13. Is recycling flexible plastic worth the effort?

James Piper: Hello. Welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast delving deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth behind snappy headlines and, one sided stories. In this episode we will start looking at how plastic is recycled, discuss what really happens to our flexible plastic. Which bin do wires and cables go into? And I have a question about the melting of glass. I'm Jase Piper, author of the Rubbish Book and I'm joined by Robby Staniforth, my far from rubbish friend. Hey, Robbie.

Robbie Staniforth: Morning, James.

James Piper: Robbie, I have a question. Do I look a bit more tired than usual?

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, I mean, maybe the glasses hide it. I can't see any, can't see any puffy eyes. Oh gosh, put the glasses back on.

James Piper: Do you know, I had exactly the same thought. I looked at my camera, thought, oh God, I do look tired. The glasses do hide it. I wonder maybe we'll put that clip on social and see if everyone else thinks I look tired.

You text me at half 10 last night saying you were in the Eye

But anyway, I feel more tired than usual because we, just got to tell the listeners this. You text me at like, I don't know, half 10 last night and said, I've just had someone text me saying, we were in the Eye today. So in the UK we have a newspaper, the Eye, it's pretty big and they'd included like a review with a picture of our logo.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it was exciting stuff. I actually got messaged about two minutes before I forwarded that picture on to you from a friend who'd find it.

James Piper: So I actually haven't asked you that question yet and I was going to ask when did you find out? Because that half 10 text was not helpful because then what I proceeded to do was jump in my car and drive round all of Bristol looking for a copy of the Eye. And what I have discovered, because I've never looked for a newspaper that late at night, what I've discovered is the shops stop selling newspapers that late at night and they scan them out to be sent back for recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh yes, I've seen those, like where they re pile them up and like strap them up to be picked up. So that's what they're doing, is it?

James Piper: That's what they're doing. And that, ah, is what had happened to all the eyes in Bristol. Luckily I managed to find one Tesco's where a very, very, very kind employee managed, to find me a copy of the Eye and I was just so happy. So thank you to the Tesco's employee in, Bishopston. I was very, very grateful to you for being able to find me A copy of the Eye. And I was so excited to get home and read our review.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, exciting stuff. Yeah. No, when it landed, my side, I couldn't believe it. You know, it was a friend I've not heard from for, like, maybe a year or two. And they were like, I just read your name in the Eye and forwarded me the picture. I was like, wow, this is amazing. And just to save it so that we're not talking through our own vanity of appearing in a newspaper, what you were going to go on to, James, is that those papers are sent back to be recycled. Aren't they those, at the end of the day.

James Piper: So great save. I was doing it just for the vanity.

Robbie Staniforth: Maybe we'll talk about how newspapers and pamphlets get recycled another day.

This podcast has blown up way more than we expected

James Piper: But, yes, we have had an amazing. I mean, this podcast has just blown up way more than we expected. We've been in the Guardian. We've been in My Eye. We got included in an email that went out to 4 million people. That gave us a big boost. And literally, just to give you guys a perspective on this, when we launched our first episode, it took us three days to get 100 listens on our first episode. I think something like three days. And then last week, that took us a day. So we got it from three days to a day. And today, within 30 minutes, we had achieved what we were achieving in three days when we first launched.

Robbie Staniforth: Wow. Who are all these people listening so early in the morning? It must be our big Australian contingent. Or is it the Solomon Islands? It's.

James Piper: Well, great question. Okay, Right. We actually have had. Robbie, are you ready for this? We have hit 100 countries listening in.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, really?

James Piper: As of this morning, it's actually 106. I'm determined to get to all 200. And Solomon Islands still have not appeared.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, still waiting for that one.

James Piper: Exactly.

Robbie: Well done on getting your podcast further than most

And I did just want to say hello to our, one listener in Eswatini.

Robbie Staniforth: Eswatini, which I know exactly where that is, but you're going to tell us, James.

James Piper: In Africa. should I be more specific?

Robbie Staniforth: Yes, please.

