Bristol Waste had a really good section on their website on Christmas tree recycling. last Christmas they collected 187 tonnes of Christmas tre trees.

Robbie Staniforth: Whoa. Gosh, that just seems a lot, doesn't it?

James Piper: It's almost 27,000 trees. Yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. I suppose they are heavy items, aren't they? But, yeah, 187 tonne. I'm amazed by that.

James Piper: So we'll talk through the process of how it works. There's like a four step process here. so they have the collection, then the shredding and mixing, then maturing the compost and leading to a final result that they can use. So they pick up the Christmas tree from curbside, and a bit of a call out. I mean I'm hoping this is obvious but they did put it on their website. Please remove all decorations.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh God. Come on.

James Piper: Don't try and recycle it with the fairy lights.

Robbie Staniforth: That's def. Definitely becomes multi material if you've left a ball ball on your Christmas tree.

James Piper: Yeah. And again in Bristol they had this thing which I hadn't heard about, which I'm going to try and use for next yeark, which

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James Piper: is the tree cycle scheme. So St Peter's Hospice did a tree cycle scheme and again I looked this up last night. And other councils had this with different charities. So it's worth looking at whether you're. Whether you've got a local charity. Collections, they do in early January. So similar to Bristol Waste, you basically sign up on a website and say, look, actually, I don't want mine collected by Bristol Waste, I want mine collected by the charity. And, in this example, because it's St Peter's Hospice, a team of volunteers, collect real Christmas trees from doorstep and they recycle them. So they do exactly the same process, pistol waste, but difference is, you give them a donation for doing that process and they recommend 15 to 20 pounds per tree.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So it's a way to raise. You can recycle and give to charity at the same time. I mean, some people are stuck with the Christmas tree in January thinking, ah, ah, we got to stick it on the roof or take it to our municipal waste site. and they are, you know, it's a problem to solve. So obviously St Peter's Hospice have jumped on that and thought, hey, we can help me recycle them. What a great idea.

James Piper: Yeah. Of course, you could just cut out the middle person and do your tree for free for Bristol Waste and then just make a donation to. For charity. But, I'm not sure. I think they probably make money off the compost, so it might be better to put your tree through the charity root and just pay a donation as well. So, yeah, really nice. And there are other councils doing this, so it's just worth looking up. So the trees have been collected, they're then shredded, blended and, mixed. And our trees, the Bristol trees, are transported to Jeco. Now Jenneco, I think, are going to get their own episode because Jenneco are the famous people who created a poo bus.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes. That was in Bath, wasn't it? Or somewhere nearby.

James Piper: I think it's bfan. Bristol, I think was. I'm not sure, actually what the route was of the bus, but, it's this area and they basically. Because they take organic waste. Yeah. And not very Christmassy, and they turn it into power and fuel. They created a poo bus or, a bus that was powered by poo. I'm not sure they like that name. They called it the. I can't remember what they called Aie, but it certainly wasn't the poo bus.

Robbie Staniforth: This episode is getting a bit faecal. We had wipes and now we've got Pooh bus James.

James Piper: So we'll do a different episode on Jennico when it's not Christmas and we can, we can and sayp poo a lot more.

Composting will help reduce CO2 and methane compared to landfill

So the trees are sent there and they're checked, prepped and shredded. So they shred them down and they'll blend them with other organic materials. And actually the Bristol waste website said and chunky gunky objects collected from place like wastewater treatment plants, which I quite liked. Chunky gunky. It's nice, isn't it?

Robbie Staniforth: They're trying to make it seem a bit more accessible and interesting clearly.

James Piper: Yes. Then they enter a compost process and this will will obviously help reduce CO2 and methane compared to landfill. If you throw it into land it slowly decomposes. So this is similar to that incineration episode where we said incineration produces less greenhouse g or fewer greenhouse gases than landfills's because in landfill things slowly decompose and it would send methane gas into the air. So much better to go through a composting process. It goes through a treatment process that uses aerobic composting to break down the trees and any other biological waste. And then they push this into mounds and these mounds are looked after for like three months. which gives the perfect conditions for microorganisms to flourish and break down the material. So they're litre like in your compost B you're creating a mound. They're doing the same thing just on a bigger scale and allowing those microorganisms over a period of three months to digest that material.

Robbie Staniforth: Great. So this is what that term, windroww means. It's a row of compost where presumably wind can get down either side of them. Right. Why have I never thought about what that term means before?

James Piper: So there go.

Robbie Staniforth: That's the wind.

James Piper: That's what those mounds are. Yeah, that's it. The mix is sterilised and left and mature and they sieve out anything like plastics. And they would talked about this before. You know where you've got material that doesn't compost in that speed and doesn't isn'ting it's going to get sieved out at that point.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. Can't get the particles fine enough or whatever.

James Piper: Ye, exactly. And now I suspect be sent for incineration, whatever sved out. and then that's going to leave a lovely bit of compost with lots of nutrients, soils and perfect for land. So they'then put that out across the land and use that to grow.

Robbie Staniforth: O okay, great.

Recent stats suggest that almost half of Christmas trees sold are artificial

Well there we go. So people will now know it's Boxing Day. What are we saying? We're thinking it's another week I think until people are tackling this issue.

