34. Cups, coatings, and confusion - why your coffee cup isn’t recycled

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James Piper: hello, welcome to Talking Rubbish, your weekly podcast, helving deep s into the world of recycling and discussing retriuth behind snappy headlines at One Sided Stories. In this episode, we will discuss how light bulbs are recycled, why coffee cups are not that easy to recycle, our hot water bottles, rubbish or not. And does mixing waste when it's collected a factoryycling? I'm Joe's Piper, all for the rubbish book. And I'm joined by Robby Stanenorff, my far from rubbish friend. Morning, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Hey, James.

James Piper: How are you doing today?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, very good, thanks. Very good. Out in the sunshine here still.

James Piper: Yeah, lovely, yeah. You text me this morning saying, I'm just back from surfing, I'm ready to record.

Robbie Staniforth: And was I ready to record?

James Piper: No.

Robbie Staniforth: There'S been a little bit of, setup problems this morning, but we're here now, looking forward to it.

South Africa has a bottle deposit scheme for large glass bottles only

James Piper: Any learnings from South Africa this week?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, lots going on. there was something about. They do have a bottle deposit scheme for glass bottles only, like large, you know, sort of 750 mill bottles. But, yeah, I was learning all about that earlier this week. A, two rand deposit, that's about 10p that you can redeem when you get a new crate of beer bottles.

James Piper: Bottle scheme for large deposit. It's interesting, isn't it? Because I was thinking about DRS a lot this week, as I do. and I was thinking, I wonder why it's in larger format bottles. Because obviously one of the good things about DRS is it is great for on the go. So, you know, a 500 millilitre bottle, 330 millilitre can makes loads of sense. Two litre bottle, much more likely to be drunk at home. So what's the logic behind focusing on a larger format bottle?

Robbie Staniforth: So they're trying to target the consumer who keeps like a 24 pack of beer at home and has people around for a bry, or as they call it here, or barbecue. And they're trying to say, well, those don't need to be single. Use bottles that are collected at the curbside and then go off to be recycled. You can actually. It's like a crate of 12 of the 750mil bottles that you keep in stock at home, you use over quite a long period of time. And then when you're ready, you go back to the supermarket with your empty crate and get the new ones. So they're not really targeting on the go recycling and on the go consumption. They're deliberately targeting people who are using stuff at home and so they have great infrastructure, lots of space here in many of the houses in South Africa, to store things. So that's why they're going for it.

James Piper: Okay, great, thank you.

Boots have expanded their blister pack recycling scheme to 800 stores

and back here in the uk, we've had the expansion of the Boots blister pack recycling schemes. So I just wanted to mention that this is a recycling scheme for all medicine and vitamin blister packaging. It's been expanded basically to 800 stores in Boots. So I know we talked about this in a previous episode. We talked about how to recycle a blister pack. We said take it back to either a Superrug pharmacy or a Boots. It's great to see that Boots have expanded this to most, of their network. I suspect 800 stores. It's incredible.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, funny you mentioned it. I had a headache yesterday and I deliberately avoided buying a ballistic pack over here and bought a small pet bottle, like White Pet bottle. But now thinking about it, the bottle was so small, it probably, even though it's hard plastic and easier to recycle, it probably still doesn't make it through the process, if we're honest.

James Piper: Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? I wonder what you could do with it to make it bigger. It's slightly harder to put it in a pet bottle or something, isn't it? Yeah, there must be.

Robbie Staniforth: And they have to dole out small portions of paracetamol. Obviously they dont want to be giving you a 200 pack of paracetamol. So this boot scheme sounds like a good thing.

James Piper: Yeah, it's excellent. And so customers are rewarded with 100 boots Vantage card points each time they deposit five blister packs. I guess this is the slight frustration that they've sort of linked into their loyalty scheme, which makes sense, but is extremely complicated because they're giving away points. What you've got to do is download the Boots app. You've got to take a photo of your five blister packs 24 hours before you go to the store. Then someone approves that and says, yes, these are five blister packs. And they send you a QR code and then you can scan that QR code. It's like, that's a lot. You know, we talk about, when I went up to borrow cup in Glasgow, we timed how long it took us to return a cup and I think it was something like 57 seconds. And we were thinking it's probably just a little bit too long. And I think 24 hours is definitely my limit.

Robbie Staniforth: Absolutely, yeah. No it needs to be sort of seamless, doesn't it? And frictionless.

James Piper: But the amazing thing aboutu is they've expanded it following customers, taking part in a pilot, and the pilot was in London and the southeast, and they actually had 170,000 customers sign up to that. So I think this will be widely used. That is a huge quantity of people, signing up and we know that kind of people like getting those rewards. So I'm sure people go through that extra effort. But it's just

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James Piper: interesting that the time it takes to reclaim a reward and reclaim a deposit is actually really important.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, it's very true.

James Piper: And then, the blister packs, they get sent off to NY group or my group, I'm not sure how they pronounce it, and they get turned m back into like playground equipment and furniture. So that's what happens to those blister packs. The foil comes off, gets, recycled straight away because that's pretty straightforward. It's metal and the plastic becomes playground equipment, furniture, things like that, plant pots, all those kind of things. So, yeah, generally quite good, I think. I don't know. I agree with you. I think if I was. If I had the choice between a blister pack and a bottle, I think I. It's difficult, isn't it? I actually don't know which one. I do because the blister pack is so much lighter. So it goes back to our pouches versus tub discussion. The blister pack will be a lot lighter than the bottle and now it's got a root for recycling. would probably pick that over a smaller bottle that I thought might not get recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, I think you're probably right. And obviously there's the old school glass bottle, isn't there, that one could go back to and that's probably quite likely to be recycled, but then a lot heavier and probably will make the product itself more expensive. So, yeah, I think this is a great step and just goes to show that even really technically difficult things to recycle, if you put the right scheme in place and you have outlets and reprocessors that can do something with it, things can change over time. 20 years ago this would have seemed crazy that you were recycling blister packs, but now it's become more of a reality in the ukl yes.

