27. Why do we export so much plastic for recycling?

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James Piper: Hello. Welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast delving deep into the world of recycling, discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and one sided stories. In this episode we will discuss how batteries are recycled, get stuck into the data on how much plastic we actually export our, peach pads, rubbish or not. Also find out what a peach pad is and could mixed materials have different UV barcodes on. I'm Jo Piper Orred of the Rubbish Book and I'm joined by Robbie Staniforth, my far from rubbish friend. Hey, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Morning.

James Piper: Do you know what a peach pad is?

Robbie Staniforth: I mean, it sounds unbelievably specific as an item though. I don't know.

James Piper: Okay, well, we'll find out. 40 minutes, I reckon.

Robbie: We set ourselves a goal of getting 100 reviews on iTunes

So, episode 24, we set ourselves the goal of getting a hundred reviews and that would have been three weeks ago because this episode 27, but for us physically it was a week in time between that episode going live and us recording now and we wanted to get to 100 in a week. I had 75 because I'd taken on Apple and you took on Spotify with 84. So I had to get 25 reviews. You only had to get 16. Do you reckon you did it?

Robbie Staniforth: I've got no idea, to be honest.

James Piper: Okay, so as we are recording now, you currently have 98 reviews on Spotify, not meeting the 100 and I got 102 on Apple. O.

Robbie Staniforth: What?

James Piper: Thank you so much, all the Apple listeners. I'm so grateful. He went near the end of this I Promise list. Came back from a nine point deficit. Thank you all so much for the reviews. People have left lovely reviews with words and everything. So it's just absolutely amazing and we're really, really grateful. Thank you so much, Robbie. I've been doing my bit for you on this.

Robbie Staniforth: Really?

James Piper: Yeah. Text my, sister last night, I couldn't remember if she had an Apple phone. And I know she listens every week, so I was like, maybe I can get a review here. So I messaged her saying, have you got an Apple device? Could you leave me a review? That would be really great. And she said, oh, we've only got Android in our house and I'd already reviewed on Spotify a long time ago. and I was like, okay, no worries. And then she said, Nathan, her husband, who is, the glitter guy, you know.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, no, the guy you criticise about the biodegradable glitter.

James Piper: Yeah. I said about the brother in law who'd bought biodegradable glitter and I wasn't impressed. And I said that live on the podcast, he decided to enact his revenge by leaving you a Spotify review last night.

Robbie Staniforth: so his revenge was on you as opposed to the podcast itself. Very good.

James Piper: Well, unless he gave us one star, but I don't think he did.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, brilliant. Oh, okay, so I got one more vote. Maybe I'll be first to 200.

James Piper: Yeah, I did text her and said that is a surefire way for him to get another mention on the podcast.

Reels on Instagram tell people to soak cardboard to get more recycling

So there we go. I had, this message in our Instagram inbox. Right. You're not going to believe this. This is what the message said. And I'm not going to name the personuse I think it's a bit controversial. So the message said, hello, after watching a random reel demonstrating a hack to get more cardboard in your bin, I triumphantly soaked all my boxes with the hose pipe and felt like a champ for maxing out my fortnightly collection. As I squished the soggy boxes in, then I started listening to your podcast. I now realise the error of my ways and will endeavour to keep my recycling dry from now on.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, my God, what were they doing?

James Piper: What is going on on social media that reels are, ah, telling people to soak their cardboard to get more in the be's Crazy.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, well, at least we've got one converted.

James Piper: Yeah, well, it's great, is t. Now, I think if any of you see a reel like that, where you're like, that feels a bit weird. Maybe send it to us and then we can just comment saying, maybe you should listen to this episode of Talking Rubbish.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, yeah, just at Talking Rubbish podcast in and James will be there in a flash saying, no, no, no, no, no.

James Piper: Listen to episode one where Robbie says, keep your cardboard dry.

Robbie Staniforth: it's one of the greatest moments in the podcast.

James Piper: I mean'such a waste of water as well. Like, you're not just, you're not just affecting your recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Getting the hostose pipe out.

James Piper: My goodness. Oh, wow.

Rob explores sustainability of running freezers on Freez this week

Anyway, what else have I noticed? This week I went to a National Trust house. This week we've got some. Oh, yeah.

Robbie Staniforth: You like your visits to those houses? T do.

James Piper: I've become very old. The second I became a father, it was actually one of the, presents I got Ellie was a National Trust membership classic. We, we've become parents. That's what we do now. We have to take our kid to, like, museums and houses, subject, them to it. Anyway, so we went to a National Trust site, with our baby and had a lovely walk around and I couldn't help but notice that in all of the cafes they were running all of their freezers. It was like minus too.

Robbie Staniforth: Ah yeah. Cold free.

James Piper: And they were running their freezers full of ice cream. And I was just thinking who's eating an ice cream know in the middle of winter? And it got me thinking about the sustainability of running these freezers. And yeah, I ended up down a little rabbit hole here of whether this is good

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James Piper: or about. I think maybe we'll do a trash talk in the summer about ice cream. But came across the I got Ono Marshfield Farm who make ice cream. I got on their website and they were saying we don't recommend switching off your freezer. Ah, they're designed to be used constantly. So I guess there must, you know you can actually really damage the freezer by switching them off. So that would mean they'd have to buy a replacement and all the carbon associated with that. So maybe it's good to keep them running over winter. and Unilever, we're actually saying that the emissions from retail ice cream freezers account for 10% of their greenhouse gas footprint. Their value chain. Greenhouse gas. Wow. Isn't that mad? Yeah. And I don't know if you saw this but a. It was maybe a year ago, probably longer actually Unilever announced that it was like grant free access to its patents, to reformulate ice cream so that it can be kept in a warmer freezer.

Robbie Staniforth: I did see this. Yes. Something that they do in the process of making the ice cream that means it doesn't need to be kept at such a low temperature. I did.

James Piper: Yeah. So the industry standards is like minus 18 and you can reformaulate the ingredients to get up to minus 12. Anyway, this is just my observations of the week I observed freezers on. I ended up spending an hour looking into freezers.

Robbie Staniforth: And then as I was your life.