James Piper: Yeah, I think so. I'm not sure when my collection is this year. They'normally the second week of Jan. So Robie, you mentioned you don't have a cut tree, so you have an artificial one, do you?

Robbie Staniforth: Correct. I see.

James Piper: So do we think artificial is better than real?

Robbie Staniforth: Well, it's going to be one of those that depends, isn't ITICK James? My one a neighbour. So we've got a local WhatsApp group on the road and a neighbour was getting rid of one about four or five years ago and up until that point I'd always either had a pot tree or a cut one and the pot one had always died between

00:20:00

Robbie Staniforth: years. So I'd put it out in my garden, hope it lastedill the next year and for whatever reason obviously I'm not green fingered enough. it would die and I'd have to buy a new Christmas tree. And obviously the cut ones we've just mentioned what I used to do with those. so yeah, for the last, I think it's three or four years I've had an artificial tree that I basically took off the wall of one of my neighbours when they put it out and they were getting rid of it.

James Piper: Interesting. And you're not alone. Recent stats suggest that almost half of trees sold are ah, artificial. this is most of the status from the Soil association so thank you to them for this. most artificial trees made in China, so dual environmental impact. And they're a bit like the Halloween costumes that we discussed before Robbie, because they're like a mix of different plastics, PVC'obviously you've got some metal in there. We got an artificial tree last year and it's got its lights built in so it's got electics, some.

Robbie Staniforth: The one that I've got's got lights built in and when I heard that on the WhatsApp group I was like I'm definitely a getting that. That sounds great.

James Piper: It is much easier. Yeah. but it's not just manufacturing racking up the carbon footprint of an artificial tree. You know, they're not recyclable. If they get thrown away they could end up in landfill or potentially incineration. And according to the carbon truster 2 metre artificial tree has a carbon footprint of around 40 kilos. Now the important point here is that is about 10 times that of a real tree. Okay.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: Now this is a real tree that's burnt, not composted so it will Be far more if you composted it.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. Yep.

James Piper: it will be more than 10 times, but sure. I mean, the basic thing is, if you're going to buy an artificial tree, you need to be reusing it for at least 10 years. I found a study. I just don't believe this. I found a study that estimated that fake trees are only used four times.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. Yeah, well, I suppose if they're not very good quality, then maybe that stands to reason. But it's one of those things that's only out for a month in a year. So over 10 years, it's not even had a year's worth of use. Do you sort of see what I mean? You know, you box it up, it doesn't get turned on. So you would have thought these things could last a very long time.

James Piper: The trick here is to make sure you're reusing enough times. And in this instance, if you've got an artificial tree, the best thing to do is make sure you're using it ten times over. and if you are choosing to buy a real tree over an artificial one, again, there's things I would look out for. So, M. Is it a tree that's grown in Britain or the uk? If you're in the UK or locally, wherever you are, whichever country you're in, is it FSC certified? Is it organic? Those are the kind of things I would look out for. And actually I found, there's a web website called Grown in Britain where you can find your local.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, that's cool.

James Piper: Christmas trees. Yeah. When I put my details in, it sent me to Westernurt, I assume the arboretum where you can buy Christmas trees, where they grow them. So, yeah, worth having a look on that Grown in Britain website to see where your local tree could come from if you're in the uk, obviously if you're not in the uk, presumably there's an equivalent website, for you to have a look at. I can't list them all. It's impossible. Sorry.

There is a new option to rent a real Christmas tree

To our listener in Germany. I can't. I just can't do it. and obviously there is a new option to rent a real Christmas tree. So as opposed to buying one, and this is becoming quite popular, I think. But they grow a Christmas tree basically in a pot. You then borrow it for the Christmas season, you give it back them, and you just keep doing that for as long as you can. A few of the key things around that, in terms of whether that's a good idea or not, obviously you don't have a tree dying every year. You don't have that waste every year.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's what I should have done, isn't it? You know, rather than putting it out in my garden and hoping for the best.

James Piper: Oh yeah, I do like a rental scheme. I haven't yet engaged with one, but I do think this is a really nice thing. I think it works really well. Did yours just die in the garden?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it just lost its leaves or whatever. You know, I think maybe became pot bound or something. I don't know whether you're supposed to like actually plant it in deep soil and then dig it back up and repot it every year. Yeah. As I say, I'm not that green fingered.

James Piper: Okay. And the trees provide habitats for wildlife in between festivities, which is really nice. And they keep removing carbon dioxide.

Robbie Staniforth: All very important.

James Piper: Yeah. Because they're pot grown. Actually they use less fertiliser. So obviously if you have a row of trees in a field, they're fertilising the whole field. Whereas if it's pot grown, they'll just specify the pot. So, and you'll know where the tree is because you can give it back. You know exactly where it's going to be. and, and how far away from you it is. So I actually really like the rental tree scheme. Yeah, that's kind of all my views on Christmas trees.

Robbie Staniforth: Some options for next year, guys.

James Piper: Yeah, it's a bit late now, isn't it, for this year? Sor. Sor. We should have done this site beginning of December trash talk now. Robbie, you ready to. Do we have chocolate to eat? I don't, I didn't bring any.