James Piper: How quickly can I Google this? it is country in Southern Africa.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. Okay. Previously known, as, Swaziland.

James Piper: Yeah, I didn't know if that was the. Is that.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, that's on the border between Mozambique, isn't it? yes, I know it. I've not been there.

James Piper: I definitely thought you were more likely to know it than me, so I was quite surprised.

Robbie Staniforth: You just wanted me. Yeah, no, it's just a new name to me. You know, I'm not. I'm obviously not up on my geopolitics. It has been 20 years since that geography degree.

James Piper: So 106 countries. Let's try and get all. Whatever it is. 195. I think it is, isn't it? So we're close. I mean, we're over halfway there. Over halfway. Yeah, I know we're doing quite well on this podcast because the spam that we are getting has increased drastically. And that's how you know, isn't it?

Robbie Staniforth: That's how you know, is it? That's how you know big time.

James Piper: Yeah. Because people are messaging you, going, you know,

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James Piper: can we edit it? And all this sort of stuff. So it's amazing. But the. What's interesting is what some of the spam emails say. We have gone further than most. You know, well done on getting your podcast further than most. And I did a little bit of research, and the average number of episodes for a podcast that starts out is about like seven to 10 episodes.

Robbie Staniforth: And then they give up. Do they?

James Piper: And then they give up.

Robbie Staniforth: I didn't know that was an option, James.

James Piper: This is not a prison, Robbie. It's not some weird recycling prison I've created for you.

Robbie Staniforth: Someone commented about our, brick backgrounds that it did look a bit like a jail.

James Piper: They did say that, yeah. Well, we'll be moving office in November and maybe we'll have, like, non brick backgrounds. I was talking to someone about a podcast the other day. I went to a wedding. congratulations, Grace and George, whose wedding I went to at the weekend. It was a beautiful, beautiful day and I was chatting to our, friend Katie, and she made me laugh because she said she listens to our podcast at one and a half times speed. And I thought, we already talk pretty fast. I think, like, can you imagine what you and I sound like at one and a half times speed?

Robbie Staniforth: I have never in my entire life been told to speed up my speech.

James Piper: It's because she doesn't have time for this. She wants to get through, you know, one and a half times the number of podcasts. So, Katie, this is for you. There we go. That will have come through at normal speed for her.

Robbie Staniforth: Thanks for listening. kt.

James Piper: Perfect. Thanks, Robbie.

We've also done the voiceover for an ECOVA ad

And we've also, I mean, what a week we've had, genuinely. I know we've gone through different things that have happened, all the new stuff. We've also done the voiceover for an ECOVA ad, which was just so weird. Wasn't it like ECOVA approached or. It was actually their ad Agency approached us and said we've got this amazing chair that's all about getting us to wash less. So just to give a summary because ECOVA will be very pleased if I give a summary of the campaign. We all have a laundry chair in our bedroom. That chair that you throw clothes on. It's a place you chuck your clothes and then you sniff your clothes cheque if they're wearable again and you wear them again and the idea is to wash less. So the less we wash our clothes the better for the planet.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's a, really interesting concept. You know, when you start to get into this, what that throwing chair or the laundry chair in the bedroom. It was quite nice to actually have something different to kind of think about. It wasn't so much about recycling, it was about, I suppose, longevity of one's clothes.

James Piper: Yeah, I really enjoyed doing it. So thank you, Ikova and additions, corrections.

This is the part of the podcast where we talk about recycling of waste

So I've just got one here which is my mother in law again I'm making it sound like she's the only listener because she's writing it all the time, but we do have more listeners.

Robbie Staniforth: When does it get to the point where it's trolling you?

James Piper: We're long past that point, Robbie. but she volunteers at local food banks and one of her observations when we were talking about plastic bags, she was back on our Taylor Swift episode and I think I talked about Connor who takes his plastic bags to the supermarket and people might find that quite weird. she was saying maybe people would think that was odd, taking bags back to supermarkets if you didn't want to Food, banks are always looking for them so they need bags to carry the food around in and distribute the food and you don't want to buy new ones. So if you have a surplus of bags for life or carry a bags, just fold them up and leave them at a food bank collection point and they would be delighted to receive them.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, very good. Reuse in action. Great idea. Okay, that's not trolling, that's just a very kind interjection.