James Piper: Now whether it's economical is a different conversation. I suspect this is costing boots quite a lot of money to put in. And, you know, for them, this is a big increase in customer loyalty and obviously something customers really Want and demanding, which is great, but I suspect this is not economically viable, even at this scale because we know it costs a lot to transport these blister packs around and get them recycled. So, yeah, a great example of it being able to be done and a great initiative by a retailer, but I suspected is not because it makes financial sense.

Additions and corrections to today's edition of Inod

Additions and corrections. So we're going a bit, bit heavy on today's edition and correction, that's not like us.

Robbie Staniforth: James.

James Piper: We do you like a bin? Yes, I think I mentioned last week we had to bump a fewitionss and corrections and so I apologise to Clloe about her bin colours. So we're going to talk about bins today. Yeah, we said Inod episode 29 when we talked about bins going to monthly collections, that one of the frustrations I had when I looked at council'websites was some recycling bins were black and some general bins were green or other colours. And I was like, oh, yeah, why would you do this?

Robbie Staniforth: I know, it's so confusing, isn't it? Don't they have purple bins in, Merseyside, in like Liverpool area as well? I remember seeing those when I visited my sister at university many years ago and I just thought, all these colours'so confusing.

James Piper: Okay, yeah, so there's lots and lots going on here. But basically Chloe wrote in because I think she's based in north, Hertfordshire. So North Hertfordshire, when they moved from curbside sort to comm mingle. So before they had lots of bins they were doing curbside sort, they moved to comm mingle. So everything in one bin and what they did was they told everyone to start using their old general waste bin as their recycling bin.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh God, that sounds bound to cause confusion.

James Piper: Yeah, and it's because of the size. So the old general waste bin was 240 lress. And so what they did was they delivered everyone a new 180 lititer bin.

Robbie Staniforth: Smaller bin.

James Piper: The smaller bin and they said, hey, the smaller bin is now your general bin and your, ah, larger bin that was your general bin is now your recycling bin.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay. So you can see why they did it to try and like restrict the volume for the residual waste and have the bigger bin for more recycling to encourage them to put more in the recycling bin.

James Piper: Yeah, restrict the volume and not have to make a load of new bins. So I can sort of understand now why councils have gone to different colours because as they've evolved their service they've kind of gone, we, well, keep your old bin, and that's a big one. So use that for recycling and we'll give you a new smaller one. So that makes sense.

Robbie Staniforth: Much better than scrapping bins.

James Piper: Yes, absolutely.

Bristol council have gone from three weekly bins to four weekly

So, speaking of bin volumes, I actually had Paul messaged me on LinkedIn who was saying, you know, in response to our episode where we said we'd probably recommend Bristol canc to go three weekly and he said, come on, guys, let's go four weekly. Why are you not pushing to be more ambitious?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, good on him.

James Piper: And actually one of the things that I didn't say in the episode because we just were running out of time, so I didn't say it was, actually about the size of the bin. So in Bristol we actually have, ah, a 180 litre general bin, which is quite small. And so if you were to reduce that to four weekly, that would mean we technically had available to us 45 lres a week. So 180 divided by four. When you look at Wales, who have gone to four weekly with some of their councils, the smallest amount in Wales is 60 litress per week. So whenever they do a four weekly in Wales, it's actually on a 240 litre bin, not a 180 lititer bin.

Robbie Staniforth: So you need

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Robbie Staniforth: a bin to collect it less regularly.

James Piper: Exactly. And I'm sort of with Bristol. Well, I don't know if Bristol have said this, but if Bristol felt this, I would be supporting them that it's not right to send residents brand new bins.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, agree.

James Piper: Best for them to keep the old bins bins than to do a slightly more frequent collection, I think, than create the carbon of swapping out all these bins.

Robbie Staniforth: Geez, we like bins. How many times have we said bins so far in this fcast?

James Piper: If anyone's playing the, bin drinking game, I apolog.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, gosh, yeah. pause now and have a good night's sleep.

We'd like to thank our sponsor Eco Suretyty for supporting rubbish podcast

James Piper: We'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Eco Suretyty, who are on a mission to rid the world of unnecessary packaging. They help brands navigate the tricky world of extended produce responsibility. But that is not all. They also collaborate on incredible recycling projects and consumer awareness campaigns, which is why they've offered to support our, podcast. So if you're an organisation looking to make smarter packaging choices, check them out@ecourtyty.com do. And if I could just take a moment to remind you guys how to get in contact with us. So Discord is proving to be a really amazing way of us all staying in contact. For those who haven't used Discord, it's super simple. It's just, I don't know, like a forum. How would you describe it? Robie?

Robbie Staniforth: I would describe it as a discussion board and I would agree that it's so simple even I'm m using it. So all you need to do is just click onto the link and create yourself a profile and then you can contribute to all of those discussions. In some ways it's like easier than other social media. If I'm onest TikTok and Instagram and things, it's just posting messages.

James Piper: Great, perfect. And if you are on Instagram or TikTok and you'd rather do that and you can follow us at rubbishpodcast, maybe do both, that'd be great. You could email us@talking rubbishpdcastmail.com and everything we discuss is in our link tree which is in our show notes and everything we've discussed in terms of socials discord, everything like that. All the links can be found in our show notes so if you need to find anything, have a look there.

Robbie focuses on fluorescent light bulbs because they can be quite hazardous

Rubbish process so how are light bulbs we recycled last week, we collected them and Robbie, I'm intrigued.

