26. Toxic tableware? The truth about black plastic utensils

Transcript

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James Piper: Hello. Welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth m behind snappy headlines and one sided stories. In this episode, we will explore how batteries are sorted. Ask whether you should be throwing out your black plastic utensils. Is the new Pringles tube rubish or not? And will councils stop collecting cans and bottles when Drs is introduced? I'm James Piper, author of the Rubbish Book and I'm joined by Robbie Staniforth, my far from rubbish friend. Good morning, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Hey, James. How's it going?

James Piper: I was late today. It was flipping freezing out there today. I don't know what I attempted to scooter in this morning. I rent scooters because we record so early. I rent scooters, because Bristol has them and, to get in and it was so cold. And, it was really funny because the QR code that you scanned to unlock the scooter was completely frosted up. So ih to like scratch the ice off o go.

Robbie Staniforth: It's like defrosting your car windscreen instead. You'defrosting a QR code on a scooter. Very sustainable, James.

James Piper: But it made me think as I was scanning it, I had to really scratch off all the frost. And I was thinking back to Alice's episode last week where she said, could they just need 30% of the code to scan?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. Ah, ye.

James Piper: And I was thinking, I wish this could accept 30% because it was absolutely freezing. It's funny how these everyday life events suddenly have turned into. Oh, that was like when we were talking about that on Talking R, everything.

Robbie Staniforth: Reverts back to talking robbish somehow.

James Piper: So often I'm thinking about you, Robbie, in my day to s day life.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm glad to hear it. Glad to hear it.

So today, I think we have a great episode today. Well, it's yet another one where I've glanced over the notes and I don

James Piper: So today, I think we have a great episode today.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, it's yet another one where I've glanced over the notes and I don't quite understand the trash talk.

James Piper: So, yeah, you wor to me as you came in.

Robbie Staniforth: Were.

James Piper: yeah, I have no idea.

Robbie Staniforth: Read it. I did read it, but I just didn't quite understand the thrust of it.

James Piper: Great, okay, well, we'll get into that, but, before that we have a bit of an exciting announcement.

We've been asked to do a Talking Rubbish Live at the NEC

We've been. Yeah, we've been asked by one of the packaging conferences whether we would be keen to do a Talking Rubbish live.

Robbie Staniforth: Which we definitely are.

James Piper: Yeah, it's no Royal Albert hall with the rest is entertainment, but it is the NEC at a trade show.

Robbie Staniforth: Whoa. I mean the NEC. We're performing at the NEC. Come on, let's build this up.

James Piper: Yeah. 6,900 visitors, I noticed on their website today. So do we want to, you know.

Robbie Staniforth: We get a thousand, presumably they'll all be there, will they?

James Piper: Yeah, they'll be given out, queueing up. I reckon it'd be like first come, first seated and the queue will be around the block. Y this is very exciting. We've been asked to do a Talking Rubbish Live. We're going to do it with, Diageio, who are, alcohol manufacturer, but they've become a bit well known because they've developed paper bottles.

Robbie Staniforth: Paper bottles?

James Piper: Yeah. Johnny Walker and Bailey's, I believe. And so we're going to talk about whether it's good to put drinks in paper bottles and all sorts of other things that we can do about. I know there was a discussion about whether we should talk about AI and how they're using that to develop packaging and. Yeah, we haven't really planned what we're going to do yet, but. 12th of February, 12:30 at, ah, the NEC, you and me talking Rubbish Live.

Robbie Staniforth: Amazing. And people will leave saying, that was rubbish.

James Piper: Yeah. So if you want to come, it's free to come. So if you're listening to this thinking, hey, I'd quite like to watch a talk in Rubbish Live. I'm near Birmingham, I'd quite like to see these guys. And you can obviously come and chat to us after. Feel free, register on the website and come along. 12:30 on 12 February, we're going to be doing our first ever, Talking Rubbish Live. And hopefully we'll get a decent recording out of it and we can put it out as an episode. So that's a bit of an unknown because we've never done this before. That's a bit of an unknown. But we'd like to try and release it as an episode.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Got no idea how all that recording software is going to work. We're going to be outside of our comfort zone there, James, a little bit, aren't we?

James Piper: Yeah, we'll make it work.

Robbie saw this plastic can while on holiday in France

And, Robbie, I saw you, were, you were on holiday over the festive period, right. And I saw you were posting all sorts of things on LinkedIn. Do you want to talk us through the, horrors that you saw while you were on holiday?

Robbie Staniforth: Well, I mean, there was one that just stuck out like a sore thumb, so I had to take a picture and put it online and that was this so called can. that was actually made out of Plastic pet. So imagine it. I'll try and explain it. It looks exactly like a can, like a standard soft drinks can, except instead of, ah, aluminium sides, it was completely clear plastic and you could see the liquid inside it. I think it was some sort of a. I mean the liquid didn't look very interesting by the way, it was just clear. but at the top and the bottom it had the normal aluminium sort of seal. So people maybe don't understand, but when an aluminium can is made, there's a rolled sheet of aluminium which is the outer wall and then the top and the bottom which is effectively a sealed on lid. And that's the bit that you crack open with the ring pull. And it's just like, why the heck has someone created this thing? And clearly it's just to differentiate itself on the, on the shelf and look

00:05:00

Robbie Staniforth: novelty, but it renders the whole thing totally unrecyclable. Do I put it in the plastic recycling? Do I put it in the aluminium recycling? Well we don't need a whole, rubbish or not to know that it's just destined to be incinerated or landfilled. So it got to be up there with one of the worst pieces of packaging I've ever seen.