James Piper: Well, you don't want to know what she then went on to say. Robby. Rubbish process. This is the part of the podcast where we talk about the collection, sorting and recycling of waste. We've been spending quite a lot of time on plastic. We've done top of the plastics where we went through the seven different types of plastics last week we sorted them, now we have to recycle it and plastic is going to be a little bit hard to recycle as well. We're actually going to split this into two episodes because there's two types of recycling.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, that's true. So these two types of recycling, basically it's because they're two very different processes. One is a mechanical process, hence it's called mechanical recycling, and the other is a chemical process, hence it's called chemical recycling. sometimes it's also called advanced recycling. Advanced, really? Just because it's newer than the mechanical recycling, which has been well established over a number of decades. Chemical is kind of only come in in the last decade or so and is still sort of growing and plants being built at the moment.

James Piper: So, Robbie, you know what this means?

Robbie Staniforth: I have no idea.

James Piper: We're leaving the listener with a great cliffhanger.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes, love it. A plastic cliffhanger. Some of our best work.

There are two ways to make plastic smaller when recycling it

James Piper: So, Robbie, we've sorted plastic by its signature. We've talked about the fact that there's seven different types and they need to be sorted by their signature. the

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James Piper: first thing to do when we're recycling it is we've got to make it smaller. And there's two ways of making plastic smaller. So you can shred it up, using a shredder, or sometimes you could use a granulator. They're just slightly different processes, but ultimately they're achieving the same thing. So a shredder is just putting plastic through blades. a granulator is doing a similar thing, except you've got holes for the plastic to fall through. So the idea is that you can have different levels of holes, to capture different sizes of plastic. So you just keep shredding plastic up until it fits through the hole and then it will fall through. And that just makes your plastic more uniform when you're chopping it up. It makes the bits pretty similar sizes.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And I suppose that's probably, trying to get it back to the sort of size and shape that they would have been when they were first used to make plastic in the first place. isn't it? But. And this is the mechanical process we're going through. I suppose we should say that, shouldn't we? Just in case people thought we were starting with the other one.

James Piper: And, these bits of plastic are called regrinds. So just to get all the wording right, they're, called regrinds. These regrinds are then washed to remove any dirt, glue, paper, anything that might be in that plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: Come on, then, tell me. Why don't they just turn, the. Why don't they Just use these regrinds and send them on. They need to be turned into pellets. I understand. Do you know why, James?

James Piper: Plastic pellets are going to be better for the manufacturing process? Because with the injection moulding for manufacturing, you're going to want pretty uniform, bits of plastic. So you've got regrinds which are basically like plastic flakes. So think about like, you know, like fish food that kind of.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Piper: Like those little flakes of fish food. Think about that. But obviously make them clear and plasticky. But that's sort of what we're, what we're starting with. And then to get to injection moulding, where we're actually putting it back into a plastic process, it needs to be in the shape of a pellet. And again, that's just like a tiny little sphere. So that's the best way of describing a pellet. It's just a tiny little, like a bb, you know, like, I'm sure you can't get them anymore, but when I was a kid, everyone used to have a BB gun, right? They were.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, I'm sure you can still get those, James.

James Piper: I'm sure they're illegal. But anyway, back at, we had those BB bullets and I suspect that's kind of the size and shape of a pellet.

Robbie Staniforth: And so how do they get these pellets? Well, the regrind is essentially, it's pushed down a tube which has heaters all along this tube. And, it starts melting the plastic and at the end there's a small hole called a die, which the plastic squeezes through and then the long string of plastic that comes out. So I don't know. Are we thinking sausage machine here, James? What's going through your mind?

James Piper: Yeah, it's like a sausage machine, but much thinner. So I'm trying to.

Robbie Staniforth: It's pushing out a pencil, isn't it?