Robbie Staniforth: I promise you you are going to enjoy this because I'm going to focus on fluorescent light bulbs. So these are the tubes that you get in your garage and things and also the compact fluorescent ones. You know those energy saving light bulbs so called that lots of people switched out from incandescen to in the sort of nties in the UK late 90s and nugties is when they came out. And the reason I'm focusing on those is because they're the most specialist and complicated and can be quite hazardous. So this process basically is those fluorescent light bulbs in and mercury glass and aluminium out at the end of the process. I spent way too long yesterday evening watching videos about this process just to polish up on exactly how it works and to try and know there's lots of different processes but this is like a generalisation. So the first thing to say is that some of those bulbs are safety bulbs. so they have a like plastic coating around the cl compact fluorescent tube just in case it smashes so that shards of glass don't go anywhere. And what happens in the process is if you do have any of these before it goes through the long kind of process of extracting the mercury, these are stripped off using a specialist machine so that the plastic is separated right from the beginning. Those then go through with all the rest of the bulbs, the compact fluorescent tubes and the ones in the home. And what happens is they get fed through a process that's under negative air pressure. That means the whole thing operates in a vacuum. And the reason for that is that there's mercury vapour that needs to be captured. And it's vital for the safety of the workers and ensuring that all of the precious mercury is recovered, that it all happens in a vacuum. And obviously their safety is paramount. And it seems like the air quality is tested several times a day, it's monitored by environmental agencies. So it's kind of a win win for safety of workers and also the efficiency of the output to have this all operate in a vacuum. And basically the whole process happens behind screens and metal chambers for obvious safety reasons, smashing of glass and things. So it isn't much of a spectator sport, to be honest. it all happens behind kind of closed doors. But essentially these bulbs, they get fed in on a conveyor and crusted into uniform shards. And then they go into a trommel, which I learned that the Americans call a tumblet, this washing machine type drum. And that drum acts as both a sifter and a glass polisher. So when the bulbs go in, they're all, I think you can probably imagine the,

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Robbie Staniforth: like, milky colour on the outside of the glass bulb. Well, what happens is when they go through this trommel, they get sifted and the glass gets polished. And of course, this vacuum system is capturing all of the dust which contains the mercury and sucking it out of the process. And what's left is a mix of clear glass and this cloudy coating has all disappeared and the aluminium end caps. And so the glass goes off for kind of regular recycling into glass products. Unlikely to be food contact applications, but other glass recycling, recycled glass applications, and of course, things like, aggregate, road aggregate and stuff like that. And then the aluminium end caps are sorted using a magnet. And I can see you on the edge of your seat, James, saying, but we learned, Robbie, that aluminium end caps and aluminium in general, is not magnetic. Am I right?

James Piper: Yeah, that's it. I mean, aluminium is sorted using eddy currents, right? They push it away rather than, rather than using a magnet to attract it, like with steel.

Robbie Staniforth: Well, remember, James, you're absolutely right. But these aluminium end caps also have conducting prongs on them which are made of magnetic metal. So it's that, that they use rather than the more complicated process of setting up an eddy current, they just use magnetism because it's a lot easier, to pull those out. And Those end caps, they literally go through as mixed metals. Just like, say bottle caps that you get from the glass sorting process of a glass bottle. They go off and be processed as mixed metals, smelted, et cetera, and extracted. So that's what happens to the glass, the aluminium, obviously, this vacuumed out powders that go through this, air filtration, it's like a closed loop carbon air filtration system and it collects as powder in metal tubs. And this is where that very precious and potentially hazardous mercury is. And it's contained in like a phosphor powder that basically looks like talcum powder. And so what happens then is this powder gets, placed into trays and put through a mercury purification process, which is like a big furnace or oven that heats it to 500 plus degrees, which is warm enough and hot enough, I should say. It's not just warm hot enough to vaporise the mercury into a gas, which then gets collected through yet another vacuum tube where water's added to cool it before it ends up in a big vat of water and mercury. And because mercury is 13 times more dense, it actually just sinks to the bottom of the tank and then there's a tap that you can open up and the pure mercury just comes out at the bottom and then gets bottled up and used, in new processes such as things like in thermometers, et cetera, where mercury is used. And I suppose, why bother doing any of this process? Well, on the one hand, mercury is very precious. On the other hand, it's very toxic to humans. It damages the nervous system. I think in America they recommend you onlyat one tin of tuna a day because of the potential hazard of m mercury contained within tuna. So it just shows we don't want this getting into the food chain. And so if you're throwing light bulbs away and not putting them into the right place, it increases the risk that mercury ends up in the food chain. So please, as we mentioned in the last episode, make sure you dispose of them responsibly, take them back to an electrical retailer where it's most likely that it will then be passed on and go through this process.

James Piper: Okay. And presumably, I mean, you've basically described the most hazardous light bulbs. Presumably other light bulbs that are less hazardous go through a similar process, but it's a bit more straightforward. It's smashing up the glass, taking the glass out, taking out the metal.

Robbie Staniforth: It's much more similar to just processing. Other electronic equipment, like an LED bulb is very similar in processing to what you would do with mixed electronical equipment, you know, smash it up, separate the glass, the plastic and the little bit of circuitry which is where the precious metals, not mercury but other precure as metals live. So it's a much more simple process than this potentially highly hazardous one that requires lots of technical equipment.

James Piper: Trash talk.

Robbie Staniforth: Why the jazz hands, James? That was weird.

James Piper: Well there you go. This is how I'mnn do it from now on. On Discord we had someone messaging saying they were moaning their six year old's mum that every time they got into the car. Fred again plays every time because they have a shared Spotify account. And she replied well it's better than your podcast that you listen to at one and a half time speed. Apparently this guy's son then piped up from the background saying actually daddy's talking. Prons are better. I like James saying trash talk. And apparently the kid just then started doing jazz hands. And

00:20:00

James Piper: that is exactly how they imagine that I say it. So from now on, thank you so much to KL'sun who's now implemented jazz hands into the programme.

Robbie Staniforth: Very good.

Every conversation you have about recycling inevitably starts talking about a paper coffee cup

James Piper: So we're talking today about coffee cups and I guess it's just worth saying that we been, as we've been developing this podcast we've been thinking what areas do we want to cover in trash talk? And I think we're sort of getting thematically into different types of episodes. We've had legislative episodes, we've kind of had refill episodes and a few of what we've done a kind of product episode. So coffee pods, carrier bags, disposable vapes, straws, and now coffee cups. And I think actually we'd quite like to takeape this forward where we just do some trash talks that are linked to products. So we've got plans for things like sachets, toilet rolls, they're just really interesting products that we can talk about. So this is next in the line of our kind of product episodes where we talk about something specific and coffee cups continually come up. Every conversation you have about recycling inevitably starts talking about a paper coffee cup.