Robbie Staniforth: I don't have any chocolate in front of me. No.

James Piper: As you're about to hear in this trash talk, I bought so much of it last night I need to bring it in for the team to eat. But yeah, I

00:25:00

James Piper: bought a lot of chocolate in preparation for this. And you'll be excited to hear the coffee scales came back out.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, brilliant. Oh, that's great news, James.

James Piper: Wouldn't be Christmas without the coffee scales.

Robbie: I was calling these things selection boxes which was not correct terminology

So chocolate we are talking today about. Well, what are we talking about? Robbie, you can help get the wording right because you've gone through this.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I reached out to a few contacts in industry, in chocolatiers, I like to call them nice. and in my email to ask about the research, I was calling these things selection boxes, which was not the correct terminology. We're talking about seasonal assortments. You know, the tins, the Tubs that contain the sweeties. not selection boxes. That'something else entirely but still.

James Piper: So you shouldn't call them sweeties chocolates. They chocol it.

Robbie Staniforth: Its going to get more confusing candies.

James Piper: So the selection boxes are like where you get a full size bar right in a box. And we're not really talking about those. We're going to have many Christmases re keep going. We'll put other stuff in.

Robbie Staniforth: Talk about those next year.

James Piper: Yeah, we might do. I was thinking Christmas jumpers next year maybe just. Yeah, get everyone excited. Yeah, that's why we're not wearing them today. Cause they're not very sustainable either. we are wearing hats though. But that hat you're wearing is about 15 years old.

Robbie Staniforth: Whoa. Okay, I think that's true. Yeah, it's still working well.

James Piper: Yeah, until you take it off and realise how much of it is disintegrated on your head.

We have talked with Cadbury, Nestle and Mars on this project

so we, you might be thinking they can't possibly spend nearly half an hour on tubs of chocolate. Well, settle in, grab your eggnog and prepare yourselves as we do exactly that because honestly, I could talk for hours on this.

Robbie Staniforth: How many sweets are people going to get through? Not sweets, chocolates. Are people going to saying how many chocolates people going to get through while we talk through this.

James Piper: Exactly. So we have pulled out all the stops for this. We have talked with Cadbury, Nestle and Mars. As Rob has alluded to, we've done the impossible, we've united all the brands. So just to be clear, in the UK and abroad, Cadbury are responsible for roses and miniature heroes. Nestle are responsible for Quality street and Mars are responsible for celebrations.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm so glad you did that, James, because I definitely would have got it wrong.

James Piper: So we have four different types of Tubs celebrations, Quality Street, Roses and Heroes. And we have three different companies. Cadbury'sSTLE, and Mars. So we need to say a special thank you to Liz from Mars. I'm calling out Liz first because I feel really guilty because Liz was our first ever email to talk in rubbish.

Robbie Staniforth: O yes, I remember Liz was the.

James Piper: First person to email us when the first episode went out, like 10 minutes after it went out or something. You know, Liz was emailing and she emailed us a load of questions and gave us some really nice feedback and I have still not got around to her questions and I feel so guilty about it. And it's because she is such a packaging professional that what has happened is her questions will form trash talks. They're big questions. It's like, why is oat milk in tetrapack, not bottles? And why is that better for the planet? Like, that is not a rubbish question, that's a trash talk. So, all your questions are lined up for trash talks. And thank you so much because I know you listen every week and we really appreciate it. So thank you and thanks for your comments and emails over the months. we also have to thank Alison and Caitlylin from Nestle. You reached out to Alison, who we both knew very well. I reached out to Caitlylin and latterly.

Robbie Staniforth: Soner too, from Nestle. We got three different responses. Fromley Y.

James Piper: Thank you, Socner. Okay, great. And we reached out to Kelly from Cadbury's, who, are. The company is Mondeleay, isn't it? But Cadbury's is what we all know. So thank you all so much for contributing to this section and just helping us out, making sure we get everything right.

This is the last episode of the year and the next one is in January

So I think we've covered all of the brands, all the tubs and Robbie, this is the last episode of the year. Right. The next one's going to be in January.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure.

James Piper: So it's a great summary episode. We have so much going on when we talk about chocolates. We have tubs made of different material, metal, pl. Plastic, paper. We have small bits of packaging in wrappers, which we talked about in episode one. We have the development of those wrappers from like, plastic to compostable to paper. There's a bit of reuse thrown in with the tins. It's like, this is great. It's such a good summary trash talk as we get to the end of the year.

Robbie Staniforth: It's a microcosm for all of those rubbish issues.

James Piper: Yes. So I think if we start with the outers and work our way in, that's probably the best thing to do. So when we talk about the outer, we talk about the tubs. Right. The tubs typically are, ah, polypropylene plastic. So if you're buying them in plastic, it's going to be polypropylene. And we're going to talk a little bit about that in a second. The metal is a tin. I reached out and asked which metal? And they just said tin. So I'm assuming it's a steel, Steel tin thing. You've then got cardboard, which is the newest initiative. We've talked about that on this podcast, the cardboard from Quality Stream,

00:30:00

James Piper: where they've introduced this carboard, outer, and we'll talk about what we think of that in a second. And then finally A lot of. In fact, all the brands have started doing these plastic refill pouches. So they do a pouch made of flexible plastic that you can use to refill your tubs or tins when they're empty.