James Piper: Yeah, exactly. That's the kind of size pencil's perfect. So the die at the end, just that little hole. So you've got a tube that's got heaters all down it, melting the plastic. And that die at the end, that's a little hole, is like a pencil shape, you know, pencil size, circle. And that's going to push the plastic through. So this string comes out and then there's. There'll be just a little blade that just literally cuts the bits of string just very quickly to get the pellets. And then the pellets will cool down and harden, like in a big Tub, basically in a big load of. Load of plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: So it's sort of like a guillotine off with its head every, like, few seconds. And then so these pellets, that's when it gets to this point where it looks very similar to the pellets that would have come originally from, an oil refinery that then, makes plastic pellets in the first place, so the very first time they were used. And so these pellets can then be melted back into products just like, you know, recycled ones, very similarly to the primary ones, that come, you know, from oil originally.

We're expecting 61% of plastic packaging to be recycled this year

James Piper: When we talked about recycling before, Robbie, we've talked about export figures and recycling rates and things like that. And I'm just conscious that we haven't really done that for plastic yet. So, I think with the export figures, we probably want to talk about that separately, maybe as a rubbish processor or a trash talk, because obviously that's a big topic for, A big topic for plastic. Ah, but what is the plastic recycling rate at the moment?

Robbie Staniforth: That's, 61%. Okay.

James Piper: So we're expecting 61% of plastic packaging to be recycled this year. So that's your bottles and tubs, trays, things like that.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it includes all types of plastics at the moment. And, again, we don't probably have time to go into it, but, you know, bottles are more widely recycled than some of the others. And this, process we've just talked through is kind of like a very normal one for something like a HDP milk bottle or a pet, like soft drinks bottle.

James Piper: Great. So we will cover export another day. But that is the current plastic recy trash talk.

Robbie: Should we bother recycling flexible plastic? James: Yes

Okay, Robbie, this is a big topic today. I know we say that every week. Every week we say big topic, but.

Robbie Staniforth: We cover the biggest topics. James,

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Robbie Staniforth: come on.

James Piper: Yeah, this one is pretty big. So I'm going to ask you the question, should we bother recycling flexible plastic?

Robbie Staniforth: Yes, let's go to the rubbish question.

James Carp: Flexible plastic is a controversial topic

James Piper: Okay, onto rubbish or not. look, flexible plastic is a controversial topic. I think it's fair to say that it's a, so when we talk about flexible plastic, let's just quickly cover what that is. We're talking about anything that's like a crisp packet, chocolate wrapper, bread bag, anything you can scrunch. And we've talked about it a number of times in this podcast. Anything you can scrunch is a flexible plastic.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, scrunch is a great term. isn't it? Because, like, you know, it's really hard to describe different types of plastic. And exactly like you can sort of flex some types of plastic, some is really rigid. But actually the scrunch is the best way to describe and have a collective kind of term for all of those plastics.

James Piper: Actually naming is really funny. I'm sure Carp won't mind me saying that I was involved in the design of their flexible plastic scheme, and attended lots of the meetings and helped them work out where the flexible plastic was going to go. So that my first meeting with them was actually back in 2019. I think they launched in like 2122, something like that. so I've been directly involved in setting up or helping to set up some of these supermarket collection schemes. And a lot of the initial conversation was what are we going to call it? What do customers most think of when they think of flexible plastic? Now I always call it flexible plastic, always. But the supermarkets all landed on soft plastic. So if you're in like a Tesco or a co op, you'll see that bins say soft plastic. And I just for this section, I suspect I will just keep calling it flexible because old habits die hard. But I do find it weird that they went with the soft plastic. I think that's a. I don't know. But is that what people think?

Robbie Staniforth: I think you'll find, James, that they did their consumer research. You know, they're experts at this and that's what the research came back and said. People most readily identify it as soft plastic. I agree with you. I also use flexxable, except I was.

James Piper: The only non co op employee in the room and I'm a consumer so you know, they weren't doing their consumer research with me.

Robbie Staniforth: Okay, well, I know Tesco's definitely did.