James Piper: I know. And yesterday I was, I was telling Eli, I was saying I'm going to do this thing on Freez. As we were out for lunch and two guys walk past us eating an ice cream. I couldn't believe it. It'coincidence minus three or something. It's like people do eat ice creams in winter. Anyway, there you go.

Robbie Staniforth: And all I've got to add from a previous episode is that you can't recycle the wrapper of a Calypo.

James Piper: Lovely. Thank you Rob. Addition and corrections.

Neil: I think most people don't write into podcasts

So we had. I had a great email from Neil. and I just wanted to thank Neil because Neil put in his email I Don't think I've ever actually written to a podcast before and I just thought, what an honour. What an honour to be his first. Oh, we're the first email and I bet. I think this is happening all the time. By the way, I think most people don't write into podcasts. I certainly listen to lots and lots of them and I've never written into one.

Robbie Staniforth: No, I've got lots of favourites. Never written in. Yeah, fair.

James Piper: Exactly. But recycling is such a. Well, divisive topic. Definitely. And an interesting topic and people love talking about it that I'm convinced. We get lots of people emailing who have never emailed a podcast before. So, thank you, all for doing that and I'm glad everyone is so passionate and enjoying the podcast.

Neil was passionate about Drs. Well, Neil was very passionate about drs

Well, Neil was very passionate about drs, and I guess he was sharing with me that he was a bit. He was really enjoying the podcast. He really enjoyed the voice that we have, as in for the industry. And I said I wasn't the biggest fan of Drs. And he was, like, that's real shame, because I think it's a really important thing.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, he was fuming, wasn t he?

James Piper: I don't think he was angry. I don't know, maybe. But he was. Hopefully will correct some of it now, maybe not. I feel like I'mnna double down on my conversation, so maybe I'm not going to fix things. But, Neil was.

Neil: I wasn't a fan of DRS for lots of reasons

Neil was out on a walk and he wanted to explain how important DRS is. And he, I said I wasn't a fan for lots of reasons. I think it's high cost. You know, at 20p, a container, it can be extremely high cost. It's going to drive people to plastic. I felt like the way they were doing it was because we're doing it on drinks containers, which already have a very high collection and recycling rate and very high collection and recycling it curbside. We're missing the opportunity to introduce DRS for other materials, like takeaway boxes or something else that could be quite interesting for us to kind really ramp up recycling rates on. So it's not that I've got a problem with drs, it's more I've got a problem with how DRS is going to get launched.

Neil says he collected 50 bottles and cans in 10 days walking

well, Neil had been out walking and in 20 minutes he'd filled a large carrier bag. He actually sent me a picture, with bottles and cans just for his walk. And he felt he may be, well, sorry. I counted and I felt he'd probably collected about 50 items. and he wanted to show that he lasted the walk 10 days ago. So know in 10 days this path that he was on, it wasn't a road for vehicles, it was just a walking path. Had collected maybe about 50 bottles and cans in 10 days. and he'd been on another 40 minute loop, another time and filled a bike pann with cans and bottles every day for a week. First thing to say is Neil, you're an absolute hero. We love, we love litter picking on talking raubbish, we love people who do it and so we're super grateful for you for doing that. I guess my concerns in the episode were the cost of this scheme is going to be about 1.8 billion. We're taking material from 75% to 90% collection when there are materials with much lower collection rates like flexible plastic. you've got limitations. If you can't go to a store, it's going to force you to have to go back to a store. And there's some people who can't do that. It will drive towards plastic because you can get more liquid in a single plastic item. So you can replace a number of cans, whatever it is, eight cans with a two lititer bottle. Neil did actually ask if I minded about that because he was like yeah, but the resource of four bottles in my example in this show is much lower than 24 cans. We're going to save that for another trash talk because that's really interesting. I guess my view is just responding to Neil's comments which look, DRS is really important and I've gone littericking

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and look how important it is. My view is that people littering these beautiful country lanes and he shared m me with me like a Google map image. I could see how beautiful it was. Are not going to care about 20p. they will still litter. I believe litter will still happen because people, if you don't care about littering, you probably don't care about kind of taking it back to store and being a good recycler. And 20p in my view is not enough to drive the majority back to store. Maybe it is, but I feel like it isn't. What will happen is more people will be out collecting. Neil will be competing to litterick because if Neil collected 50 in 20 minutes, that's 30 pound an hour, decent wage. Neil could do that as his full time job. The reality is people will be competing. Suddenly everyone's going to be like oh, that's where 20B I want to go out. Letitter picking. So my fear is that littering doesn't change, but what does change is maybe how people collect it. So you might still see litter and I guess littering doesn't change for the takeaway packaging and for other things. So I was minded and we'll talk about this another day but the Madonald's did you see Madonald's were thinking about trialling putting number plates on the bags.

Robbie Staniforth: Did they ever do it?

James Piper: No, I think there were privacy issues. but they were going to print your number plate onto, onto your kind of packaging basically and then if you tossed out of the window they would know which car you were. and I just think that is a great idea. Idea. See the privacy issues but it's a great idea. And you know, I think what you might find is fewer cans and bottles because the reality is more people are collecting them and they're not, they're not on the ground as long. But it's not going to change all the other stuff. It's not going to change the crisp packets and sandwich wrappers and you know, fast food takeaway out, packaging. And that's the problem. It'it's a good thing for drinks containers, it's not a good thing for everything else. And a lot of our litter is not drinks containers. we have curbside, it's convenient, it's used by a lot of people and now we have to walk past those bins to get to a supermarket to go back to the shop. And you've got the carbon associated with driving back to the shop. You've got all sorts of things that need to be thrown into the mix. So if you want to email us as Neil has done and lots of others are, you can get hold of us@talkinruubbishpodcastmail.com we can be found on social media rubbishpodcast. And we've launched our discord, the link of which will be in our show notes rubbish process.