Robbie Staniforth: So that's what the refill pouch is. It's actually a pouch to reuse the solid tin you've had knocking around the house for a few years or whatever.

James Piper: Yeah. I think the company's argument is everyone's got a tub from prior years or a tin from prior years lying around. It's like, why buy, why not buy a pouch and just fill it back up again?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And then you can put the pouch in one of these shrinkers.

James Piper: Oh, very good. There you go.

So let's start with the plastic, the polypropylene plastic

So let's start with the plastic, the polypropylene plastic. Now the first thing that I've was actually quite surprised by here because I didn't know this was all these outers. So all these tubs, tins and cardboard have to be food grill.

Robbie Staniforth: Yes. Ye.

James Piper: And that's because the companies are not hermetically sealing the chocolate.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, that's a good word.

James Piper: Yeah. When we talk about hermetic sealing, we talked about it before when we were talking about like the film on a tray. So when you buy.

Robbie Staniforth: O. Yes.

James Piper: You buy meat and it's like you buy bacon and it's got a flexible on top and that flexible is really stuck to the tray that's hermetically sealed. So it's going to, it's going to make sure there's no leakage, there's no contamination coming out of that. There's no point doing that with chocolates because you don't need to, it doesn't.

Robbie Staniforth: Doesn'T need to be airtight.

James Piper: Exactly. It just is not needed. And so it would be absolutely overkill for the chocolates. And it's difficult on a packaging line to seal to that level.

Robbie Staniforth: I mean I've always said it's overkill to hermetically sealed chocolates. James.

James Piper: That is if I had a penny every time I've heard you say that. And but what this means is there's regulatory standards all over the world that if your product is not hermet medical sealed, the next layer of packaging has to be food contact approved.

Robbie Staniforth: because it's possible that it will what, leak out of that packaging?

James Piper: Yeah, basically. And we'll talk about food contact packaging in future. But I mean, basically just think of it as a high standard of packaging. Clean. There's limitations on what you can use in terms of Recycled packaging, you have to be using virgin in certain instances. We'll talk about that in a second. There are facilities in the UK that have developed a process to produce food grade recycled polypropylene. Recycled food grade. PET is easy. We talked about that. You can take a PET bottle, you can recycle it into a new bottle, you can put drink in it. Therefore, that recycled pity is food grade.

Robbie Staniforth: See them all the time in soft drinks and bottled waters. It says made from recycled content. That's recycled, called pe. Exactly.

James Piper: With polypropylene, it's a bit different. So with polypropylene you have to have a very close loop process. So with pet, they're, going, well, this was food grade. So when we recycle it, it can be food grade again. Okay, so that's what they're doing. M. With pet, they take a load of bottles, they go, well, these were food grades, so we'll recycle them. The problem with polypropylene is it's used in so many places and in so many ways. Like you can use polypropylene to make bottles of cleaning fluid or bleach or something. You don't then want to recycle that into something that's food gr.

Robbie Staniforth: so motor oil in a polypropylene tub, you don't want that to suddenly be used for food contact purposes when it gets recycled.

James Piper: Exactly. And the polypropylene in there will take on contamination, it will take on contaminants. It's like a sponge polypropylene. Now, you can clean them, you can extract them, clean them, but that doesn't mean that it could then be used for food grade. So what you have to do is make sure that what you're putting in is food grade plastic so that what you're getting out is also food grade. And to do that you have to keep it separate. And so there's lots of, difficulties around doing that. What is happening over time is AI is improving. In a couple of episodes time, we're going to talk about packaging, tagging, and we'll start talking about AI and how that's improving the waste sector. But what they're actually doing basically is using AI and tagging to sort food grade from non food grade. And that will allow them to go, oh, well, this polypropylene was used as a chocolate tub, therefore it can become a new chocolate tub. Whereas this polypropylene over here was used as a cleaning product, therefore it should not be used in food grade again. So that's what we're moving to this world we're sorting is so much easier. For that reason they have to use virgin polypropylene at the moment because it has to be so just to summarisee, it has to be food grade because the wrappers aren't hemametically sealed. Because it has to be food grade, they're using new polypropylene each time rather than recycle polypropylene. And that is where we will start seeing a difference in the future. As sorting technology gets better, you're more likely to start seeing tubs made of recycled material. But if you're wondering why it's not happening at the moment, that is the reason.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, fine. So you don't see recycled

00:35:00

Robbie Staniforth: content in this tub all the time because it's actually a technical challenge.

Anything that comes into contact with chocolate has to be food grade approved

James Piper: Just touching on food grade quickly. We have this problem also with the wrap around the packaging. If you think about it, when you buy when you buy a chocolate particularly like, I don't know, celebrations, you've got the logo of the, of the chocolate on it and you've got inks and things like that. So you know all of those inks also have to be food grade approved. anything that could come into contact with the chocolate has to be food grade approved. So yeah, it's just an interesting challenge that these guys face that they have to make sure that they're using the correct packaging in order for us for it all be really safe when we come to eat the process. One of the chocolate companies actually mentioned to us that a lot of people reuse their tubs for things like home baking and food storage at home.