James Piper: Yeah, my French friends will be laughing right now. I know they will because when we first launched this podcast, I visited them in Paris and we went to a, matcha coffee place. And this is what they did. This was their usp. So they filled the plastic can using quotations, the plastic can, with Matcha coffee and then they would screw on the metal lid. We just launched the podcast. So I filmed this and I, my French friend trying to work out which recycling bin to put it in.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh really?

James Piper: So if Saln is happy for me to put this video up, I might I might dig it out of the archives and put it up on social. So if, you want to see that, it'll be on probably Instagram, I suspect rubbish, poodcast. And certainly I'll have a video of them making this can because it is absolutely atrocious. So you feel this wouldn't be recycled even if it went to a merf, got shredded up. They extracted the metal. You just don't think this is a recyclable.

Robbie Staniforth: It's a total nightmare to shred up and then stick the aluminium in one place and plastic in the other. And also there's just no need for it. The beauty of a pet bottle, you know, a regular bottle, is that you can screw the lid back on and it's a use for carbonated drinks when you want to not drink it all in one serving as opposed to the can that you can't reseal, which is great for a single serving of a carbonated drink. So it just totally messes with any pros of either aluminium or plastic drinks, containers.

Waterpar in Tenerife has a reusable cup system

But moving on to more positive news, I must give a shout out to this Waterpar Siam Waterpar in Tenerife. They've got a reusable cup system and it was brilliant to see, where their recycling station was. One of the bins, and I'm now doing the quotation marks for bin, was where you could deposit, your reusable cups. And what that meant was they were using less single use containers. It's an, in a closed environment, obviously, because you're at a waterpark all day and it means you just use the same cup all day and then at the end of the day it gets washed up, used again for the next group. So I was really impressed to see that.

James Piper: Oh, that's amazingitions and corrections. So we had a few additions on Drs, Ian. I was speaking to a podcast promoter yesterday, actually Willbe, because, yeah, people reach out to me and say, oh, we really like what you're doing. We'd like to help your promote. I always like to have calls with these guys to see where I can improve, where we can improve story. And, they said, I really like that you always have this guy Ian on. He said one of your positives is, you know, you've clearly got a community of people who just constantly email you. And I was like, yeah, he'a regular fixture now.

Ian says having fees in legislation makes them difficult to change later on

So, Ian was emailing me about Drs and he was pointing out some really interesting stuff that we hadn't talked about. So we talked about the fact that Drs fees weren't in the legislation. I was surprised by that. You were saying that was true. And he was saying, well, the trouble with if you have them in the legislation is it makes them really difficult to change later on. And so if you want to increase that from 20p to 30p, it's suddenly become a political discussion. And this is. He's flagging. This is what is happened in the US where deposits haven't changed for decades and it's become a bit of a political football. No one wants to change them. And that means they're not rising with inflation and that means they're less meaningful as time goes on.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it gets devalued and who wants to go through a Parliamentary process. So that's definitely a positive, of the legislation in the uk.

James Piper: Yes.

Wales not following England and Scotland on glass policy

And we also had Tom email us last night, actually, who is from Aubo and we've talked about, I think we talked about a you pro before, but they were trade association for the aluminium industry. and he just wanted to flag that. Actually we sort of talked on our podcast as if Wales. I don't know, maybe we gave off the impression that Wales were being difficult by not following England and Scotland. That's not the impression we wanted to give off. But, you know, sometimes we can accidentally fall into that. So Wales not following England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. But actually Tom's view is, hey, Wales have just maintained the original position. The original position was an all in drs. England have backtracked on that and said we don't want to include glass. Wales and Scotland sorry, Scotland has then have to follow as of Northern Ireland and Wales have gone, hey, we're not going to follow. We're going to continue with that original position. So it's a good call out. But actually if we gave an impression that WHLEs are being difficult, we should probably take that back because the reality is Wales are just saying, hey, we're sticking with what was originally planned.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, they want glass in, always have done. And they're just unwilling to move from that position. But we will wait and see because who knows how that's all going to end.

M and S display recycle at large stores on a lot of products

James Piper: So we also had a message on our website from Gedine. Thank you very much for messaging us. And she wanted to highlight the fact that, in M and S they display recycle at large stores on a lot of the products. So they say recycle back at store. And this will be on your flexible plastic. We talked about this a lot on

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James Piper: flexible plastic. It might have the OPRL label, which is the onpack recycling label that says take back to large stores. However, she's observing that they don't often have those bins in their stores. and when she asked staff, they either don't know what they're talking about or what she's talking about, or they take the packaging and say they will put it in a container outside the shop floor. So, you know, her view is she shouldn't have to find a member of staff to hand the packaging to. And so she tends to take the packaging to other supermarkets. And this is, I guess she's saying, well, M and S seem to be virtually signalling they're saying on their packaging that this can be recycled. But actually in their store they don't often have the bins. And this is a really good flag because what I wanted to explain here was actually the OPRL label, which is a label that's on packaging that says tape back to larger stores, is a national label with rules about what kind of packaging it can sit on and it is not linked to a specific store. So the way to have recycle at larger stores on the packaging means that 75% of the public have easy access to a bin. So if you see recycle on a piece of packaging, it means 75% of the public have access to curbyclections. If it says recycle at larger stores, it would be the same thing. 75% of people have access to a larger store to recycle. So you can end up in a situation where a shop has that label on because the label is a national, agreed campaign that goes on the packaging. But the shop might not have any bins because it's actually about can people access a bin? Not can they access a bin in the store where the label is?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And it's exclusive to or unrelated, I should say, to brands and supermarkets and specifics of know, you don't apply it because you've put a load of bins in your store. You apply it because it's a soft plastic that can be collected.