Lead acid batteries paved the way for battery recycling

So we have collected and sorted, our batteries. Robbby, we've got to do one final thing which is how do we actually recycle the things?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, exactly. Right, yeah. So we, we we've, we've gone past the stage of the coin sorter and we've got them into some nice neat piles with different chemistries and the first one to talk about is lead acid batteries because these paved the way for battery recycling. 70% of their volumes, reusable lead. You know, this is useful stuff. And according to the Environmental Protection agency in America. 99% of these are recycled and we've got a similar number in the uk. So these are the things that are starting engines on cars and garages swap them out. I know recently I've been to Halfford's, to have mine changed because it eventually got to the end of its life after a decade or so.

James Piper: And that's why they achieved such a high recycling rate, because the garages take them out and go, well, that's ours and we make money off it. We'll sell it to a recycler.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, and that's the key combination, isn't it? It's not just that there's value in the product itself, but the fact that it's quite easy to get it back to the right place, to get them in the quantity and volume required, to make it financially viable to recycle. So these things are then crushed, to recover the sulfuric acid, you know, that sort of activates the battery inside it. And the, plastic casing that you'll probably be familiar with, it's a big sort of rectangular box, and the metal that's inside and then the lead itself will go off to be melted down in a sort of secondary process and can be used to make things like new batteries. but it's also kind of similar to the steel and aluminium process. You get it back to rae lead, it could be used for other lead products. And then the electrolyte in the bacty, like the sulfuric acid itself, is neutralised using something similar to baking soda and converted into a less harmful, substance.

James Piper: So that's lead acid, which is, a highly recycled item. And then the batteries that we use in our house are, primarily are alkaline batteries. And if you think about it, there are a combination of materials. So you've got bits of plastic in the wrapping, you've got metal, there's some paper. So the first thing they need to do is shred up those batteries. So the first thing that happens is they get shredded down, which separates out, the paper, the plastic of the metal. So once you shred something, obviously all the materials separate up and the plastics and paper are, ah, normally, I think, incinerated for energy. So they tend

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James Piper: not to be recycled. There's not huge quantities, it's quite low, it's tiny.

Robbie Staniforth: It's like fines, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah. So they, they'll just, send that off for incineration, for energy. I'm suspect there are people who do recycle that and they'll extract it using the methods we ve talked about. Air jets, sinkc flow, all sorts of things. The metals are what people are really looking for. and in our household batteries, I believe they're mostly steel so they'll be magnetic and therefore they can use magnets to extract that steel. and the meta will get melted down. The same process that we talked about with aluminium and steel packaging so it get turned into ingots. it'll be exactly the same process for batteries.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And that highlights an interesting thing that actually when you recycle something, so you recycle your battery, it doesn't mean every last element inside that item is going to get recycled. You know, if it's multi material thing, quite often there's something of value in there and it goes and gets recycled, such as the steel in this instance. But also there are rejects through the process. You can't just have 100% of it ending up in a sort of finished product.

James Piper: Yeah, great. That's a really good call out. And once this process is complete, a substance called black mass is left over. Yeah, this stuff, this is the complex bit because it's like what do you do with it? It's basically you just have to imagine a very dark powder, hence it being called black mass. And it basically contains the inside of the battery. So inside the metal is the electrolyte, the zinc magnet, manganese oxides and any other metals that were in there. they're all. Once you start melting it down or once you start shredding it, that will come out as a powder. It can be chemically recycled to recover some of those elements. so you can chemically recycle it and then those can get reused in like the steel industry. So I know black mass for us, when we were doing, when we were doing battery recycling was always quite complicated. But I do think more and more people are recycling this stuff.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. This is the thing that's left over at the end and it's got a few useful bits in. But trying to extract those useful bits is not that easy.

James Piper: Yeah. And as we said with batteries, the main thing is get them recycled. we did a study on this because we were launching a campaign rather with hubbub actually that was called Bring Back Heavy Metal. I just love that title. It was a great one Y and we had all these people dressed in heavy metal gear and it was great.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Look at Bring Back Heavy Metal. It's interesting, it's good.

James Piper: And we did a study on this and it was estimated that 178 million batteries are sat indoors. Indoors IND drawers.

Robbie Staniforth: No, we did a indoors IND drawers. That's quite good.

James Piper: Okay, let's just leave that in. I was about to re record that but I think you know indoor ind draws. Okay. So there's about 178 million batteries indoors indooawers. And we'll all remember that now. And the way we calculated was that was just how many batteries each household could have. And I think it was something like eight batteries per household or yeah's not.

Robbie Staniforth: That many and accumulates. You it adds up.

James Piper: Yeah. And I did have this idea actually that one of the best ways we could collect batteries might be just to do an annual batteries amnesty. Because we all tend to just have a draw full of batteries, don't we? And actually you don't need to recycle them every week. You just sort of need to every year go as part of your spring clean. Go y. Oh, I'll take those to supermarket. So I think if you've got to draw building up right now of batteries, just take them to a store and get them recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Bring out your batteries or bring back heavy metal I should say.

James Piper: And the main thing is don't put them in your general bin. They're likely to. They can cause fires and that can cause huge issues in both recycling plants and trucks. Those stories are becoming more and more prevalent as we get more and more complex batteries.

So make um, sure you're recycling them in the correct way

So make sure you're recycling them in the correct way. Make sure you're taking them back to store and keep emptying those drawers indoors.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, agreed. And my last comment because we're going to move off batteries now is get rechargeable ones.

James Piper: Yeah. Nice. We actually haven't said that at all, have we know?

Robbie Staniforth: Yah.

James Piper: Because I love a rechargeable battery.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, you got to get rechargeable once they are just overall much more environmentally friendly.

James Piper: Trastral. Time to move outdoors. Out Chaws.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that works.

Why do we export so much plastic? Now this is another topic

James Piper: We're leaving the house and we're talking about exports. Why we're leaving the country. Why do we export so much plastic? Now this is another topic.

Robbie Staniforth: This is not a one word answer.

James Piper: This is another topic that I was like we are going to do a lot of trash talks on this and I was writing my notes last night and it was at the point where I was like knee deep in the Basel Convention and I thought I've written too much here. This is going to be about three hours. So I actually literally last night went through deleting so much of this and thinking, right, that's future trest talk. So if you're listening to this and you think why

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James Piper: didn't they talk about the parcel convention, which you might be, just know that it was in the original notes. We've got to keep this to like 25 minutes and sorry. And we'll come back to it and there'll be another trash talk and we'll do why do We Export so Much Plastic? Part two.