Robbie Staniforth: So universal, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, absolutely. And it's because I think coffee cups fall into the recyclable but not recycled camp. You know, so many things fall into this category where it's like yeah, they can be recycled. Are ah, they recycled? Oh no. You know, and that's extremely frustrating because the messaging on those kind of products could not be more confusing because people think they're recyclable because they are. And that then leads them to jump to oh, and they're probably recycled. Because if they're recyclable, surely they're recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: And that just is not the case. So we'll go into it in more detail. But yeah, four in five of the cups used today are marked 100% recyclable.

Robbie Staniforth: Really? Wow, that is a lot.

James Piper: It's a lot, isn't it?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, 80% are definitely not recycled though. That's not how many are recycle. I can be pretty sure of that.

James Piper: Correct.

Today we're going to talk about disposable cups and reusable coffee cups

Let's get into the detail on this. So first of all, how many coffee cups do people use? So in the uk there is an estimate at the moment we use about 3.2 billion single use cuts yearh go.

Robbie Staniforth: That sounds like an awful lot, doesn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, 3.2 billion each year. It's a huge number. And last week we talked about Blue Planet and the blue Planet effect that that had on straws and other bits of plastic and single use plastic. I mean it's worth noting that cups came before that. Cups were the big issue in 2016. So it was March 2016. Hugh Furley, Whittings store, who's a, celebrity chef, who's now a campaigner, went through London in a coffee cup battle bus to raise awareness of at the time, the two and a half billion paper cups being thrown away. So again, like plastic in episode 32 where we said, hey, there was this big campaign Blue Planet, you know, everyone was talking about it, but plastic production still went up. Well, we're still using more paper cups today than we were back then, even with all this publicity.

Robbie Staniforth: And I'd like to say that Hugh is friend of the podcast because I met him just after we launched and gave him the card and said you ve got to listen to the podcast. But actually I have no idea whether he ended up listening or not.

James Piper: Hi Hugh. He's definitely listening. He's got to be list he'be lessons of a coffee cup episode wedding for sure.

Robbie Staniforth: Surely.

James Piper: And the sandwich pack one when we do a sandwich pack one in the future. Didn't it wasn't matter his next obsession.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that was. Yeah, he got on that a couple of years later.

James Piper: Yeah, we'll do a separate sandwich pack episode. Anyway, I remember this battle bus and this big publicity that came from coffee cups and I remember going to an event that night. I think the night the coffee cup bus drove through London, I went to an event and I remember talking to the sustainability at Costa, who looked like he might not sleep again.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, no.

James Piper: You know, it was like super stressful for everyone. It was a, how do we get out disposable cups? You know, that was. Everyone wanted to get out of them, but obviously the coffee chains also want to deliver us coffee really quickly and they don't want to put anyone off buying coffee. and we're going to talk about this. We're going to have kind of a three parter on coffee cups. So today we're going to talk about disposable cups. Next week we're going to have an interview with one of the coffee cup recyclers to actually talk about the process, how it works and, how it can be improved. And then the week after we're going to talk about reusable cup schemes. So if you're wondering why we're not talking about reusable cups today, that's going to be in a couple of weeks time. We're going to have a good conversation about all the different reusable cup schemes that are out there. So we're going to have a bit of a.

Fewer than 6 million coffee cups were recycled in 2016

Because coffee cups are such a big issue, we're going to split this across a few episodes. So at the time that this was all happening, so around 2016, fewer than 6 million cups were being recycled. Of that 2,5 billion, and just to put that in perspective, that is less than 0.25% of cups were being recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow, that is really ridiculously low.

James Piper: When we ran Leads by Example, which was our programme to increase recycling in leadeds, where we put new bins in the city centre, we did lots of surveying

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James Piper: and that surveying showed that 71% of people didn't know cups have to be collected separately in order to recycle them. We'll talk about that in a second. But 95% thought they should be able to be recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: So, there we go.

James Piper: You know, a big, big percentage really wanted to see these get recycled, but most people did not understand how the process would happen. So hopefully this episode is useful in terms of explaining how it all works. and I should say throughout, we're talking about lots and lots of figures today and there's an organisation called the National Cup Recycling Scheme, which is actually run by valpac and we're going to be talking about them in a little bit. so I just want to thank them for all these figures and for putting together some amazing reports in terms of coffee cup recycling, because that's been super helpful for us.

So why are Coffee cups so hard to recycle

So why are Coffee cups so hard to recycle. And it comes back to what we talked about in straws in episode 32. So when we talked about straws, we talked about the fact that if you have a paper straw, you have to put something in it to stop the moisture hitting the paper. You know, when we talked about hosing down cardboard, we're painfully aware that that destroys cardboard and stops it being able to work. So you cannot just use pure cardboard as a coffee cup. It will just not last the drink. And so what you do is you put a barrier between the cardboard and the moisture. And there are broadly two types of barrier. There is a liner, you know, literally a liner not necessarily made of plastic, but something, you know, physical that sits between them, or you put a coating on. And we're going to. I don't want to talk too much about coatings today. I think we'll talk about that next week, in our interview with the recyclers, because I think coatings have a specific issue.

When people talk about compostable coffee cups, what they're referring to is liner

So let's just start talking about liner. so liners typically have been made of plastic, made of polyethylene plastic, and a cup will be made of about 95% cardboard and 5% plastic. Now, when people say about compostable coffee cups, what they're referring to really is the liner, because cardboard is compostable. So when they talk about compostable coffee cups, they're talking about a liner that is made of a compostable plastic or a compostable product. So typically it will act and perform like a plastic, but it will compost rather than being able to be recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: And this is what we touched upon when we interviewed Pierre from knppa, quite a while ago now, wasn't it? They're coatings that are compostable.