James Piper: Absolutely. And we would say this isn't necessarily a good thing.

Robbie Staniforth: Right.

James Piper: We think supermarkets, if they carry that label, they should also have the bins. So I'm just explaining how this situation can happen. And then my call is actually we should make sure it's happening. And so I think M and S. I am M not up to date. MN S certainly they were a pioneer in this space.

Robbie Staniforth: They were. Ye Yeahah. In terms of trialling it.

James Piper: My first meeting on flexible plastic collection because I helped develop the bins that are in supermarkets. My first meeting was actually at M and S head office and they were the ones leading this conversation. I believe that's still the case. I'm not 100% sure how many stores have their flexible plastic bins in. Certainly they will need to. If we're getting these kind of emails in, it's important that they improve its visibility and improve people's access to it. It's interesting that a company that led the way, definitely led the way, is getting called out. And so, you know, if they're listening, it'd be great to get some email or communication in to say how that could improve and whether we could, share any more information with our listeners around how many bins? How many stores have those bins and whether there's something we're just missing here? As always, if you want to contact us, you can get us on social, which is rubbishpodcast. You can email talking rubbishpodcastmail.com do. And we launched our community of recycling enthusiasts on Discord. So if you want to join our Discord, the link will be in our show notes, and that's where you can contact both me and Robbie. Although I'm yet to see Robbie sign up. I'm going to make him do it after this.

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, how lively is it on there, James?

James Piper: Yeah, it's very lively. We're getting lots of questions. There's a current EPR question outstanding for you, I think. So,

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, I'm clicking Download the app right now. It's downloading. We continue.

James Piper: Perfect. All right, let's continue with the podcast while Robbie sets up his Discord rubbish process.

Robbie Q: How are batteries sorted before going to recycling facilities

So, last week we talked about battery collections, Robbie. And we talked about how stores have to have collection points for batteries. Once they get to the recycling facility, the first thing that needs to happen is they're sorted. So our question today is, how are, batteries sorted? I guess it's important to note when they're put in the container, they're obviously mixed up. You've got your AIPAA's double A's. We talked about the fact that you could put laptop batteries, watch batteries in there. You know, these are different metals, different chemistry types, so they're going to need to get sorted into the right metals and chemistry.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And I mean, they also need to sort by size, by shape, by weight, even, and by the type of metal that's going to come out of them. The first stage is manual sorting, where they run it along a conveyor belt and you have people picking out target batteries. And I've been to these plants before where they basically have, two containers or buckets next to them, or even up to four, and they're pulling out. they become highly specialised jobs pulling out the really valuable batteries because that's what they're trying to target, the ones that they're going to ultimately make the most money out of at the end of it. So, it's a manual sorting process first. This also then removes any rubbish and contamination because unfortunately, in those battery tubs in supermarkets, even though they often have a small aperture, so you can only fit batteries in, even even though they're clear. So it shows that

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Robbie Staniforth: it should just be batteries. You do still get all sorts of other rubbish put in there because people are just thoughtlessly using a bin and they're not thinking about the fact it should only be batteries. And normally they're picking out the very large batteries like power tools and laptops, laptops sort of type batteries, that are kind of bigger than the standard ones. We'd see the AA'THE, AIPAA's, etc.

James Piper: Yeah, great. And then it's on to more automated sorting. So using magnets to take out magnetic metals. So that'll be. Some of the batteries will be zinc, and button cell, certain button cells will be non magnetic. So they'll separate those from any magnetic type. So that's an easy way just to sort your metals, get your zinc extracted, using magnets. Most household batteries that we buy will contain steel and will therefore be magnetic. So most household batteries will be magnetic and those will then be sent for mechanical sorting. And mechanical sorting. You've been to supermarkets, you've seen those Coin Star machines, I'm sure, Robbie, you know the ones where they, it shakes and all the coins go through, go into the slots.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Ah, it's quite fun using these things.

James Piper: There you go. That's battery sorting. So they're basically using a sieve. Because the beauty of batteries is they're all different sizes. So you can just sort them by their sizes by using that kind of technology, putting them through different holes and depending on the hole that it goes through, it's obviously sorting batteries by size. So you'll get things like 9 voltble, a AA, a C'd'all the batteries that you would use at home. M if you think about them, they're all different sizes. They're going to fall through different holes in the sim. I think it's just worth noting in batteries, we have a problem. Okay, so batteries. When it comes to recycling rates, when they were setting up this legislation, they were trying to move from 9% recycling up to 45% recycling. And what happened is the way they calculated that recycling rate is they look at what had been sold and then they looked at what had been recycled and they compared the two and they said, we want 45% recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: And this is of small household batteries, genuine household batteries the average person would be using.