Thailand becomes latest country to ban all plastic waste imports

But for now we want to focus on countries that have banned imports of plastic. And the reason this is relevant is because Thailand has just become the latest country to ban all plastic waste imports. So yeah, we're going to talk about Thailand. We're also going to talk about China, who were the biggest country to also do this and we'll talk about the impact that that had on the market.

Robbie Staniforth: This was one of those things where I actually coincidentally. Well was it coincidentally? Maybe it was in the back of my mind, I launched a poll on LinkedIn about this because. Yeah, I did last week. Yeah, no, just totally coincidentally. And I was basically saying I hear phrases like plastic is a globally traded commodity and we have to support other countries in terms of their waste infrastructure. We don't have enough manufacturing in the UK to justify keeping it. So I hear these phrases and I sort of basically the poll was, is it too protectionist to think that we shouldn't be exporting our waste? Like is that just too small minded a policy? And the poll's still live now. So, I think it will have closed by the time this episode goes out. But it's one of those things that I hear all the time like nobody can give a straight answer. There's lots of different opinions about whether we should or shouldn't export any waste whatsoever. And there's very compelling arguments on both sides. But the reality is, as you say, it does happen. And we're going to look at why does it happen.

James Piper: See guys, this is why I had to delete whole sections because I didn't know Robbie was going to suddenly throw in a link to Tim Pole that's not in my notes.

UK uses about 2 million tonnes of plastic a year according to pacflow reports

My goodness. So according to the packflow reports, now the pacflow reports we haven't really talked about. So they are done by a consultancy. Well, they're done by valpac who, are a company we know very well and they have a consultancy, arm and they work in collaboration with RAP and DEFRA to produce these reports. And basically they are reports of how much packaging is Moving through the system, how much recycling is happening, what the likely future looks like, all those kind of things. So they're really useful reports for us. according to those reports, the UK uses about 2 million tonnes of plastic a year. 1.2 million of that is the consumer. Retail side, an 800,000 is non consumer, so that's things like agriculture, construction, commercial. It, includes things like hospitality. So we're just going to focus on that 1.2 million because that's what's relevant to us and our listeners who are consumers. 1.2 million in consumer and retailer.

Robbie Staniforth: It's what people see every day, you know, when they're doing the shopping. Etter.

James Piper: Yeah. So when you break the 1.2 million down further, about 900,000 of it s in the grocery sector and 300,000 tonnes is outside of the grocery sector.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. Groceries are big. I suppose people would know that, recognise that from when they look in their own bin, wouldn't they? It's mostly grocery packaging.

James Piper: Y Exactly. So m the UK starts with 2 million tonnes. 1.2 million that's linked to us as consumers. 900,000 tonnes of that is grocery. 300,000 do is non grocery. And in 2023 we exported 52% of our plastic packaging. and that's all that data is based on consumer. So that's about 600,000 tonnes. So of the 1.2 million it's in the consumer bucket, about 600,000 tonnes of it exported.

Can you guess the top three countries that export plastic waste by weight

So I've got a question for you, Robbie. The answer is in my notes, isn't it? But in white text. I've done something clever today because I was like, I'm not going to be able to remember. So I've put it in white text so you can't see it. So you haven't cheated. You've assured me, Robbie. Can you guess the top three countries that export plastic waste? This is according to CleanHub. So what are the top three countries that export plastic waste by weight? So this isn't like per household or anything, this is just by weight.

Robbie Staniforth: I can't believe you got me with the old white text number. It totally bamboozled me, I'm ashamed to say.

James Piper: It doesn't take much.

Robbie Staniforth: Get one over on me. Invisible, in digital, invisible ink. okay, so I have had chance to at least think about this overnight and I think it's like relatively big countries. It has to be, doesn't it? Because who's the biggest? So I think usa. Okay, Im'm, then gonna go with. I'GONNA go With Germany. I know they do have plastic recycling there, but I Im, m gonna go with Germany. And then finally I'm going to go for an island and I think that's Australia. They don't have the infrastructure there.

James Piper: Interesting. So according to CleanHub, Germany is number one.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, great. Okay. All right. I got one at least.

James Piper: Yeah, 600. I had to get really close to my screen because it's in white font. It's

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James Piper: really hard to read. Germany, number one. 688,000 tonnes exported.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay.

James Piper: Number two, you'll be surprised that the USA does not make this list, by the way. And we'll come on to maybe why that is. I'm not sure actually. But, they're not on this list. So Germany, I think that is a reflection actually of the USA approach to waste, which is limited recycling, lots of landfill.

Robbie Staniforth: Yep. Yeah, no, I should have thought about that actually, because they're probably not bothering to collect it to then have to send it on because they don't have reprocessing plank.

James Piper: Yeah. And when we talked about that Elon Musk, tweet that I talked about Ledin, which said recycling his pointless. I did reflect on it and thought, well, that's because he's looking at it from his US lens, where they just don't collect and recycle in the same way. So Germany, actually one of the biggest recyclers in the world. Obviously we'll have more material collected to send abroad. You know, there's a positive spin on that as well. So Germany, 688,000 tonnes. Number two is Japan.

Robbie Staniforth: Ah, so it was an island.

James Piper: I just pick the wrong one at 606,000 tonnes. And then predictably, because I've already told you that we're 600,000, we are actually third.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, so we're third of the global plastic weight exporters.

James Piper: Correct. According to CleanHub, I believe that's true. Plastic, 52% of our plastic exported. There are lots of materials that have higher export percentages. So lots of our paper and cardboard is exported. It's higher than the plastic one. Aluminium lots is exported. But again, we did talk about that in the aluminium episode, because sometimes it's exported and then brought back into the country as sheets. So it's a bit weird to count that as an export. But that does happen. Lots of US steel was exported. I was quite surprised by this. I thought we did because of Tartar and Selsa. I thought we did a lot of our steel domestically. But when I started looking into the Data. What was actually happening is that data really fluctuated for steel it was particularly high in 2022 and 2023, the amount of exporting. So I think we need to look into this. We need to get on the phone to Tartar, I think to a trash talk on this.