Robbie Staniforth: Ye ah, I definitely have done this for sure.

James Piper: Which is really interesting because even if they used hermetically sealed chocolate, they probably still have to do food grade alers because of the way customers use it. So you also have to think of things like that. And this is the problem, I think that people were flagging about the ocado refill scheme that oado were doing both pasta and washing detergent and people might use the washing detergent to store bottle to store like pasta later and that would be a problem. So again you're going to have to be really clear in your labelling. Do not reuse this to put food stuff in.

Robbie Staniforth: And that's why the avcado thing, they had the different aperture, didn't they or something and that was how they made sure that pasta and washing up liquids weren't ye this, you know, cross contaminaination. Sorry, I was using A hand signal there to indicate what I meant. That doesn't really work on a podcast.

James Piper: That's good. You're also wearing Christmas socks, which really doesn't work on a podcast. So I said robbie, you going toa wear something Christmasy? He said ye, I've got my Christmas socks on it.

Robbie Staniforth: The Christmas socks are actually in the bag. I didn't put them on in the.

James Piper: Oh, you're not even wearing them.

Robbie Staniforth: O.

James Piper: Great. so that's plastic.

Metal tins are much easier to talk about food grade than plastic

We'll move on to metal. So metal tins are also used. I mean they're much easier to talk about food grade, easy to recycle. Pretty straightforward there. They're just metals so they're just going to go through the standard metal recycling process. I guess the thing to flag here is, they're really useful for refill and I know in the UK we have John Lewis and John Lewis have this partnership with Quality street where you can go in and pick your own selection of sweets. Right. So you can sayk I didn't know that. Do you not? Oh, and John Lewis, I eat too much chocolate.

Robbie Staniforth: I had no idea about this.

James Piper: They have it in Bristol. They have a Quality street section where you have to pick three sweets but you can just fill the tub just.

Robbie Staniforth: With three toucs, your favourite three. And avoid the odd one that you don't like or whatever.

James Piper: Exactly. And what's good about that is it's cheaper if you bring your old tin, so it's £17 for a new tin. but if you bring your old tin, I think this year it's 14 pounds.

Robbie Staniforth: So you get so 3 qu cheaper if you bring your tin or tub. Okay, that great.

James Piper: So that's the call out on tins. Most of them seem to have moved to plastic. In terms of in store, most of what you see is plastic. You do see some tins but the tins I wanted to talk about are those John Lewis ones.

Robbie Staniforth: Oay.

Robbie Def/ury weighs cardboard tubs from Quality street

James Piper: so let's talk about the cardboard. This is the newest one from Quality street this year. We've talked about this a few times.

Robbie Staniforth: Because we get a big old drama with this one James in 2024 ye.

James Piper: So these cardboard tubs as we've talked about are in 60 stores. Ah, in 60 Tescos'I should say definitely in Bambury. Def/ury and I have to say I'm impressed. I bought a couple of them, I've played around with them. We sent one to Alan who won our prize for episode 15 and they were also Impressed and sent me loads of messages. So this is our Northern Ireland correspondent coming back to us saying they took it apart and literally there was no glue anywhere. You know, that was their main observation, actually. You could just unfold the whole thing and it was just like an origami. It was all concertina to provide the strength. It was very, very impressive.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so I need to get one of these and deconstruct it myself, clearly.

James Piper: Yeah. I have to say, very, very impressed. And again with this, it has to be food grade, which means they couldn't use recycled cardboard. They have to use virgin cardboard for that to be food grade. so again that'that's quite important on this. So that's how you make these things food grade. You generally have to use brand new stuff. That's really the biggest learning in these outers is that they have to be food grade. And that means that it's quite difficult to get recycled content in them.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure. But then they can be recycled into some other non food grade cardboard paper product. What?

James Piper: Yes. And as I said, Robbie, I got the coffee scales out last night. I weighed these things. So the plastic tub, I weighed a celebrations one. I couldn't buy them all because I'd have too much chocolate, but I weighed the celebrations 1. The plastic tub was 118 grammes and the cardboard was 92 grammes. So the Quality street cardboard was 92. So you've got a reduction in weight, which is great. Often when people move to cardboard we actually see an increase in weight compared to plastic. But in this instance, the cardboard was lighter than the plastic, which is great. So 118 for the plastic, 92 for

00:40:00

James Piper: the cardboard. I didn't have a metal tint weigh unfortunately. So, bit of a gap on that one.

The plastic refill pouch is 10 times more lightweight than the tub

but let's talk about the final one which is the plastic refill pouch, because I did have one of those to weigh.

Robbie Staniforth: So this is the soft plastic, flexible plastic pouch.

James Piper: Flexible plastic, yes. It's 12.2 grammes. So it's so light compared to the tub. The tub is 118 grammes, so. So I think 10 times more lightweight. I definitely think it's better in your first year to buy a tub, keep the tub and then in future years to buy the plastic refill pouch.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, keeping those tubs going round and round sounds like it's a viable thing. I mean, this is all news to me. By the way. I had no idea you could refill your existing tub.

James Piper: Yeah, great. There you go.