James Piper: Yes, but what happened is that producers, the people who were paying for the recycling, got to self report how many batteries they put on the market. And so what was happening is because they were having to pay the bill, they might Be tempted to say, oh, well, this battery here isn't a household battery, it's an industrial battery, you know, and they might say, oh, this, you power tool battery, for example, is going to be used by the trade, not an individual, even though it's sold in BN Q. Hey, I know that. It just so happens that trade people are buying it. So it's not a household battery. So the people paying for the recycling, the producers were saying, oh, no, I think this is industrial. And the recyclers were, when the batteries got to them, they made money from this legislation if they were recycling household batteries because they could get paid full recycling household batteries. So they would be saying, oh, yeah, I got all these batteries from a construction site, but they're sold in bq, they're a household battery, so I'll recycle them as household. So what was happening is that producers, the people making the batteries and selling the batteries were saying, this isn't household, it's going to trade. And then the recyclers were going, even though this went to trade, it sold in the households or it'households so the 45% recycling rate was hit very quickly. And if you look at the data, it's heavily skewed towards lead acid batteries. Lots of, the evidence of recycling comes from lead acid batteries, which are largely industrial batteries or high percentages industrial batteries. So you will often hear the industry talk about the fact that we've hit this 45%. Or you might not often hear, we often hear the industry talk about they've hit this 45% battery recycling rate. But the complexity around that is that actually that's down a lot of that or some of that will be down to reporting and how that reporting differs. So one of the things the government needs to do, or has tried to do, but needs to do better, is really define what a household battery is. And that will then make sure that everyone has to do the right thing.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, absolutely. Agreed. And it was proved, case in point, one year where more than 100% of those lead acid household batteries were recycled. And it's sort of like, hang on, you can't keep having more than 100% recycled every year. and it continued for multiple years. So it was clear that there was just a mismatch in how they were being classified.

Trash talk about black plastic and why it's so hard to recycle

James Piper: Trash talk. So today's trash talk, we're gonna educate Robbie here because he's read the notes, but he didn't understand them. So we'talk about black plastic and we're asking a question, should you throw out your black plastic utensils will explain why you might be tempted to do so in a second and then why.

Robbie Staniforth: And I've got lots of these. I got lots of these. By the way, I like a black spatula for cooking. So I'm interested to find.

James Piper: I'm exactly the same. I've got non stick pans so can't really use metal, use a plastic one. So this is beautiful

00:20:00

James Piper: because I wanted to do a trash talk and black plastic anyway and why it's so hard to recycle it. But that's like a two minute trash talk. So it was really nice that there was this extra story that I could kind of ring fence this around. and this is our second science reporte. critique. Critique. Yeah. So after the microplastic episode of episode 11 where we talked about are we eating a credit cardare for microplastic? We are back with a fact checking episode because a study has come out saying we should all throw out our plastic utensils so we get an opportunity to dive into that and discuss whether we should. And I promise you this is actually a genuinely interesting story. So let, let's crack on with it and you'll see what I mean. I think it is really, really interesting. So this is from a news report that came out in October 2024 or sorry, I should say it's from a scientific study that came out in October 2024 that was then heavily picked up by news media and was printed everywhere, talked about everywhere about how we should all thr out black plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I remember seeing the headlines at the time.

James Piper: Ye great. And it's increased in our attention and become quite an urgent episode because three weeks ago there was a discussion about how perhaps that report may not be correct. And what we're talking about here is poly brominated diphenyl ethers. So for the rest of this we will call them, BDEs or PBDE. So brominated diethenol ethers. Basically what this is is a flame retardant. So it's a thing that was put into different materials to stop them, catching fire.

Robbie Staniforth: I mean you're using them in the kitchen so it seems like a logical thing to put in there.

James Piper: Well, we'll come on to that in a second so I can tell you, I've read the notes.

Robbie Staniforth: Spoiler.

James Piper: In a second. So, these PDE sory have been linked to cancer and hormonal and development issues. So from a, there are definitely issues with bde. There's no question of that. And, there are unsafe exposure levels and that could cause all sorts of health issues. So in theory, these chemicals can leach out of plastics under heat. So often we will hear, and we'll do more trash talks on this, talk about the fact that plastics can leachh different chemicals under heat. So when you use them in cooking, like if you microwave plastic meals, you know, there's all sorts of studies that show that plastic then leaches into your food. And again, we will talk about that in the future. We're going to focus specifically on BDEs today. So the BDEs were banned in the EU and the US in around 2004. That's when the ban started. My understanding is that China actually only banned them in 2023, so they are still around. But we recognised the health issue back in 2004, EU US banned them and there was a study published in Chemospere which wrote about the toxicity of black plastic and said that cooking with black plastic utensils could meet your daily exposure allowance of the compound. So the theory around the study, the reason it got so much traction, is they said if you use black plastic utensils in your daily cooking, you will be meeting the daily exposure allowance of this compound. Just from those black plastic utensils.

Robbie Staniforth: You can see why that's a headline. Not seriously worrying, isn't it?

James Piper: Of course. So the question is, Robbie, how. I mean, this is like. I'm a big fan of Jonathan Creek, so this is like an O lateral. Let's go more modern. I'm a big fan of the lateral podcast. So the question is, how can a compound that has been been banned since 2004 be in our kitchen utensils today?

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, my utensil I've definitely bought within the last couple of years and I don't think it's been sat on the shelf for 18 years before I bought it, so I'm going to discount that one.