Robbie Staniforth: Absolutelye. No, I'm sure that's increased over time as still works as kind of decreased in the UK in terms of demand for steel and things.

James Piper: Yeah.

What plastic are we actually exporting? If we're exporting 52%

So Robbie, I guess the question is what plastic are we actually exporting? If we're exporting 52% of what we're collecting, what is most likely to go.

Robbie Staniforth: Abroad, it's probably the least viable stuff to turn into something useful in the uk. So I imagine it's probably fair to say it's the lower quality stuff. What do you think?

James Piper: Yeah, I think so. I think ah, if there's a value to it then you can, you know, you don't need to export it. We talked about like flexibles needing to go to countries because they're being manually sorted. Perhaps they end up in countries with lower wages, which then makes it more economical to sort. Whereas if you've got like a clean stream of bottles, for example, PETT bottles, that's really easy to melt down into pellets and recycle. So I just think by the nature of the way the economics works, and we talked about this in episode 13, our flexible plastic episode.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: Lower quality stuff is more likely to be exported.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And it's the similar reason to why lots of clothes manufacturing is in low, wage economies. It's the same economic logic.

James Piper: Yeah. And if we think about like flexibles, there's kind of two types of flexibles. So in the back of store we have films from like supermarkets where they've taken it off the pallet. So you know, Tesco a, ah, Palteri a palte in wrapped in shrink wrap. They'll take that shrink wrap off, that is clean ldpe, clear. It's got a lot of value, good stuff. And then you've got the stuff at the front of the store that we're bringing back, the crisp packets, chocolate wrappers, that's completely different. So if you just take that as an extreme example, the supermarkets will be bundling up all the stuff at the back of the store and sending that for UK recycling because it's high quality, it's clear, clean ldpe. And then the stuff that we're putting in the front of the store they're likely to send off for manual sorting, which means it is more likely to go abroad. So it's a good example where you've got the same material essentially in the same location. One is cleaner than the other, so one is more likely to be exporter than the other.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, I think that's. I mean, it's a generalisation. Of course. You can't say it's complicated, but I think that the broad generalisation is. Right. That lower quality stuff, is exported.

James Piper: Yes.

China was the main destination for UK's plastic waste up to 2017

And when we talk about exports, we can't not talk about China and we can't not. There's too many negatives. We can'tot talk about an operation called National Sword. I mean, just what kind of name is this? National.

Robbie Staniforth: Great name. Yeah. Do you know where that came from? I mean, it's really got aggressive undertones, doesn't it?

James Piper: No, I don't. It starts with Operation Green Fence. I think. So started for Green Fence, which is quite like, you know, garden Y. Makes sense. And then straight into National Sword, which is.

Robbie Staniforth: They had to get tough when they had the next iteration. I remember Operation Green Fence because when I was back in my days war, working

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Robbie Staniforth: with, Ikea, helping them to sell their bales of cardboard and that flexible film at the back of store, we had that Ikea and Leeds when I was working there. I remember the salesperson from one of the waste management companies saying, we've got a massive problem with the price of your bales because of Operation Green Fence and the fact that it was coming and China were no longer accepting our waste. And that sort of meant that the price fell out of what you were going to get for a better of cardboard and a bale of plastic.

James Piper: Interesting. That is interesting. And China, I mean, when National Saw came in, which was 2018, 2017, China was the main destination for UK's plastic waste up to 2017. and I cannot stress enough how much was going there. It was estimated that 95% of plastics from the EU and 70% from the US were going to China.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I mean, it's huge. I mean, they're a huge manufacturing powerhouse. So, you know, they wanted the feedstock, material for manufacturing products, you know, all that, or at least that was the sentiment, before they close their doors, so to speak.

James Piper: Yeah. And people do forget this when we talk about export, like there's no point. well, actually, we'll talk about it in a bit. There is a point, but economically it makes more sense for the material to be recycled in the country where the manufacturing is happening, because you can just recycle it down to a pellet and then put the pellet straight into the manufacturing process. So when we talk about export and recycling, it's not all bad. Where we have this vision of like ending up on a roadside in Turkey or in the Atacama Desert or wherever it's going to end up. We have these, know, visions of big mounds of waste. In the main, you know, people want material because they want to be manufacturing with it and they want to be creating stuff with it. I think we have to remember in all this stuff that economics is driving this and people are not going to take material in unless they think they can do something with it. Now we'll talk a little bit about some of the problems that happen with export and obviously we'll have more episodes on this. But if we start from that point where it's like it's okay to move material around.

China stopped importing plastic waste with contamination levels above 0.05% in January 2018

I think we talked about like green and clear bottles, didn't we? Have we talked about that on the podcast? I think we did. Where, we said the UK uses more clear bottles because of like, we manufacture whiskey in Scotland. we don't make very much wine here, but we drink a lot of wine. So there is this kind of redistribution of like we're bringing in green bottles from France, we're exporting clear bottles in our whiskey and at some point we have to switch them back.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, sure, send us the clear glass, and we'll send off, the green glass. It sort of makes sense.

James Piper: Yes, but that doesn't excuse what is happening with exports. That's just, in principle, it's not all bad. I just wanted to kind of COVID that off so that we don't go into this with all exporting is bad.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, agreed. And when it comes to what is bad, what happened in China was that it wasn't high quality stuff. There was loads of contamination, wasn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, well, they just took so much that people put loads of stuff in. They just sell. Yes, send that to China. Never take anything. And so by the 1st of January 2018, China had actually stopped importing any plastic waste with a contamination level above 0.05%. So what they were saying is if you're sending us PET bottles, 99.95% of that bale has to be pet bottles. Now this, this had been 10%. So in the past you could have had 90% bottles and then 10% of other stuff. Now it had to be 99.95%. I mean, that is essentially closing your doors because once you've got to, 99.95% purity. You're not going to export it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. You can do something with it. the reality is that previously people were thinking, gosh, it's just too hard, given labour costs in the UK to get this any more pure than sort of 90% target material. Let's just send it abroad and let them deal with it. They'll give us a fair price for it and who knows what happens to that 10%, but we don't really care. I think was the mentality, before 2018, for sure.