James Piper: They did they spend a lot of time on it.

Robbie Staniforth: We'll doff our cap to them.

James Piper: Yeah, too right.

We want to talk about whether flexible plastic can be recycled

Okay, so the reason this is a difficult conversation for us and we want to get, I mean look, this podcast is all about being honest. It's all about exposing the difficult stuff. And the flexible plastic is one of those areas and we really want to kind of delve into it. We will talk about this a number of times, I'm sure. Robbie and I set up a fund called the Flexible Plastic Fund which is all about helping with the economics of flexible plastic. I think we'll talk about that another day because we really going to run out of time on this one. But let's just talk about whether flexible plastic can be recycled and should we be bothering to bring it back to store. And this comes from a report that's been done by Everyday Plastic, which was published on the 1st of October, so quite recent, a few weeks ago. And they put some Apple Airtags into some bundles of plastic that were put in supermarket collection points and they tracked where those went. And so it's useful for us just to have a quick look through that and think about that. Just to lay this out for people not in the UK, or even if you are in the UK, you probably haven't seen all 6,000 collection points, but the UK has at the moment over 6,000 flexible plastic collection points. So most major supermarkets have converted their kind of carrier bag collection point that used to be there into a fully flexible plastic collection point.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And I think in 2023, estimates were that over 215 billion items of, flexible plastic was being put on the market. No.

James Piper: Yeah. Interestingly, I wrote that stat down. I thought, where's that come from? And I looked at the source and it has come from us.

Robbie Staniforth: Correct. So we're quoting our own work.

James Piper: So we're quoting our own work and I didn't even realise it was our own work. So. Yes, that's, Yeah, that's the trouble with this sort of recycling stuff. Often I realise we've written stuff about this.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So anyway, 215 billion items of soft plastic. There's a lot of this stuff knocking about.

We really like flexible plastic because it is lightweight and efficient

James Piper: Let's be fair, let's. Let's cover off, a, thing first of all, which is we really like flexible plastic. We talked about it a little bit on Nick's episode, the, Bauer Collective interview, because it is lightweight, it's efficient, it's easy for us to have our product delivered to, easy to transport, but really quite complicated to deal with at the end of its life. And constantly we're doing these balancing acts of, like, something that is really good in terms of its efficiency of getting a product, product to us versus the collection and recycling of it. So if we think about, like, I don't know, cat food, for example. You know, cat food could come in a pouch or it could come in a tin can. And tin cans are really easy to recycle. They're 100% recyclable, as we've talked about, and pouches are not. But the pouch is so much lighter, so you can flat pack it, you can transport

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James Piper: it really easily compared to the can. And so constantly we're weighing up these decisions on which is better.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I mean, there's no single answer. I think the problem always with These flexible plastics or any plastic is just what happens if it's not managed correctly. And that's the main thing that people are critical of, is if it does get out into the environment, it's likely to do more damage than some of the other materials.

James Piper: Let's just talk about how we've got this. We've got these 6,000 collection points with the supermarkets. And I can tell you, because I was involved in these discussions, the supermarkets really want to get their stuff collected and recycled. That's what they want to do. They've got no interest in having stories where it proves that things aren't recycled. That's not on their agenda. But what they really wanted to do was make it simple. And we talked earlier, about the seven different types of plastic. The reality is the most economical flexible plastic to recycle is clear ldpe. So the stuff that you are, wrapping your vegetables in, the stuff that is, a lid on a tray, that's, that is really good plastic, really easy to recycle, likely to become shrink wrap again. And because it's clear, you haven't got any of the colour contamination. So when Ellie and I are doing our flexible plastics at home, because we've got a bag of flexible plastics next to a bin that we take to a supermarket, we will often only put in there clear ldp. Because the reality is, I know that's what the supermarkets want.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, okay. Yeah. And because you're well informed, you're sort of making that educated decision that this is the best target material to be sending through.