James Piper: this is a genuinely interesting story. So basically what has happened is before, 2004, before they were banned and potentially more recently in places like China, these PDE'sD were used in electronics and they were used in TVS, computers. Any black plastic electronic was likely to contain a bde.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure.

James Piper: We have religiously taken our electronics back to the Civic Community site. We talked about that in the last couple of episodes. We take them off a recycling, they go to be recycled and that black plastic can then be recycled back into a kitchen utensil. So what has been happening is the places that have BDE which are not foods they're electronics, they're tvs, they're computers get recycled, theast gets melted down and they go, oh, we've got some black plastic here that's been melted, let's turn that into a kitchen utensil. And it may contain these materials that have been put into our electronics. Wow, super interesting, right?

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, great that the recycling'really happening. But in this case. Oh no, we're recycling stuff that's got some nasties in from way back when.

James Piper: Exactly. Or more recently if it's China, because obviously lots of this stuff's manufactured in China.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure, yeah.

James Piper: so this happens because it's hard to sort black plastic for recycling.

5% of all packaging going to landfill because it's black

So we'll just quickly do our two minute trash talk,

00:25:00

which is why is it so hard to recycle black plastic? And actually I found an article back in 2018, DS Ah, Smith were reporting three and a half million tonnes of plastic goes to landfill because it's black. And 1 million of that was packaging, which is 5% of all packaging going to landfill because it's black.

Robbie Staniforth: Just because it's black. And yeah, I understand this bit, I do know. And that's because the carbon black can't be red, by near infrared sensors, because it's black, it won't ping the light back, it just sees it as nothing, effectively when it's on the sorting belt.

James Piper: Exactly. So it's using a product called carbon black. Now this is less likely to happen. Now obviously this is a 2018 article that talks about 3.5 million tonnes. It'll be less now because companies are more likely to use detectable pigments, so they use less carbon black. And if they are using carbon black, they'll add something that can be detected. and we talked last week about using invisible barcodes and we talk with Alice about the potential to use this for black plastic. and obviously with AI sorting we could also avoid this. So this will become a much smaller problem in the future. But what has happened is because black plastic is hard to sort and recycle, we lose black plastic from the system. Companies want to make materials or products with recycled plastic so they get it from old electronics. And that's why this has happened, that's why this black plastic has entered the market.

Robbie Staniforth: So the way that black plastic gets sorted when it's packaging is across a bell at high volume and it all gets lost. Whereas when you're getting a TV monitor or a computer monitor, that's black casing, that's easy to just separate and say, here's A whole. Here's a pile of manually pulled apart black casing. Is that what you re think?

James Piper: That's it. That's exactly it. Right now we've scared everyone. Don't throw out your black plastic just yet. We'll talk about it.

Robbie Staniforth: Let's hope they haven't stopped the episode.

James Piper: Now. Please, please continue listening.

A study tested 203 household items for bromine

So the study tested 203 household items. And the way they tested was they tested for bromine because, so a chemical bromine, because obviously brominated diphenl ethers BDE will contain bromine. So they tested 203 items for bromine. They tested 109 kitchen utensils, 36 toys, 30 hair accessories, and 28 pieces of food service packaging. So takeout packaging. of the 203, 87 contained bromine. They then looked at the 20 that had levels of bromine that would suggest they had the compound. So of 203, 20 had enough to say they probably have this compound in. And of those, 17 actually contained BDEs. So of 203 household items, 17 contained BDEs. And the highest levels were found in a takeout sushi tray, a black plastic spoon, and a children's pirate necklace. now I did find a government website that suggested that it couldn't leech through the skin. So I don't think we should be too concerned about the children's pirate necklace. But certainly, you know, the takeout sushi tray and the black plastic spom we'll talk about.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's aon common item in my household as well. Sui goes down very well with my daughter. So I'm really worried now.

James Piper: Okay, let's keep going. So I don't want to make. First thing is I don't want to make light of any of these issues. Same as with the microplastic credit card episode. Look, this is all an issue, right? So, we shouldn't be exposed to chemicals that wouldn't naturally be there anyway. So there are issues, but it is really important that we get this science right. And it's really important that people talk in the right way. And I'll explain why that's the case. So I'm not making light of any of this. I think we just need to talk about the realities and the truth though.

There were some obvious issues with the study released in October

So the study was released. There were some obvious issues. Straight up way. Okay, so let me go through four of the main issues with the study before we talk about what happened in December. So the study released in October, the main issues that I found and, I found a really amazing blog called Evidence and Reason. So thank you so much to the writer of the blog who highlighted some of these issues. So first thing is they tested the transfer of the chemical to oil. So when you're cooking with oil, obviously the chemical could leach into oil. The way they tested it was by placing the utensils in 200 millilitres of boiling oil for 15 minutes. What? Real world, I have never cooked. First of all, I don't deep fry anything. Okay? So even if you deep fry everything at home and you use 200 mills of oil a day, which is, you know, a huge amount of oil you'd be getting for a, you know, over a litre a week, even if you use 200 millilitres of oil a day, do you leave the utensil, the plastic utensil in for 15 minutes or do you just quickly grab the thing out of it with the utensil?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I think no one's doing that because it's just like you'renn you're gonna melt your utensil. Isn't that what everyone would think? Nobody thinks it's that heat prooof that you can leave it in boiling water for 15. Boiling oil, sorry, for fifteening minutes.