James Piper: Yes, that's right. And their coating will go through the recycling process, but. But not be recycled. The cardboard will be recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: I think it just gets washed out in the process, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, but because their argument is because it's made of seaweed, it doesn't turn into microplastics, because it's not, because it is largely seaweed based. Then you get other types of plastic which are bioplastic. So like the cornarch, which will form a microplastic, because those bioplastics are still plastics. and you get normal plastics which will get washed out of the process. So, again, I think we need to talk next week to, James Cropper, who's the recycler we're interviewing. We need to Talk about kind of the process of the plastic, whether that becomes microplastic, whether that gets washed out in the wastewater. Because certainly that's what we heard in monot Pl episode. So let's remember to cover that.

Only 2.8% of coffee cups are recycled according to James Smith

The other thing that people tend not to think about with coffee cups is the lids. and in 2019, well, I mean it says here in 2019 2.9 billion lids were placed on the market. But I suspect the lids and the cups probably track each other. So it's pretty close. So something like 3.2 billion cups to 2.9 billion lids. We don't always get a lid.

Robbie Staniforth: But in principle science plausible.

James Piper: And at the time I read in this report and I was quite astonished by this and I did actually message the report authors. I haven't heard back but if I do hear back in the next couple of episodes I will report on this. I was asking about the lids because they said that 98% of the lids were polystyrene and 2% were PET and that would mean none of those were recycled because polystyren just is not recycled. So they were saying in the report that nothing, no lids were recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh really?

James Piper: Yeah, I think you know by weight they're going to be a significant part of the product. So I again I'm just digging into that. I need to find out whether they are actually polystyrene nowadays. certainly back in 2019 they were. So when we talk about the recycling process it's just worth noting recyclers and we've said this many times on the podcast but we'll just say it again. Recyclers want clean material and predictable material. Cups are an absolute disaster for both.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, they just want it to be uniform, don't they? And like just the same thing over and over. And obviously cup and lid is definitely your first problem and your second problem is the fact that there's different types of Liner, Etter etc.

James Piper: Yeah, so you've got different types of liner, you've got contamination with the coffee. so it's not clean material and it's certainly not predictable. You don't really know what it's made of because there's so many different

00:30:00

James Piper: types of cups out there, so many different types of lines and would get into this next week in terms of what you do to try and predict what's coming through the system because James Copper are a very big paper cut recycler. So were going to come on to the like recycling rate and how its changed over time. But its increased from 0.25% to about 2.8% and that's based on the last data that I have available. So cups are not still not really recycled. 2.8% is nothing compared to whats put on the market. Better. Better than not.

Robbie Staniforth: S pretty low though, isn't it? It's not a significant amount.

James Piper: And so we have this issue that what the recyclers say and what Rob will say next week. Rob from James Coppper Cropper. What he's going to say next week is we as recyclers want paper cups with a pe. That's all they want. They don't want any of these, you know, paper cups with an aqueous coating or paper cups with a compostable liner. They just want clean, predictable material. Standard Costa Starbucks cup, the cardboard with a plastic/ast liner in it because they can recycle that. I guess the argument back to them is yes, but if only 2.8% are recycled, is it better to standardised coffee cups to give them a PE liner or is it better to go for these more novel systems that maybe compost, maybe don't that maybe have less plastic in them and can't be recycled? But that's okay because you know, 97% of them are't being recycled today.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's such a tricky decision to kind of make and to the one thing that I would agree with is a bit more uniformity would help all involved because if youre re not sure whether to compost it, to recycle it, to throw it in your general waste, then that's just confusing for the average person.

James Piper: Yeah, now that is definitely true. and even we get know Im like what kind of cup is this? As Im buying stuff and Im looking at the side of it and it says recyclable, compostible, biodegradeable. What was the one I found in Cornwall? Biodegradable comp. Possible recyclable. Just chuck it. The worst messaging I've ever come across. But that's what happens, right? Your coffee cup has loads of messaging on it. So with coffee cups one of the main things is that you've got to collect them up separately and the reason for that is they've got to go to a specialist paper mel and there actually there were four recycling facilities in the UK that dealt with these. So dsmith AC uk, James Cropper and EET and DS Smith I think have stopped offering a cup collection service. Certainly I think 2-20-23 they stopped it. and they were quoted saying it became unviable to collect small volumes of cups from around the country. So there are, I think, still four recycling facilities. I'm just not sure they're all collecting cups. But it needs to go through a specialist process because basically we've talked about cardboard recycling and the pulping. When you do that process, you've got to pulp it for longer with a coffee cup. That's the only difference. It's the same pulping process. You've just got to pulp it a little bit longer to extract the plastic from the paper. And so you can't have it in with normal cardboard, because normal cardboard goes through a slightly quicker pulping process.

Robbie Staniforth: And this is the thing that people will be confused about, won't they? Get home with a paper cup, looks like paper, really similar to just your normal brown cardboard that you put out. And, you will logically think, just crush it up and put it in with the rest of my cardboard. And, what these facilities are saying is, no, we don't want it with the rest of the stuff because it needs to be pulped for longer.

James Piper: Exactly. It will be seen as contamination in the cardboard recycling. So what you need to do is collect it separately and then the recyclers will separate, you know, if it gets to one of their facilities, it will separate the paper in the plastic. And as I say, that process just takes a little bit longer. So because we need to collect it separately, there have been a number of collection schemes set up over the years. BIFA currently have a collection scheme, from what I could see. there's an organisation called the Cup Collective, which appears to run across the eu. The one that I know the most about is the National Cup Recycling Scheme. Again, this is a scheme that was put together by VALPAC and Costa. I think it was probably off the back of kind of all of the discussions that were happening around 2016. I think it was around that time, wasn't it RBBY? If I did, it was Seteah.

Robbie Staniforth: There was a kind of paper cup group where a load of producers all got together. I think Costa was leading the charge. But There was also McDonald's, Cafe, Neero, Preatt, Greg's. Lots of the big coffee retailers in the UK at the time were talking about, we've got to set something up to collect these things separately because of what they were told by the recyclers, that it needed a specialist process.