James Piper: Exactly. Now, the supermarkets, when they were designing their bins, did not want to put on the bin, only clear ldpe. Because that is so confusing. How would you know, you know, as a consumer, how do you know you're not going to be able to make that decision? The reality is the supermarkets wouldn't collect anything. So what they did was they said, we're going to introduce bins and we're going to put on those bins. Put any flexible plastic in here? Well, they said soft plastic, but if I had my way, they would have bins that said put any flexible plastic in here.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah.

James Piper: One of the challenges, if you put a bin out that says put everything in here, you know, it's sort of like the co mingled stuff at home. So at home where the council say, put it all in one bin and then it has to go to a mirth. Right? Yeah. It's the same with flexibles. If the supermarket says put it all in this bin, it has to be Sorted, for sure.

Robbie Staniforth: It's all sorts of different types of plastics are in there.

James Piper: That's right. And the only way you can sort flexible plastics, because of the way they are, because of. Because they're flat and they're airy and they don't really like to, be sorted using machinery, they have to be handpicked. So they need a team of people with a conveyor belt. You pull your flexible plastics on and they go, oh, there's the clear LDP I want, and there's the metallized film, you know, your chocolate bars or crisp packets that I don't necessarily want too much of. And they will literally hand pick the stuff that they want and put that, in a pile for recycling. The metalized stuff is likely to go down an incineration route, but that's what's happening. You've got to pay for the sorting of that waste.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And things are changing all the time and they're trying to get sort of camera technology and stuff. We don't want to go too much into the rubbish process. but things are developing, but ultimately there just isn't the infrastructure to handle all of this material. Certainly in the UK at the moment.

James Piper: Yes. And that will change. We've talked a number of times on this podcast about flexible plastics being collected from curbside by 2027. So we are starting to see change already. We'll talk about that in a second when we talk about where these airtags ended up. But we're basically. So let's just keep summarising because we just need to keep thinking about the chain. You bring your flexibles back to a supermarket. Supermarket has said, I want this to be a really easy message for the consumer. So if you can scrunch it, chuck it in the bin, it then needs to be sorted. So it's sent off to be hand sorted. Now, this is where export comes into play, because the reality is it is cheaper to employ people in another country to hand sort that waste than it is in the UK if you go to a country. So I think there was a study that found a lot of Tesco's plastic, I think it was back in 2021, was being sent to Poland for hand sorting. So they tracked the plastic to Poland for hand sorting and then, I believe, to Turkey for recycling. And so this material historically has gone to the uk, outside of the uk, where it's cheaper to hand sort.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, sure. And when they're hand sorting it, they're trying to look for the clear plastic. is the. Is the Top one as you mentioned, because that can be recycled back into something useful, potentially a food grade item of packaging maybe, but actually more likely the kind of shrink wrap and those kind of thing, palette wrap, if it's that clear ldpa, the other materials are then more likely to be down cycled as the term might be, into another

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Robbie Staniforth: product. Something like those recycled plastic boards or recycled plastic furniture that you see. And I Remember on episode 10 when we were interviewing Nick, he mentioned that that's what was happening to the pouches that go through that Bauer Collective refill system at the end of their life once they're kind of technically compromised. I think he said, yeah, that's exactly right.

James Piper: So we got recycling with the clear plastic, monomaterial plastic that the recyclers are really looking for. We've got down cycling for anything that could be metalized. So down cycling into boards, alternative to wood, those kind of things. And there's also incineration, for energy. So you know, burning that plastic and incinerating it to get energy. And again, all of these things in theory, incineration, we're going to come on to another time. In theory, all these things could be better than landfill. So taking it back to supermarkets gives it a, the best chance of being recycled and also avoids it going to landfill. Because that is none of these, none of this report said, oh, and it ended up on the roadside in Turkey, which is the big concern that we always have, you know, is always being mismanaged and it's ending up on a roadside somewhere. This report did not say that all of the waste went either to incineration or to be down, cycled or recycled, which is exactly what we would expect. I think sometimes though we just forget that's what we expect.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, that's right. And I think when it's that problem or not problem, it's that assumption when you're putting something in the bin, in the recycling bin, shall we say at home, that all of that is good stuff that goes off to get recycled. That's the average citizen sort of thought process. Actually really what it is, is it's giving it a better chance that it might get recycled because it's unlikely to be pulled out of the general waste, the black bag waste, if you put it in there. So it's not really about this term that floats around wish cycling.