James Piper: So there's the first issue and you could leave it, for example, just going back to your boiling water point. Boiling water transfers plastic very differently

00:30:00

James Piper: to boiling oil. So you could actually leave your tensil in 15 minutes of boiling water. You wouldn't experience any of these. So specifically oil, you have to use a lot of it and you have to leave your utensil in for 15 minutes. I don't think many people would eat what was in there if they'd left the utensil in there for 15 minutes. Y so you would probably think.

Robbie Staniforth: Of it as tasting plasticky at the end, wouldn't you? Just logically.

James Piper: So we're not using a real world test here. So that's the first problem. Second, they claim to use the median instead of the mean. When you use the mean for averagesr you get all sorts of weird skus because obviously if you've got some extremes either end, you can massively manipulate results. So they said, well we'll use the median because the median's more accurate. and that is true. The median was coming in at about 103 milligrammes and 1100 is the mean. they actually ended up using the mean. So the medians 103 the means 1, 1100 they ended up using the mean. They said they wouldn't. They said they'd use the median. But when you look at the data, they've definitely used the mean. so that's an issue. You know, they've potentially got 10 times the actual number. By using the wrong average, it inflates.

Robbie Staniforth: How many milligrammes end up, being passed on or transferred. Yeah.

James Piper: Yes. So when the study was published, the press release that they released said that they found the compound in 85% of analysed products.

Robbie Staniforth: Oay.

James Piper: But as I said at the start, they started with 203 products and they whittled it down to 20 that actually contained bromin mean. Yeah. And of those, 17 contained the compound. So what they did was they said 17 of 20 contained the compound, but they didn't say 17 of 203 contain the compound. So they used the wrong number when they were explaining how extreme this was. So a lot of the news stories were like, 85% of your products contain this. That's not true. They analysed 203 and 17 were found. And then the highest amount was actually found in the sushi. ### Now, I don't know about you, but one of the definitions of sushi is not cooked. So again, you said you're worried about your daughter with her, sushi. It's not cooked. The whole problem here is that it's transferred by heat. You're not going to heat that plastic tray. Yeah. You're not going to have any issues.

Robbie Staniforth: So what do I learn here? Don't use my sushi tray as a utensil to put in boiling oil for.

James Piper: 15 minutesre._rect that's the summary of where we've got to so far. All right. But none of these are the big error. Okay. So those are errors.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, wow.

James Piper: None of them are the big error. Okay, you ready for the big error?

Robbie Staniforth: Go on them.

James Piper: Get your calculator out, Robbie. We're going to need it.

Robbie Staniforth: Do I literally need it? Okay. Calculator up.

James Piper: Yeah. Okay, you ready?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

Environmental Protection Agency says daily BDE exposure is 82%

James Piper: So, in all these tests, they estimated that the utensil would transfer 34,700 nanograms of the compound every day. This assumes you deep fry for 15 minutes. So assuming you do all those bad things that we talked about a minute ago, you would transfer potentially 34,700 nanograms of BDE into your oil. The Environmental Protection Agency in the US says the safe level is 7,000 nanograms per kilo of body weight. Okay. So we're allowed a daily BDE exposure of 7,000 nanograms per kilo of body weight. And they used an average body weight of 60 kilos and calculated it, at 42,000, which is why they felt it was dangerous because 4700, which is the amount you could be exposed to when you cook, of 42,000, your daily allowance is 82%. So just by using one utensil with your dinner, you could be exposed to 82% of your daily BDE allowance. Okay, so let's just cheque that. Could you multiply 7,000, which is the number of nanograms per kilo, by 60, which is the amount that the study used as an adult weight? So they said the Average adult weighs.

Robbie Staniforth: 60 kilos, which is pretty light.

James Piper: I would it like compared to me. Yeah. What's 60 times 7,000?

Robbie Staniforth: 420,000.

James Piper: Yes. And this study was published at 42,000. They got the wrong number. They used the wrong zero and they multiplied 60 by 7,000 and got 42,000 and decided that it was an 82% daily exposure. They'd multiplied wrong. And the answer is actually 420,000. So it's actually 8.2%. So even if you cook with black plastic and you leave it in oil for 15 minutes and you do all these bad things and you only ever use black plastic utensils, blah, blah, blah, you still would only get 8.2% of your daily safe limit. And this assumes you deep fry every day and keep it in the bo water, boiling oil for 15 minutes every day. So they published it as 82%. The actual, the correct answer is 8.2%. So again, not trying to make light of this, we shouldn't be taking in these compounds full stop. So, you know, there's definitely an argument for that. But you cannot publish a study where you've said 7,000 multiplied

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James Piper: by 60 is 42,000 and expect everyone to not pull out a calculator and cheque it. So.

Robbie Staniforth: O my God.

James Piper: Very, very odd.

Robbie Staniforth: That is a rudimentary error, isn't it? Someone, when they realise that, is just tearing their hair out.

James Piper: Yes. So they actually, actually admitted this mistake. They published a, retraction and said, look, actually we got it wrong. It should be 422,000. You would think this would cause the authors to go, okay, guys, maybe don't throw out your black plastic. But their retraction said the calculation error does not affect the overall conclusion. It does.

Robbie Staniforth: It does.

James Piper: I'm m really sorry, but it does. Like, if you're saying that you're getting 82% exposure from your black Plastic utensils when you're cooking and you're actually getting 8.2% of what you're allowed every day and you're boiling it in oil for 15 minutes and all those things. I'm sorry, but that does affect the calculation and that does tell me that actually I'm within those safe limits and maybe I shouldn't advise everyone to throw out that black plastic. So I don't agree with that.