The celebrations are wrapped in plastic lined foil whereas Roses and Heroes recycle

Okay, so what's in these tubs. So here we have different material. Now there is a fascinating thing here that we did not research because I only did it last night. So we just need, we're going to do an addition on this. I'm going to promise that we've got to reach out to Kelly from Cadbury's to find out the answer to this.

Robbie Staniforth: Ok.

James Piper: But basically we've got slightly different materials. So the celebrations are wrapped in plastic lined foil. And you know, people really like the feel of some of these things. They like the spin as you're opening up the chocolate. So celebrations wrap with that plastic line F that allows them to do that.

Robbie Staniforth: And the noise as well. Isn't it it that?

James Piper: Yeah. And people, I mean Quality street have moved to paper this year in line with this cardboard and people complain all over the place because they like give me more plastic. I like plastic at Christmas which is just bizarre. I mean I think I've been using these qualities. Obviously I've eaten some of these Quality street having got this carpal tint and I think the paper is pretty impressive. So I'm a fan of it. Roses and Heroes are also this plastic lined foil. Now the reason we need to do a bit of research is because Roses and Heroes are both made by Cadbrury and when I popped to a store last night to get some of these to do some weighing, Roses had recycle with carrier bags at store on on their wrappers. Heroes had don't recycle O Now they're made by the same company and I would say they're the same thing in terms of the plastic, they might not be.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so what insert reason now?

James Piper: Well, I don't think we're going to find out before this episode goes out. Oh, okay's an, it's an ed addition for a future episode.

Robbie Staniforth: This is a cliffhanger for an edition.

James Piper: Yeah, we're going to have to reach out to Kelly and find out. Briant so celebrations recycle at store. Roses recycle at store. Heroes don't recycle. Question mark. And then the Quality street paper you can recycle at home. Now in all instances, Robbie these wrappers are small. We talked about small things a lot but in episode one particularly we talked about anything smaller than a tennis ball is difficult to res cycle. So let's talk about all these different things. So with the flexible metal lined plastic which is the first thing, if you're taking that back to supermarkets, that's not going to be a massive issue because you're going to put it in your shrinker that you've just got, but bag that up in a bread bag. So get a bread bag and start filling it with things like these little celebration things. Tie it up and take that back to supermarket. That's quite EAS when it comes to foil. You need to bundle that, up into something bigger than a tennis ball. So I would be adding the foil that came in like a Quality Street. I would put that in with my aluminium foil.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And maybe you can take the foil that you wrap your turkey in, the big old sheet that I'm sure you wrapped over your turkey and put them inside there and scrunch it up into a size of a tennis ball.

James Piper: Very nice, very Christmassy. and then the paper, and this is why I like the Quality street tub so much. The Quality street tub that's made of cardboard. You can just put the paper from the Quality Streets back into that and seal it, as in put the lid back on it and that'hold those together. So that's a really nice example where a company has gone where we're going to make our outer material cardboard the same as our wrapper paper and therefore you can just store one inside the other and that can be sent to the recycler on mass.

Robbie Staniforth: I chatted to a recycler and they confirmed that, yes, it is very likely that that will all be go through the process and be recycled. The papers as well as the cardboard all recycled together. Fantastic. So that was great to hear but surely you're going to cause arguments here, James, aren't you? Empty wrappers back in the tub.

James Piper: I know. And they. Well, we've been putting ours in the.

Robbie Staniforth: Fruit bowl, temporary storage.

James Piper: Our empty raappers have got in the fruit bowl where there is no fruit, there's just orange flavoured chocolate wrappers. And then we're goingna empty the fruit bowl into the tub.

Robbie Staniforth: What a healthy Christmas you've had.

James Piper: J We ve got a new baby. It's just food has gone out the window. if you have a plastic tub of Quality street, then what you can do with those wrappers is put them in like an envelope or something. So again, the key is they're paper wrappers, they can be recycled.

00:45:00

James Piper: Put them in something to make them bigger. So if you've got paper wrappers but you haven't got a, cardboard outer, because you've got the plastic outer, just put the paper wrappers in an envelope or something.

Some of the nation's favourite flavours at Christmas are mint and orange

The chocolatier gave me some Cool facts. And I'll just end with a few of these really cool facts. so mint and orange. Some of the nation's favourite flavours at Christmas are mint and orange and they are the worst in terms of creating smells. So, the chocolateier have to chocolate. The companies have to make sure that the packaging for mint and orange is suitable so that the min and orange aromas don't leak out. Otherwise you'd end up with a chocolate ale that it just smells completely of mint and orangein now, which I'd been well up for, by the way. I think we should feed back to them and say, guys, buy more, make the packaging worse.

Robbie Staniforth: Let's fill the supermarkets from minute orange scent marketing.

James Piper: Yeah, they have to be very careful on the migration of those smells.

Robbie Staniforth: just to be clear, those are two different flavours, aren't they, James? Mint, mint or separately orange. Okay, fine. Mint and orange sounds absolutely vile.

James Piper: Good point. So a lot of chocolate we'd associate with Christmas is only available at Christmas and a lot of these chocolate companies, rather than going, oh, well, I need to be packing these year, you know, I need to change my packing lines. They will use another company to do the packing. And so one of the chocolate companies mentioned to me that they, ship chocolate around the summertime all over the UK so that it can be sent to these packers who can then pack up the chocolates because they don't want to give away the secret recipe. So there is a window of the year around the summertime where our motorways are filled with chocolate tankers that are being sent to make these festive treats.