James Piper: Yeah. And all those brands fund this scheme. So you've got Costa, Madonald's Cafeirero, Pratt, Greg'burger King Pure. and the vats, a professional, all fund the scheme. there's currently about 6,000, 5,000 collection

00:35:00

James Piper: points. So around the country they've got these bins that, you might have seen them, you know, these bins where they stack up coffee. Coffee cups. And the idea is that the scheme boosts the value of recycled cups. So we've done something similar with flexible plastic, where you put a pot of money together and you go, if you recycle a tonne of paper cups, we will boost that. And I think they boost it by about £70 a tonne.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm not sureorical current.

Only 2.8% of coffee cups are getting recycled according to government figures

So that's to make it more economically viable, isn't it? And we talked earlier about blister packs in this regard too. And it's about the producers taking responsibility for the cups that they're using and pumping money in to make it viable, because it's their responsibility as producers of the cups to make sure that these things get recycled. And sometimes the economics mean that they need to pay extra money into a system to get them recycled. And this does exactly that.

James Piper: That's it. And as I said, about 2.8% of cups were getting recycled. Now, this was actually back in 2019 and I think I know the reason they're reporting that 2019 number, which is in the report, they talk about the fact that actually Covid happened and has reversed the trend of collecting cups. So they were on an upward trajectory, collecting more and more cups. Covid happened. We all sort of sat at home for a while and then we forgot that coffee cups were a big issue. And so in the main, I think the recycling rate will be lower than 2.8% because the last number they've reported is just before COVID And in the report they say, I mean, the words are, we were gathering momentum and then Covid happened and it has been difficult to come back to those levels. So we'll chat with ROT about it next week because he will know, we'll ask him what the current recycling rate is and we'll see if he's got ideas for how we can improve that.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it seems a shame, but it's one of those things that you just have to get into the zeitgeist and socially normalise the behaviour of recycling cups. And when things like pandemics happen, you kind of. I can see why you would lose momentum in communicating with your customers about what to do with them.

James Piper: It does happen all the time that, you know, we have a big news story, big media push towards a specific product, we all care about it for a bit and it disappears, you know, and I think the risk to that is my opinion is brands and retailers sort of when something happens to a product they just go, we'll just ride this out, it'll disappear. People all forget. And time and time again that is what happens. You know, we all cared about coffee cups in 2016, we all cared about flexible plastic last year. We all cared about just plastic in general in 2017. And I do think there is a bit of don't change anything because everyone will forget soon that we talked about this. And I think as consumers we need to not. I think it's difficult, isn't it? It's difficult to take that kind of activism stance of banned coffee cups because it just like it's just not going to happen. So what we have to do is remember our reusable cups and we'll talk about reusable cups in a couple of episodes time. But we need to remember those. Thats really important. If we forget it, then obviously we're buying a coffee cup and it's our job to make sure that that is then collected for recycling. And so we as consumers have a lot of power here first of all to remember a reusable cup so we don't have to buy a paper one. And if we buy a paper one to seek out a recycling bin, there's not really an excuse there. There's so many collection points and it's really important that we're using those and getting that recycling up because we're the only people who can make that 2.8% higher.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, you're exactly right.

James asks whether we need policy on mandatory cup take back or not

And this is a great segue, James, for you to talk a little bit about whether we need policy here and mandatory cup take back or not. That's one of the big things is these producers have got together and we've got this recycling scheme on a voluntary basis. But in order to scale it up and make it more widespread, do you need legislation?

James Piper: And I think with some of these things legislation is so important. Coffee cups is such a great example because actually they did a. I think they must have watched people like I watched people in a supermarket. They must have done because they decided that out of 1,200 people that were, I'm assuming, observed, only 1% used a coffee cup collection point in when it was available to them. And I just think most people don't know they exist. I also think one of the challenges is that they seem to put these Coffee cup collection points in coffee shops. And I'm m actually like I think back to that guy I interviewed in Leeds who was like, I drink my coffee here, I throw it in that bin. You actually want the bin to be like 100 metres away from the coffee shop to tie in with the time someone's finished their coffee. So tricky, you know, that always happens that you end up with this like we'll put the bins where the product is sold and actually that's in the main not where people have their waste. So you know that'that will be part of the issue here. And getting you

00:40:00

James Piper: know, I know in the report they talked about getting more links into councils to get bins. But yes, as you say, the way really to increase visibility on something like coffee cups is legislation. And there was a proposal, there was a proposal to have mandatory cup take back. So if you sold cups, so if you, I think you had to employ 10 full time people and sell fibre based cups, so paper cups, if you did both of those things then you would have had to supply a bin on your premises to collect the cups. You would have to make arrangements for recycling and you would have to report the weight of the cups sold and collected. Now this was coming in, I think originally it was coming in under epr. It was going to be like a part of epr. Then there was a discussion about it being separate to epr, and being a piece of legislation in its own right. And the government felt they could increase recycling rates to around 40%. Now they actually calculated that 40% from our leadeds project, Robbie. Which I didn't realise. O okay. Because we collected with Hububbs 600,000 cups. And they extrapolated that and said, well, if you were able to do that in that small space then you could do this countrywide and you could get that recycling rate up to 40%.

Robbie Staniforth: O well good to hear that that had some impact at some point.

James Piper: But yeah, so I was very excited about mandatory takeack, Robbie. I was very excited about legislation. What happened to it?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, well, unfortunately, so it looked like it was going to come in but, but basically the government consulted on it in 2021 and what actually happened was there was quite strong public support that they would include it, as you mentioned before, in the normal extended producer responsibility regulations for packaging that they were drafting at the time. And I actually happened to see an early draught of these regulations and I remember there being a specific chapter on this. So it was at one point in a draught of the legislation. But then in May 2024 when the legislation became public, the UK government submitted it to the EU and the World Trade Organisation for approval that these laws were kind of legal and not internationally problematic. Suddenly it was missing. And so at the time, it was said that the government had run out of time to draught things correctly and think through the policy fully. And so rather than slow down the whole of extended producer responsibility for packaging going through, they would just scrap it. And I was personally asked numerous times during this period by officials in government, would Eco Surety start a take back scheme if it was in the regulations. And I kept saying no, not really. If we started any scheme, it would probably be a reusable cup scheme rather than a recycling scheme because one's already existed. And so the government said they re add this mandatory take back scheme in once it was pushed through and the first cut of the legislation had gone through, which it has, and it started in the first of January this year. And they're looking at making some amendments at the moment. So at the time it was very plausible that it'd be added back in. However, in December 2024 they made that cancellation permanent. And the reasons that they cited for it being cancelled permanently is that it was high costs. So they estimated it would cost 52 million to government and the industry to bring in this mandatory take back scheme.