Robbie Staniforth: Anyway, well, as we say, you said the caveats at the top. Just like the credit card episode. This is not good stuff. Yes, it is bad, but it is nowhere near as bad as what the headlines made out.

James Piper: Yeah, so let's talk about that.

Question about new Pringles tube that they say is recyclable

So we've had this question quite a few times actually, Robbie. about the new Pringles tube. It was actually, I think it was the first question that was asked on our discord. Oh, was it? Which was hilarious because I'd already planned it for this episode because we talk about it all the time. So Pringles were highlighted as one of the. The worst packaging examples, I would say, certainly.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh yeah. For years I remember people, someone from the Recycling association being on the BBC breakfast sofa talking about Pringles tubes as an example of terrible packaging.

James Piper: It is pretty bad because it contained metal cardboard. You had the plastic lid, you had metal lens, plastic lining. I mean it just very similar to like a tetrapact type thing where you've got loads and loads of materials welded together. A very difficult to recycle. So Pringles, which is owned by Kellogg's, I believe.

Robbie Staniforth: That's right. Y.

James Piper: Although they've got a new name now, haven't they?

Robbie Staniforth: Kea.

James Piper: yeah, but it's KE Kel decided to rebrand this and create a recyclable Pringles tube which is now very out in the wild. I think you're way more likely to see this in the UK than the unrecyclable one. So the question is, is the new Prinkles tube that they say is recyclable, is it actually rec. Recyclable?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Well, this is a. Or not. It's not rubbish and it is recyclable. Yeah, that's great. I spoke to our paper correspondent Jon O as ever to just double confirm this. I mean, we were pretty certain anyway, James, weren't we? that this was recyclable because. And the reason for that is they won awards this year. I think they won an environmental packaging award for best design of the year or something. not this year, actually. Last year in 2024, I should say, and basically what they've done is they've decreased the amount of materials in it. So the tube itself has a cardboard bottom and therefore the whole thing, or the major part of it, I should say, is cardboard and can be recycled in the cardboard recycling, just how you would recycle any other cardboard box. The plastic lid, which has been retained, unfortunately can't be recycled with the cardboard. It's a separate material, but it's also a separate item. so that can be put in the plastic ###c whether it will end up being big enough to get sorted and actually recycled at the end of the day, I'm not totally sure, but I think you would still be putting that plastic in your plastic recycling. just quick side note, I often use them as a temporary lid for a tin of beans. so you can reseal, a single use can of beans or any other, can that you're using. but the one bit that isn't recyclable is the seal. often it's sort of like met. It's papery and a bit metallized underneath. That seal obviously needs to protect the product and make sure air, it doesn't get exposed to air and the crisps all go off. that bit you do have to rip off and just put in the rubbish. So. But I think overall this is a real positive change. It's great that a brand has been in the crosshairs for a piece of bad packaging and got set about the task of changing it to something that's ##l yes.

James Piper: And I was asked whether you should try and remove the metal liner. So just to be clear, you just leave it as it is. This is called composite packaging. When you, join different materials together, it's called composite. And normally what we would say is you take the predominant material. So if you're recycling a sandwich box, for example, it's predominantly cardboard with a plastic liner, you just put it in cardboard. Same with Pringles. It's predominantly cardboard plastic with a metal liner. and so you put that in cardboard, you don't need to remove the metal. The metal makes up less than 10% of the overall tube. Therefore it can be recycled by paper mills. and paper mills will do the work of sorting and extracting those materials.

Robbie Staniforth: It's within their normal tolerance they're used to, not just getting 100%

00:45:00

Robbie Staniforth: cardboard fibres. And that's confirmed by John O at DS Smith. Thanks again, Johnny.

James Piper: And I guess what's interesting here is last week we talked about O. Sorry. Two weeks ago, we talked about glitter, and John O was saying, you know, the metal can cause havoc with food grade car board. The reason glitter metal is different is because it passes through sieves. So this metal will not pass through that sieve. and so it can be extracted much easier. Rubbish question.

The question is, will councils stop collecting bottles and cans?

So we had an email in from Kate. Thank you very much, Kate. And she asked a really good question about Drs that we did not cover on our Drs episode. So this was great.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow.

James Piper: Can so. I know. I love this question because we really had to think about it a bit. Drs comes in, we're all getting used to taking our cans of bottles back to store and claiming back our money. The question is, will councils stop collecting bottles and cans?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So I had a very long conversation yesterday with, Martin at Alupro. We mentioned Alupro earlier there, the Aluminium, trade association, to try and just understand this, because there were lots of options that the government were looking at for it. but really, really the central crux of it is that there's no decision in the legislation about whether, you know, local authorities will be banned from doing it or whether they'll continue. So basically it will ll be up to market forces. And we can't give you a definitive answer, Kate, about what can happen, what will happen, but we'll try our best to predict what is likely to happen. What will happen is the deposit management.

James Piper: Sorry, I have to laugh. You're like, we'll trying best to predict what's going to happen, then go, what will happen will probably happen. I should say, lovely.