Robbie Staniforth: Whoa, that's very cool.

James Piper: Yeah, that's nice, isn't it? and then late last night I was just closing out my research on this and I discovered a thing called tub to pub which I hadn't heard of. So Green King. Yeah, Green King actually do a scheme where they will take your old chocolate tubs and if you bring them in, in January 2025 and they've got a website where you can look up which, pubs have taking them, they will send those off to a plastic recycling centre they're shredded and sold on. And the money that's raised from the sale of that recycler is given to M. Mamillian Cancer, charity. So if you wanted to do that, that's a good route for your tubs.

Robbie Staniforth: Great charity scheme. Yeah. So get down to your local Green King pub if you have a quick pint and recycle your tub.

James Piper: Rber.

Robbie Taskmaster tests whether Christmas crackers are recycable

Sure not so I Thought what would be quite good on this rubbish or not is Christmas crackers.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh yeah, okay.

James Piper: Not quite a lot. Quite a lot going on in a Christmas cracker.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Not consciously thought about them before, but actually being an avid recycler, I know it's always one of those things where I'm trying to get people to separate various bits so we can send them off to various ##ious, bins, around the Christmas table.

James Piper: Okay, Robbie, so I'm going to test you with each different part of a Christmas cracker. So let's start with the cracker itself. What do you reckon?

Robbie Staniforth: The outer cracker? It's cardboard. So that is not rubbish.

James Piper: Yeah, recycle. I agree. I think you'd have to be careful with glitter. anything like that, any ribbons, anything on that. And I would also remove those snaps, you know, the things that made the noise. They're not going to create huge amounts of contamination but if they've come out anyway, I just would put those in the bin. But actual alar of the cracker defitely cardboard can be recycled. What about the paper hat, Robbie?

Robbie Staniforth: Well, we've just had a massive argument about that, James.

James Piper: We have. This is a re recordd because we cannot, we genuinely can't decide if the baby is recycable. I think it's quite low quality paper, like tissue paper. So I would treat it more like kitchen rolls. So if my coun council accepted kitchen roll in food waste, I'd be putting it in there and I'd probably put it in the bin. But then if kitchen roll isn't contaminated, that should probably go in the recycling bin. So you're veering towards recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, so because it can be when if you just say rip a paper hat, it kind of rips like a piece of A4 paper and therefore I think it's solid enough to go in the recycling, be recycled again. Whereas toilet tissue or a tissue, when you rip it, it sort of, it kind of shreds up into dust. It isn't a clean rip and I think that's a good test. I don't have any science to back that, up, James, and you wouldn't expect any from me. But that's the reason why I would say that it's not rubbish, you can recycle it.

James Piper: And that's the beauty of podcast that we can cut out with 20 minutes where we've debated that bit of an answer at the end. It's nice. Okay, what about the joke?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, the joke's small, isn't it. I think that's. That could be rubbish. Although if you can collect up enough of them. If you can collect up enough. I mean the piece of paper we'renn.

James Piper: Have to cut again and just do a debate on this because I think it's definitely recycable. It's just papereah. It's like the chocolate wrappers. You just need to.

Robbie Staniforth: Yes.

00:50:00

James Piper: You just need to bundle it up. So I would just be putting that in an envelope, I think.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: No good shape used envelope. Fill it with your chocolate wrappers, your paper chocolate wrappers from Quality street and your jokes from your Christmas crackers. The toy we'ren toa have a long the bay about the toy because it depends, doesn't it? What's it made of?

Robbie Staniforth: Gosh, no. I mean toys almost never are, going to be able to be recycled, certainly if it's plastic.

James Piper: O so cracker. Yes, it's cardboard paper hats probably, but required a 20 minute debate between the two of us. Jokes. Yes. But bundle them up into like an envelope or something so there's lots of them together. Toy probably rubbish. and for that reason we would probably recommend eco friendly or homemade crackers. you can get kits to put crackers together and you can decide your own toys. So that would allow you to be a bit more creative and avoid things that are just like cheap plastic toys that can, that are just going to go into bin.

Robbie Staniforth: One thing my mum does is collects up the toys out of the crackers and then has made them the following year. So use the toys in another year because it's just a little toy you play with for a few minutes at the dinner table or whatever and maybe for a day or two afterwards. And then she collects them back up in a Tupperware box or a baki as she would call it, and then uses them, in future years.

James Piper: Very good. And last year I actually bought the Taskmaster Crackers. so again, this isn't an ad I paid for them, but the Taskmasterack trackers. I love Taskmaster. We've talked about that. They're just like, you pull them and you get given challenges and stuff.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh cool.

James Piper: And they've got different items, all paper based, I think that you can do, challenges with. And so we had loads of fun with that. And then, I just pulled it all up and I. And then at New Year we had a different set of friends over. I just redistributed it. You didn't need to give them the crackers you could just give them the challenges and. And the bits that go with the challenge. So we couldn't play because we'd already done it once, but everyone else who was there for New Year could play. So, I thought that was a really nice idea. So it could be good to find some puzzly type crackers and then go, oh, can I use these for Christmas and New Year? if you've got different friends coming over.