James Piper: Yeah. And this wasn't just plastic. Paper and cardboard also dropped by a third. Not as drastic CA because it was easier to make sure you didn't have contamination because cardboard'just used as cardboard. But certainly from a plastic perspective, this actually dropped, led to a drop in plastic imports of 99%. So China essentially stopped 99% of their plastic imports, which, when you consider that they were taking 95% of the E.U. s plastics and 70% of the U.S. i mean, I was working in this industry at that time and I remember this just being an absolute nightmare. Suddenly all of these recycller in the UK and in other countries had nowhere to send their way.

Robbie Staniforth: It probably coincided with China, starting to do more domestic collections and recycling themselves and thinking, where we're going to get all this fibre from? Let's get it from ourselves and stop burning

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Robbie Staniforth: so much of it rather than, import it in from these other countries. They probably weren't hand in hand.

James Piper: Yeah. So we ended up with waste backlogs. As countries struggled to find places to send their plastic that they collected and not sorted because it was lower quality stuff. Most of the EU Plastic started moving to places like Turkey, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, which just made things worse because the reality is China had built up this ecosystem. It was so large that it built up an ecosystem of, recyclers that, while not all perfect, had lots of processes in place and lots of things in place. And suddenly other countries saw this opportunity to go, oh, well, we'll take all your waste because we can make some money off it. And that. And all the countries that wanted to offload their waste thought, great, we've got a solution, we'll just send it to these other countries that have opened up. And I found some stats in the Guardian, actually that said 16% of global municipal waste is burnt in the open. So 16% of waste is burnt in a way that is going to cause health issues. and this rises to 40 to 65% in low and middle income countries. Yeah. So they are more likely to take our exported waste. This just is not good for human health in those countries. This is not good if they don, you know, countries were opening up that did not have the capacity to manage what China had been managing and that caused huge problems.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Which is a great moment to shout out Waste Aid. the UK based charity that looks at international projects in these countries to try and improve, their waste management. They're really doing some important work there because we take it for granted over here in the UK that we've even got a bin in our house that gets collected once a week or fortnightly, never mind the recycling on top of it. You know, as you mentioned, some countries just don't even have the concept of waste management. Really.

James Piper: Yeah. So China rec closed its doors. Our, ah, waste didn have a home. It led to increased costs around the world, because, and to an increase in incineration and landfill because companies had to get rid of the surplus waste. It was just building up and so more and more was landfilled and incinerated. but we're eight years on from this policy that China introduced. We're now in a slightly better place, I think.

Turkey was the largest destination for UK waste in 2023 according to Greenpeace

But it would be good just to assess where our waste actually goes. So in the UK, we send 63% of our waste. this is in 2022, which is the latest I have. 63% went to the EU. Turkey was the largest destination for our waste in 2023 they took over 140,000 tonnes. Interestingly, according to Greenpeace Turkey, that's a 60% increase from 2022. So in 2022 we sent 88,000 tonnes. In 2023 we sent 140,000 tonnes. That Turkey figure is not great. And we'll come ono that in a second because that's a huge increase in volume being sent. And arguably it's a country that can't take this much waste. So there's definitely issues with sending that much to Turkey and particularly to the amount that we've increased sending to Turkey, in terms of other places we send to the Netherlands was second with 116,000 tonnes. And I could just quickly go through the top 10. So the top 10 that we send to Turkey, number one, Netherlands, number two, and then it's Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Spain, Vietnam, France, Poland and Italy. So those are the top 10 countries where we send waste to.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, quite a mix actually. Yeah. And lots of EU countries, as you.

James Piper: Mentioned, just to show how Much this can change. I think Hong Kong in 2019 took in 50,000 tonnes. Well, in 2022 that was 310. Wow. As in 310 tonnes? Not thousand, barely anything. Yeah. So the reality is these things do change and countries change and you can see that from that increase in the Turkey figure. So there was a really good report this some. The Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee actually noted in 2022 that large amounts of wasted is exported from the UK abroad ends up being illegally dumped. And with reports of British plastic waste being fat burnt in Turkey, which we've already talked about being an issue now this definitely happens. I, I'm not sure how much I agree with the kind of a. Well, first of all, what does a large amount of our waste mean? It needs more detail than that. I need tonnage. We can't just say emotive statements like that. And I think with all these things we have to remember that the whole point of recycling is to take something and make it worth more at each stage of the chain. So we talked about this. If you take a mixed baray of plastics, it's worth X. If you then separate it out it's worth more. If you then clean it, it's worth more. And then if you pelletize it, it's worth more. Again, no one at any point in that chain wants to burn stuff because there's no money in that. No one wants to landfill stuff, there's no money in that. What they want to be doing is turning it into high quality waste. The problem with exporting is we will typically tend to send, as you said, Robbie, lower quality stuff. So it is more likely to end up going down the burning route.

00:40:00

James Piper: And certainly some of what we send will go down that route. But I do think a lot of it is recycled because, ah, otherwise, why would they take it? They're taking it to make money out of it.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, it's one of those things that really matters, whether it's a cost or a price you get. So if you're exporting something saying, I'll pay you to take this off my hands, there's the temptation for that receiving country to say, yeah, I'll take it off your hands, there's loads I can do with that. When they're actually thinking, I'll just burn the stuff and I'll make some money for taking it off their hands. When it, when economics is flipped and you're saying to someone in a foreign country, you need to pay me for this stuff, then you're right. And your logic is absolutely correct that it's not in anyone's interest to just burn the stuff or hide it because they paid someone and they're not going to make any money out of burning something. So that's really where the tricky sort of economics, between some a, waste being a value and valuable, or actually a cost and a gate fee, as people would say, to dispose of it.

James Piper: Okay. And when we talk about waste exports, we often talk about the oecd, which, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, for those not familiar with it, it's 38 member countries, which actually includes Turkey. seeing as we send so much waste to them, just worth calling them out.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. It's a bit bigger than the eu, isn't it?