James Piper: Sorry, just to interrupt you there. 52 million is so low compared to the numbers we're talking about on epr. And drs. Both of those are coming in at a forecast like 1.5 billion to 2 billion. And I get this is just one way stream, but it is such a significant part of our day to day lives and is such, it's so frustrating that it's a waste stream that's relatively easy to recycle as long as you collect it separately. And voluntary initiatives are clearly not delivering enough. And so, I don't know, 52 million, it's a drop in the ocean comp compared to what some of these other schemes are costing.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And considering that there's 3.2 billion cups out there, as you mentioned at the top, it seems like a worthwhile thing going for. But the government cited that there were lower environmental and economic benefits than they had first thought and that actually the greenhouse gas emission savings, when they kind of put a monetary value to that would total less than 4 million and it would be a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions, that would be saved as part of the wider packaging reforms. So they were Kind of citing this as small fry compared to all of the packaging formats that they were delivering, new policy on. And they also said that there would be a limited increase in recycling rate and litter reduction. And so they had estimated that it would only increase, in a very small

00:45:00

Robbie Staniforth: amount by only 7% in 7 percentage points, I should say, in 10 years. Which seems like they were being pretty pessimistic about what this mandatory take back scheme would deliver.

James Piper: Also very different to what they've said in the consultation where they've said, hey, we think we can get up to 40%. They're now saying, oh, actually we only think it's a 9% recycling rate. just. It's fascinating, isn't it, because the government are here going, it's small fry, it's not worth doing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, but on this same government is going, oh, but we'll ban straws. Yeah, you know, it's like that is way smaller. Why did you ban straws? If your logic is, well, actually we're going to look at littering and impact and all this stuff. You know, it's just fascinating, isn't it? Like I'm, not saying banning straws was a bad thing, by the way, as we said in that episode, like, I'm really glad they're banned. I'm just amazed that the government can on one hand say this is small fright, it's not worth doing, it's not worth collecting and recycling and on the other hand go, but we should ban this even smaller thing because, hey, that's got a bit more publicity.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. The reality is it's the politics of the day and some things become emblematic and even though they're small, they take policy decisions and other things that are slightly bigger and potentially would genuinely have a more positive environmental effect get left by the wayside. And so effectively they ended up saying that, look, our wider packaging reforms are going to deliver so much more. We're going to concentrate on that and we welcome the efforts of leading voluntary initiatives which to be honest, if it's only about 2% a recycling rate, I'm very surprised that they welcome those efforts. Yes, good that they're doing something, but it's absolutely not delivering in its current, voluntary form.

James Piper: I guess the reason you would recycle is there was a lifecycle assessment, published in the Journal of cleaner production in 2020 if it showed that the carbon of a paper cup could be reduced by 40% if you recycle it. So there is a logic to doing that. and it's just worth us noting that there are some manufacturers of compostible cups, so vegware specifically, I think, that have made, quite significant moves to get their cup comp possible and recyclable, which is a really interesting development. So, they have a cup for hot drinks that certified recyclable. it basically replicates a standard paper mill. So again, let's get into that next week. Let's talk about those vegare cups, see what Rob thinks of them. and you know, we will talk a bit more about these novel barriers that are being used.

The main takeaway from today is coffee cups can be recycled

So we're going to have to, we're going to have to move on because we could talk about coffee cups for days with.

Robbie Staniforth: I know we could.

James Piper: So the main takeaway from today is coffee cups can be recycled. It's a pretty straightforward process, but they have to go for a slightly longer recycling process than normal cardboard, which means they have to be collected separately. Industry has been working hard to put in collection points, but they are not collecting enough cups. So we as consumers, if we buy a paper cup, should go back into coffee shops to find those collection points to use them to increase the recycling rate.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Or take a reusable cup with you.

James Piper: Yes. Well, we'll talk about reusable cups in a couple of episodes, but of course that is the preferred rooted for us to have coffee rubbish or not.

Robbie Robbby asks whether a hot water bottle can be recycled

So today's rubbish or KN actually came from my house because, we had a hot water bottle going around my house the other day and, it was reaching the end of its life. And I thought, I wonder if this is recyclable. And then I thought, add that to the podcast as I often do. I guess the first question is, Robbie, do you know how to age a hot water bottle?

Robbie Staniforth: I know that there's a little mark on it, so I've seen those before and I've discussed it in my household too, but actually I wouldn't know how to read it. There's a littlert of circular thing with some numbers in or something like that, but I don't actually know.

James Piper: Okay. So it's called the daisy. Now, it's really important that we don't use hot water bottles beyond their life because obviously that's extremely dangerous. You're putting boiling water in them and if they degrade with that boiling water in, that could cause burns. Really important to know how old your hot water bottle is, which is why they all legally have to have this daisy on the neck of the bottle. It is sort of looks like a Trivial Pursuit piece. Trivial Pursuit holder. Is that a fair, fair representation. It's like a circle.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. With slices, segments or whatever around it.

James Piper: Yeah. So in the middle is a number. That number represents the year. So if it s a 24, that would be 2024. There's then 12 pies around it, basically 12 holes, which represent which month and then there's dots within those months that represent the weeks. So if, for example, you had a 20 in the middle, it would be 2020. If six of the, holes were filled in, that would mean it was manufactured in June. And if there were three dots

00:50:00

James Piper: in the June 1, that would mean it was the third week in June. That's basically.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. Okay. Means that's absolutely news to me. And this is when it was manufactured. Yeah. Not when the bottle, goes off, what's the word? Comes to the end of its life.

James Piper: Correct. It's the manufacture day and then you have three years from then.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, fine.