BBC Breakfast News reported on how much recycled plastic actually gets burned

It's about you can't be in control as a citizen of the whole process. You can just do as instructed and put the Materials that you are told to put in a certain place. And there has to be an element of leaving, leaving, the system to improve over time and hopefully more and more of what you put into that container. In this example taken, back to a retailer, actually gets recycled.

James Piper: Yeah. And I think that's my frustration. But everything's so black and white when it comes to the media. So, you know, the report or the headlines that came out of this report are, supermarkets are lying to you. Your waste is getting burned. It's like, well, some of it is, yeah, definitely, some of it is. And that's the stuff that can't be recycled. And the stuff that can be recycled is going to be recycled. And the reality is headlines like that just serve the purpose of making us as consumers go, well, I'm not going to bother taking that back to supermarkets because it's all getting burnt. You know, and that's kind of the rhetoric that you hear sometimes with our curbside, where people say, well, why do we even bother recycling? It's all just going to get landfilled anyway. It's like, that isn't true, you know, and the bit you don't see is it going off to a mirth, getting sorted. You know, no one has any interest in just landfilling. Landfill is really expensive. People want to recycle. It makes your waste valuable.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. And we're going to come on to the economics. But I think the one thing that I noticed is when BBC Breakfast News reported it right at the end of this sort of supposed kind of expose about, it doesn't all get recycled. They sort of asked the question of the reporter, so what should we be doing? And the reporter said, the best thing you can do is take it back to the stores because some of it is getting recycled and things will improve over time. So after all of this work, it's like, so what should we do? Should we throw our hands up and just say, just chuck it in the general waste bin. It all gets incinerated anyway. It was like, no, that is absolutely not the directive instruction. It's keep doing what you're doing. We're just saying it's not there yet. The infrastructure is coming, but it's not quite there. So, to be fair to the BBC, in terms of making sure they're not too biassed, I thought they did quite a good job.

James Piper: Yeah, I agree. I thought it was a very balanced piece. I text you saying, you know, I think that's about as balanced as you're going to get at this point. Yeah, we've mentioned economics a few times and actually the first lot, the very first line in my book, which people keep quoting me, everything could be recycled. It's all a matter of money. It's all a matter of how valuable is something. It is easy to shred, melt and remanufacture anything. We could literally do it with anything right now. I could just melt it down and turn it back into something. That doesn't make it economical. It doesn't make the thing that's coming out the other side worth anything. And so the thing that comes out the other side has to be worth more than the cost of the process. Right, and that's the challenge that flexibles has.

Robbie Staniforth: Absolutely, yeah. And it's well distilled because, so often people get caught up in these terms that it's technically recyclable. Like as in, you can do it in a lab, but actually it's not economically feasible to do it.

James Piper: That's right.

11 of 40 AirTags stayed in the UK and six were exported

So let's move to this report, Robbie, because I think people will have

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seen the headlines and they'll be interested in this. It was quite big news when it came out. So, Everyday Plastics put 40 air tank bags in plastic bundles. They tracked 20 of them to Eurokey, who's a recycler whose name often comes up when we talk about flexible plastics. Certainly they were talked about in the Tesco report in quite a negative way a few years ago in terms of a lot of that waste disappearing and going off to Poland, which I think was a surprise. but 20 went to Eurokey and they managed to track 17 AirTags to end destinations. Okay. So of the ones they tracked, this is what happened to them. So seven were turned into fuel pellets. Now, that's basically incineration, but you've kind of added an extra step. You've turned it into something that can be used as a fuel. So seven were turned into fuel pellets, three were incinerated in the UK and two incinerated overseas. Four were down cycled overseas and one was down cycled in the uk and all of the fuel pellets were in the uk. Now, I'll just pause there because what that means is 11 of these AirTags stayed in the UK and six were exported. And I can tell you this is not some exclusive. I can tell you that is a massive improvement on where we've been.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, sure.