James Piper: Ye, yeah. And there's been a lot of discussion about banning exports, particularly of plastic to non OECD countries. But. And I know that's something the EU have started doing, they've started to ban shipments to non OECD countries. But hello, Brexit. I don't think we've mentioned the B word yet on our podcast before. we do still send an/eccd countries. The government put in place this kind of system of prior informed consent, which basically means you're about to ship something out, the other country has to say, yes, we're willing to take it in.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it sort of formalises the process a bit, doesn't it? Yeah.

James Piper: As long as both those things happen. As long as you say, I'm going to send this to this country and the country says, yes, I want it, then you can send it. Definitely better for transparency, but obviously still open to abuse. If you have bad actors on both sides, you know, ultimately they can both agree to it and it doesn't mean very much.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And the pledge on this one, the ban to non oecd, countries came from the prior Conservative government who made it actually quite a long time ago. So when they responded to this, committee, the committee's findings, they sort of said, yeah, our intention is still to go ahead with this ban, but actually it's gone a bit quiet with the change of government. So we'll wait and see whether such a ban, ever comes in. As with all these things, it's complicated. I'm sure there's some non OECD countries who are not just willing to take our waste, but wanting our, resource to do something with it. So they need to kind of make sure that they do it in such a way that doesn't Close down actual genuine recycling that happens in non OECD countries. And again it comes back to this. How protectionist do you want to be with your, your foreign policy when it comes to waste? So the new government will have to weigh that up.

James Piper: Perfect.

Thailand have restricted imports of plastic waste effective from January 2025

Thank you Robby. And you know this is where I've had to delete loads of notes. So we about mislabeling. We could talk about how people get away with this stuff, we could talk about all this thing but I just know we're going to run out of time. So we'll do another episode on how this fraud actually occurs and how people hide you know, lower quality stuff in amongst higher quality stuff to get through customs and things like that. So we'll talk about all of that but just given the basics of kind of where our waste goes, what China did and now what Thailand have done. So yeah Thailand as we said have restrict imports of waste. this is introduced by the Natural Resources an environment ministry and approved by Thailand's cabinet on 3 December 2024 and on 1 January 2025 it's active. The discussions on the ban have began in 2020 so it's been going on for a little while. and they received I think Thailand received about 1 million tonnes, just over 1 million tonnes of plastic between 2018 and 2021. So they have a lot of plus_ic.

Robbie Staniforth: Going to them and that's not just from us, you know that's from all sorts.

James Piper: Oh that's everyone. Yeah, that's how much they've been we're, they're not in our top 10 Thailand and we sen. We don't send huge amounts there. Japan is actually the biggest exporter to Thailand. So it's Japan that is sending a lot of their waste to Thailand. I suspect this ban is actually linked to this failure to agree the plastic waste treaty in Busan which we haven't really talked about. you know they had this

Robbie Staniforth: Global plastic waste treaty that they were trying.

James Piper: Exactly. They were trying to do in South Korea and it would have introduced reductions in plastic production and phasing out certain chemicals and single use plastic products that has failed to reach an agreement which is a real shame because there was some really good stuff in there particularly around the import and export of plastic. so I suspect Thailand are reacting to the fact that that hasn't been agreeing on but we can't keep doing this so we're just going to create our own ban and they fast track that through the country has said they have goals to ban several single use plastics

00:45:00

James Piper: and achieve 100% recycling rate for domestic waste, which would just be incredible. So, you know, I really, really like the scale of their ambition.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, it's great to see that Thailand undertaking it. Seriously. Obviously they've got those. The tourism problems that you kind of hear about in terms of, over tourism and stuff. But in order to keep such a country like, that's beautiful country. We've both been, haven't m we, James? It' 's like amazing. one of the things that they don't want to do is suddenly turn it into a place where, plastic'being dumped, so to speak.

James Piper: Absolutely.

EU introducing new regulation to restrict exports of EU waste to non OECD countries

And when we talk about the future. So just to quickly touch on where we're heading with this, the EU are introducing a new regulation called the Waste Shipments Regulation, and this will restrict exports of EU waste to non OECD countries. and again, similar to the uk, they will only be allowed to the countries in four that it's happening. The difference here is they inform the European Commission and everyone agrees that they are willing to import the waste and demonstrate there. I guess the bit that's being added on is this demonstrating the ability to manage it.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And coming back to what you said about Turkey, you know that massive increase they had from 2022 to 2023, the 60% increase, it's like, did they build 60% more infrastructure to deal with this stuff? Like, it doesn't quite make sense, does it? And that's the bit that the EU are adding.

James Piper: Yeah, that's right. And this applies from 21st May 2027. So we'll continue to cover this. I've promised you, Robbie, that you're going to keep goingill 2027. So we'll cover this live. But, you know. Absolutely, yeah, that's the.

Robbie Staniforth: That will be news soon.

James Piper: Yeah. So hold up for that episode, what, 212 or something. We'll be covering that. So there are rules as well. So that's all always that's coming in there. There are also rules that are specific to plastic, where plastic will be prohibited for a period of time. so again, we'll talk. But that as these things come out, that one's actually in 2026. But just to give you an indication of the steer, lots of countries are moving to this of you can only export waste if the importing country agrees to take it and they can prove they can manage it, which is a big shift from where we've been at the Past where it's like, oh, yeah, we'll take your waste and we won't think about how we're going to manage it. Robbie. I guess the question when we talk about waste Xbox is, and we both ask the same question to each other all the time, should we ban waste exports? Should we just deal with everything domestically?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's quite a blunt instrument, isn't it, to just say ban everything. I think the first port of call is just better cheques with what's actually leaving the country and just tightening up whether this is genuinely stuff that someone else is going to use and turn into a new product, in their manufacturing powerhouse somewhere else in the world. Could even be with within the EU or whatever. and that's the bit that I'm least certain about is what's actually leaving the country and to what degree is it what China would expect, that 99.95%, you know, the real stuff versus what they were getting, which is 90% all right stuff and 10%, you're just hiding a lo of rubbish, literally rubbish, in it. So I think that's sor of my view on it.