James Piper: So when we had this hot water bottle the other day in my house, I realised it was beyond its three year shelf life. So we didn't use it. And that's why we were trying to decide whether it could be recycled. So what do you reckon, Robbie, Rubbish or not?

Robbie Staniforth: I think it's too complicated, isn't it a mix of like rubbery plastic or whatever? I think rubbish.

James Piper: No, definitely recyclable.

Robbie Staniforth: Really? At the curbside?

James Piper: No, that's a different question. That's not the purpose. It's not rubbish or curbside. Definitely be recycled. Rubber is very easy to recycle. you know, you've spent ages just talking about tire recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: You can't throw that in with your tyre recycling, can you?

James Piper: I mean, technically, yeah, they'll retreadge your hot water bottle. Ah, yeah. Rubber is easily recycled. You just have to find the place to put it, basically. And typically they will have a brass screw in. Now the brass screw can potentially go in the metal recycling. Again, if you're going to the dump to get rid of your hot water bottle, you could put the, the rubber into the correct bin and you could put the metal into the metal bin and that would be okay. I don't think it's going to be in the household of recycling collections. Although I did find, a couple of websites that suggested you might be able to. So it might be worth having a look. but I suspect the best thing to do is to find your nearest recycling centre and then it'll get recycled into things like Play mats, rubber flooring, plumbing fittings and tireress. See it does become tires. Robbby.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, well, there we go. I didn't realise that there was a rubber bin in your local recycling centre. So that's news to me.

James Piper: So yeah, I had a quick look and you could take it to for instance Bristol Civic community site. We're not actually sure which bins to put it in. I'm not sure if they have a rubber bin or not. It might go where the tyres go. But probably the best thing to do if you do have a water bottle recycle is to take it to the dump and ask them where to put it. But they can definitely be recycled. So definitely an or not. interestingly I found a website, well with some ideas of what you could do with old hot water bottles. So I quite like the. You could cut them up and use them as non slip mats. Sort of use them as coasters or something. Yeah, N. That would be quite cool. You could fill the hot water bottle with some like foam and then you could use that as a knealler for your gardening. I think that's what we're going to do. We always need new kneeah for gardening. I think we're going to fill it with foam and that's a great idea. Yeah. So thank you to the recyclable website that had some ideas around what to do with hot water bottles.

Will mixed recycling bins lower recycling rate due to contamination

Rubbish question. So we had a message from Francesca. Thank you Francesca for messaging in. And she works at a six form college which has general waste bins, mixed recycling bins and paper bins. When the bins get emptied they all just get put in the same big bin. You hear this all the time. Right.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh gosh.

James Piper: Francesca asked the estate teams whether this meant all the rubbbers just goes to landfill and they said that the refuse contractor sorts it all out for them. Will this lower the recycling rate due to contamination? God, this happens a lot, doesn't it? People diligently sort out their waste and when someone comes along with a bag and just puts it all in the same bag.

Robbie Staniforth: Puts it all together. Yeah. God, it's so disheartening when you see it, isn't it? and totally I can see why Francesca might lose faith in the system.

James Piper: Yeah, it's actually really hard to find data on this. I went back over my episode 29 data, my council data and had a look and noticed that of the best performing and worst performing councils there actually wasn't much of a difference between whether you collect waste Comm mingle or whether you collect it or whether you separate it. Now the reason for that I think is typically if you collect waste, comm mingle. So if you just have one bin and you put everything together, you actually collect more waste because residents go, oh, well, it's all together. I'll just put everything in there.

Robbie Staniforth: Everything that is recyclable. That's the important thing to say. Isn't Francesca saying that it'the general waste, the mixed recycling bins and the paper all gets mixed up together. It's like one big bin for everything, including all the horrible general waste stuff.

James Piper: Yeah, but this is true, actually. Yeah, that's just comm mingle recycling. But actually they're including general waste in this. So I mean, my observation was this is the worst of both worlds commingled. You can have high volumes, but high contamination separate. You have lower volumes but clean material.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: This is combining the two. It's like you've done the work to separate it and then we'll mix it all together so you've got lower volumes because people have had to think about what they're putting in each bin and then you're taking those layer volumes and contaminating them.

Robbie Staniforth: And not just that, you know, people like Francesca will be thinking, why bother putting it in the right bin anyway?

00:55:00

Robbie Staniforth: And just generally lose faith in the recycling system.

James Piper: Exactly. it just has a massive issue. So I had a quick look at about 5 to 10% of what is sent to a MPH is rejected due to contamination. In this example, where they're mix in general waste, it'll be way higher. So yes, Francesca, the answer to your question is it will lower the recycling rate due to contamination. I suspect it will be significant. I think at the low end it will be about 10%, assuming the general waste isn't that food heavy. But seeing as this is a sick form college, I suspect there is a lot of food going into those general bins and that is contaminating the recycling. And I bet a huge proportion of that waste is going off for incineration and not being recycled.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And on the 1st of April this year, it's great that simpler recycling comes in and will force these businesses to keep things separate. We've talked about that previously and that's exactly why. Because if you mix it all, as you said, you just won't recycle as much.

James Piper: And that includes colleges and schools in this example. Ye.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: Great. Perfect.

Rubbish podcast has two more episodes to go on reusable coffee cups

Okay. A lot to talk about in coffee cups.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And we still got two more episodes to go. I hope people are strapped in for more on coffee cups.

James Piper: Yeah, well we got very interesting data on the reusable cup scheme so that'll be good in a couple of weeks time. And I'm really looking forward to our interview with Rob next because getting into the thick of it and really talking to a recycler who actually does this stuff is going to be really interesting.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh yeah, I love a juicy cliffhanger.

James Piper: Okay, cool. Well we will see you all next week for that interview. And just as a reminder, if you want to get hold of us on Discord, the link is in our show notes. You can follow us at Rubbishpcast, any of the social media. You can email me talking rubbishpodcastmail.com and our linkree with links to things we've talked about in the show is available in our show notes as well. So just have a look there if you want to get hold of us. Bye.

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