Robbie Staniforth: And anyone who knows me well will understand that I like to reuse jokes. Same ones over and over again.

James Piper: Yes, yes, yes. rub..ubish question.

Scrunch test helps us identify whether wrapping paper is mostly paper or plastic

So the rubbish question. I don't know if anyone's asked us this. It's just a good Christmas question. What is the scrunch test? It's interesting because from a historical perspective, I was trying to work out where the scrunch test came from.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's been around for years, has't it?

James Piper: It's been around for ages. But I thought it came from WRP because it's always on Recycle Now Rap's website. I just assumed it came for them. So I reached out to them to say, did you guys invent the scrunch test? And they said, no one actually knows. We're not sure. So I have no idea where it's come from. But it's a really nice way of working out whether something can be recycled or not. And there are lots of use cases for it. You could actually use it with the chocolate wrappers that we've talked about. But the primary use at Christmas is going to be for wrapping paper. So it helps us identify whether wrapping paper is mostly paper or has plastic in and too much plastic to be recycled. So, Robbie, what is the scrunch test?

Robbie Staniforth: So once you've got the wrapping paper, you've enjoyed your pres. Unfortunately, you can't get it back into a flat sheet and use it again, because that's obviously an option. With wrapping paper, you can scrunch it up into a ball in your hands and, to see whether it rebounds back and sort of explodes back out or whether it stays all scrunched up. And if it stays all scrunched up, that means it'primarily paper and therefore can go in your paper recycling. perhaps you could put your, Christmas jokes inside it and fold it up and put it in your recycling bin. If it re boundce back, that means there's plastic in it. Much more difficult to recycle.

James Piper: Yeah. And that would just go straight in the rubbish bin. So I was going to suggest you cheque it with the wrapping paper from the present I've given you. But actually you've nicely opened that and it would probably ruin it.

Robbie Staniforth: It would. But I am very certain that this would. And stay scrunched. It's just a piece of brown paper. But actually, didn't we have someone writing and give us an idea for an alternative to the scrunch test?

James Piper: I could do well, this was in my, So when I reached out to rap to ask for the history, I actually reached out to Adam, friend of the podcast. Thank you, Adam. And Adam said, look, I personally prefer the tear test. And I was like, I've never heard of this. So if you can tear it with little to no effort, then it's paper and can be recycled. And if it takes a bit of effort, then it's probably got a plastic laminate, so don't recycle it.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. And so this present you gave me, I'll give it a little tear. You probably heard that on the microphone, I hope. And yeah, I can still reuse it, but it's definitely paper.

James Piper: That was like asmr.

Robbie Staniforth: That.

James Piper: That was like a.

Robbie Staniforth: Robbie ripping paper. Robbie ripping

00:55:00

Robbie Staniforth: wrapping, actually.

James Piper: Exactly. And of course you don't have to use wrapping paper. This is the thing I debated. Although we managed to find just some paper wrapping paper, which I thought was good. You, could use gift bags instead of wrapping paper that can be reused. Tote bags, things like that. So. So, just to call out for moving up the waste hierarchy away from using wrapping paper, we could also just be using things that can be reused much easier. Although in our house we reuse all wrapping paper. Yeah, we just open it really nicely.

Robbie Staniforth: Ye, yeah. Got a lovely drawer of flat sheets of what I like to think of as free wrapping paper not spent a penny.

James Piper: Yeah, nice.

If you're listening on box today, please leave us a review

Well, that's the end of our Christmas episode. Wor ho ho ho.

Robbie Staniforth: That was great. What noise does an elf make? Hello, James. That was fantastic.

James Piper: Thank you, little El. It's not the best rolepl play. So, if you're listening to this on box today. God, that means you must really like ususe. That's like you've taken time away from the family. Maybe you've gathered the family around the wireless for the old talking rubish special. Oh, wow, that would be so nice. And if you really like us that much, as in you're listening on Boxing Day, please leave us a review. That's always helpful. Tell all your friends and fact where you will have done. I mean they'll all be round for box that you'll be saying have you heard Talking raubbish. Listen to this.

Robbie Staniforth: The episodes droped.

James Piper: The episodes dropped.

Robbie Staniforth: Santa's been.

James Piper: I mean this is what happens. We release an episode and we get hundreds of listens in the first few minutes and I just think that's amazing. U say thank you so much if your listening this on box day or any time over the festive period. We've had so much fun this year. I can't believe 2020 fours at an end. The next episode is going to be in 2025. That's crazy. And we just really appreciate you all taking the time with us and spending time listening to us talk rubbish. As always, if you want to get hold of us, our social media is at Rubbish poodcast. We can be emailed at talking rubbish poodcastmail.com linktree for any reports we've talked about or links to any of the websites we've talked about are in our show notes. you can WhatsApp us and our WhatsApp details are on Facebook, Instagram and Linktree. I've also put them in the show notes. So basically everything's in the show notes and that's the easiest way to contact us.

Robbie Staniforth: Merry Christmas, folks.

James Piper: Merry Christmas. See you in the new year.

Robbie Staniforth: Bye.

00:57:24