James Piper: Yeah, My view is we should ban all exports, I think, of waste. I think there is nothing wrong with the country saying we are going to get to a point where all of our plastic is pelletized in this country. So we say, okay, we'll take in all, ah, our plastic. We pelletize it all. You have now taken it from the lowest value to the highest value. Now then you can export it. So you export it as pellets because what you're exporting is a high value product that you're going to look after and you're not going to want to fall into the ocean or disappear in a river or whatever. And whoever you're sending it to really wants it because they've paid a lot of money for it. So I personally think all countries, if my environmental superpower were you interviewing me, would be that all countries get to a point where they've pelletized their waste before they're allowed to export it because increasing it to that high value will reduce leakage in the system and ultimately.

Robbie Staniforth: In pelletizing that waste. It's not waste, it's not rubbish. It is genuinely resource that's ready to be used for something else.

James Piper: Exactly. So we can technically and legally ban all exports, rubbish or not. Right. To advertise our discord, going to have a discord special across rubbish or not and rubbish question. These are both rubbish or not. And rubbish questions that I have got from our, Discord. So again, have a look at the show notes and make sure you click, that link and register and then you'll be part of that discussion. And we're going to start gathering rubbish or not and rubbish questions from there. So it'd be great to have you in there.

The best thing to do is to remove peach pads before recycling

So we had Rebecca on Discord asking about the lining in food

00:50:00

packaging, otherwise known as the peach pad. Now what this is is if you buy a punnet of like blueberries, for example, sometimes they have that like little pad in the bottomom.

Robbie Staniforth: The pad at the bottom, that's a peach pad. Okay.

James Piper: Called a peach pad. It's not just for peaches.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. okay. And sometimes it's like a little bubbly wrap type thing as well, isn't it? Are they different? The moisture soaker and the.

James Piper: Yeah, sometimes they use a polythene bubble wrap which is just glued to the inside of the, of the punnet. And sometimes they use these black fibre, pads ###s the idea is that they're there to absorb liquid just in case it seeps out of like fruit to meat. because you don't want that going straight into the. You don't want that leaking, when you get it home. they tend to be glued into place to stop people tipping them into. I mean, if you're like cooking with meat, you don't want to be tipping it into the meat.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh yeah, sometimes I've had that happen and then you've got to like peel it off when it's on the top side of the meat that you've just turfed into the pan. Yes. Yeah. No. ###ly a little bit of glue is helpful there actually.

James Piper: So they are technically rubbish. The best thing to do is to remove them, before recycling. However, the recycling process is able to separate them. It'll be part of the washing process. So I guess it's one of those where it's like, it's rubbish, it's not going to be recycled. The best thing for you to do is to remove it. But if you're in a rush and you're like, I can't be bothered to remove it. It's not going to be the end of the world. It will get removed at the recycling facility. So it's just one of those that's a bit like rubbish and not.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, well, I think it's one of those where we wa want toa be honest about it that you're not doing anything nefarious by leaving it in there. But we've got to promote the best, the world's best recyclers. James, washing out your jars, washing out your punnets, pulling out your peach pad. so that's definitely what we would advise overall, would we say it's rubbish.

James Piper: Okay, it's rubbish. Great Rubbish.

Question. Aid was wondering if something is mixed plastic

Question. we had AID on our discord and Aid was wondering if something is mixed plastic. So this is referring to our invisible barcodes.

Robbie Staniforth: O ye.

James Piper: And they were saying if something's mixed plastic, as in it's got different components, to it could each bit have different barcodes that get separated once it's been chopped up. So if you had, let's think of an example what's going to be mixed plastic? So maybe like, if we took like a bottle with a lid, could the lid have one QR code and the bottle have another QR code? I guess is the question.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, sure.

James Piper: But I wonder if he's referring more to composite packaging so like where it's actually stuck together.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. I think that the problem is if it gets chopped up as he mentions, it's going to be so small it's going to be very difficult to read this QR code. The application of the technology is across a much bigger item, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah. So I guess my response to this that's thinking about it is that actually a lot of the barcode stuff is useful for the mirth, which is the sorting part of the process, which is before you've shredded it, there is no real value in the barcode once you've shredded it. So if we think about a bottle, it might have a PET bottle with an HDPE lid. Yes. You could have a barcode on the libance at HTP and you could have a barcode on the bottle that said PE to. But there's no value to it. It's just going to confuse the sorting machinery because it's going to scan both and go, which one is it? Which, where do I put it? So you're always best sorting to the predominant material, which in the bottle would be pet and then you can shred it later down the line and syn float it. But, because the barcodes are being used before any of the shredding happens, I think you're going to want one invisible barcode. Even if the product has multiple types of plastic, you're just going to want to put it on the predominant ma.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And there's such a huge shift to mono materials, making a lid the same material as the bottle as well, isn't there? That. That's the thing. We would encourage that we just have less of these mixed plastics.

James Piper: Absolutely. Great.

Robbie: That was a very detailed episode on exporting. I think it's important to highlight

Thank you so much, Robbie. Thanks for joining. That was, that was a detailed episode. There was a lot, A lot going on in there, but people really like them. I know we've got lots of positive feedback for, like, incineration and this one feels closest to that, sort of. We're just going through a lot of detail about how exporting works.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, the experts are complicated. I just. I think it's one of those things that you really need to shine a light on exactly what's going on to make sure that people understand and certainly that context about, you know, we export a lot of paper and aluminium and other stuff too. It's not just all plastic being dumped somewhere is important to highlight.

James Piper: Yes. And they will be definitely the subjects of future trash talks. Thank you so much, Robbie, for joining. Thank you, everyone, for listening. as we say every week, we love recording these. We love that so many people tune in. If you want to contact us, you can email talking, rubbishpodcast, gmail.comt you can get us on social media, rubbishpodcast, or you can join our discord, the link of which will be in the show notes. We've

00:55:00

James Piper: got all sorts of ways of contacting because everything is in the show notes. Just have a look there. and we look forward to hearing from you. Thanks so much and see you next week. Bye.

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