Robbie Staniforth: What will probably happen is that the deposit management organisation who will be set up to run this deposit return scheme, will likely set a price that they're willing to pay local authorities for all those containers that don't come back via the more conventional route with a redeemed deposit, taking it back to a reverse vending machine or going back to store. So anything where the deposit hasn't been redeemed and it ends up in a local authority site, that they'll set a price. Local authorities might set up a system to separate these containers in their recycling facilities and say these are beverage containers that are part of the deposit return system, we're going to bail these up separately because we might get a higher price from this deposit management organisation than they would normally get from the sort of open market. But those containers, when the local authorities send it to this deposit management organisation, will need to meet their quality standards. They have to be effectively and in the aluminium example, they must be soft drinks containers that are the right size and definitely once had a deposit on them. They won't accept aerosols in the middle of the bail with the cans, so they'll need to make, the quality standards. And we just very quickly did the maths on this because it'll ultimately come to probably an economic decision about whether local authorities continue to do it or not.

James Piper: I don't think we've ever used a calculator as much as we have in this episode.

Robbie Staniforth: Lots. Lots of calculations.

James Piper: Of calculations, yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: And so, on average there's about 66,000 cans in a tonne, of aluminium. Recycling Sel.

James Piper: Self correcting your, pre. I can't remember what episode where you said hundreds of thousands.

Robbie Staniforth: Hundreds of thousand is not even 100,000, it's 66,000. and this is from Alupro, so they know what they're talking about. And so if you imagine that the deposit level is of 20p, which seems to be a popular number that people think it's going to be, then 66,000 cans at 20p, he pulls up his calculator to get the exact number so that people don't get upset with me. So 66,000 cans, in a tonne at 20p would be £13,200 is how much a tonne of unredeemed deposits. So if you're going back to store and getting those 20 Ps back, a tonne is worth £13,200. That's a lot of money. On average, a tonne of aluminium cans at the moment, just on the open market, nothing to do with, deposits is worth about one to two thousand pounds. The price fluctuates, but you're looking at somewhere like ten times the value. So it's highly likely that this deposit management organisation, they probably won't give them the full £13,200 for all of those cans in a tonne, but it will be somewhere between the one to two grand and the £13,000 that they'll give. And that might well be enough to tempt local authorities to continue to collect, for example, cans. The maths for plastic bottles might be somewhat different, but I reckon cans. It's possible and probable

00:50:00

Robbie Staniforth: that local authorities will continue to collect them.

James Piper: Yeah, well, the maths for plastic bottles will probably make the plastic bottles even better because what a tonne of plastic bottles is like, worth nothing, 300, 400 quid. and you'll get a lot in a bay in a tonne, because they're lightweight, but they're not as light as Al. I bet it's pretty similar anyway. Super interesting. Thank you, Robbie. So, yeah, I mean, DRS completely changes the economics of bottles and cans. It makes them worth so much more. And obviously local authorities will be expecting some of that return back to them should they continue collecting them. The reality is, if you put them out in your bin weekly, someone's going to walk up and down, take them out of your bin, because that's very. They're worth 20p. So someone's going to be, you know, who wants those deposits, will walk up and down your street taking them out of your bin, putting them in a bag and taking them back to store. So, I mean, I just think it's unlikely they're going to end up back of a local authority. What this means is local authorities will have quite a lot of space on their trucks. If you think about, you know, your weekly collection, they're going to keep doing that, or fortnightly collection, they'll keep doing that, but they're not going to be collecting up cans and bottles, so they're going to have space. So I actually think a DRS gives huge opportunity to local authorities to, increase things like textiles collections, battery collections, the kind of things we're talking about in this podcast. I think they could start collecting all those materials because they're going to have space. And so that's one of the exciting things that comes out of DRS that we can go, okay, well, if you're not collecting cans of bottles, what are you going to collect? Lovely.

Robbie: Thank you all so much for listening to Rubbish podcast

Thank you very much, Robbie. I really enjoyed today. I love. Sorry if I taught loads. I just carried on going on that black plastic thing.

Robbie Staniforth: It was so interesting.

James Piper: I m see you were compelled. I was watching was?eah just interacting, telling you a story. I loved it. Thank you all so much for listening. It really. It means the world to us. We just, we continue to grow the podcast, we continue to love doing it, and we will keep doing it, and we will keep doing all these different types of episodes that we enjoy. And this one, you know, I really like these. Go through the scientific reports and see what we can find. So we'll keep an eye out for more stories that are worth telling you about. If you do get a moment to review us, we'd really appreciate it. reviews on Spotify and Apple make a huge difference to how people find us. So thank you so much. If you've taken the time to do that and if you have an opportunity to and haven't already, we would be really grateful. Make sure you follow us on socials where we're at Rubbish podcast and join our Discord. The link will be in our show notes, top of our show notes. You can also find all the reports and anything we talked about in our link tree, which might be more important this week with all the things we talked about. So have a look at our link tree if you want to understand all the things we're talking about. And there'll be a link to all of our socials in our link tree as well. So no excuse. Loads of ways to find us. Absolutely, yes. And we love chatting to you said please reach out to us. We absolutely love it. And as this podcast promoter said, that is one of the things they are very impressed that we are doing, communicating with our community, building our community and just having loads of fun with it. So we want to keep doing that and we can only do that if you write in and talk to us. So thank you.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, thanks for all those questions.

James Piper: They're brilliant, Robert. You'll start seeing them. You'll be on Discord.

Robbie Staniforth: Absolly.

James Piper: You'll get involved. This is great. Thank you everyone. We will see you next week. Bye.

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