James Piper: Like, historically, flexible plastic has all been exported. So the fact that 11 of them stayed in the UK and six were exported, like whatever happened to them, whether they were incinerated or recycled, is a massive improvement. And that's in only, a few short years. You just think. I think we're on a journey now to this massively improving, to all of this material being handled in the uk, which is where we need to get to.

Robbie Staniforth: Sure, no, agreed. And I think it's one of those things where it's quite hard to communicate the nuances of a journey towards recycling more of this stuff. But that's sort of what we're on here, as opposed to saying anything is inherently good or bad.

James Piper: 17 made it to an end destination. Of the one that didn't make it to end destinations, eight were found at Euro Key, two at supermarket distribution centres, eight at waste handlers, three had failed failed trackers and two were on a motorway in Europe. So, again, most of those was that 16, 20, 18 of them were, in the UK when they failed, when they stopped, and two were on a motorway in Europe. So, you know, of the 40, we can surmise that the majority of them remained in the uk. Okay. So I know this isn't what everyone wants to hear, I know everyone would love to hear that all recycling happens in the uk, but that, you know, that just at the moment is not what happens. And we would all love that. We would love that. That's what we want to see. But, really the scandal here would have been if it was all dumped on a roadside. And I don't. I think this massive improvement in terms of keeping things in the UK is actually a sign that we're in the right direction. We are not there and we need to make sure that the organisations like Everyday Plastic, keep doing these things so that we can cheque how much better we're getting, you know. But, I equally think the media has a bit of a responsibility to say, well, when we reported on this in 2021, everything was shipped to Poland and now loads of it has stayed in the uk and that's good, but how do we get better and how do we improve on that?

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, I think you're sort of pushing water uphill to try and, fight against what sells headlines or whatever, not necessarily newspapers these days, ad space or something online, is it? but I think really what we're sort of saying is you're going to need some quite, actually draconian legislation in order for it all to be sorted out in the UK and recycled here. Things like mandating that it just can't be exported, just make it illegal to Export waste or plastic waste or however they do it and things like mandating curbside collection because if it's just left to the like unit economics as it has been to date, it's just not quite worth it. And that tracks back all the way to the price of primary oil. And we haven't got time to get into that. But it's pretty cheap to manufacture virgin plastic. Unfortunately that's just the way it is. And so what that means is it makes it quite unviable to do all of those things you need to do that we mentioned at the top to sort and process etc. Separate grades, to make this plastic worth something.

James Piper: Yeah, and you mentioned there oil. Actually this is a good point for me just to say because I often think this, you know, we're not just talking about oil based plastics here. Ah, I have this thing about the source of plastic and we'll talk about bioplastics another time. But bioplastics are a plastic just made from renewable plants. Okay. So the source of them is different to what they end up being. I think sometimes people say you're talking about plastic, that's really bad that uses oil. It's like, no, no, I'm talking about plastic and I'm

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James Piper: including bioplastic in that. So just to be clear to anyone listening who's thinking these guys are pretty pro oil based plastic, I'm really not. I'm very pro bio plastic and moving to renewable and sustainable sources of plastic. But I call all of that plastic. And the analogy I like to think of is, you know, if we think about solar electricity or wind electricity or whatever, we don't say oh solar, it's not electricity, you know, Whereas some of these guys say this isn't plastic because it's a bioplastic. So no, no, it is a plastic that what it product it is at the end is not dictated by the source of it. And a bio based renewable plastic is the same chemically as a fuel based plastic. They are the same thing. So we should just call them plastic. And in the same way that if you have solar electricity you would call it electricity.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, no, it's a fair point I think then the waters all get muddied about what happens at the end of certain plastics life and compostable. Yeah, compostable, biodegradable. That's a whole different kettle of fish. What you're talking about James, is the fact that it is plastic. It is doing the same, the same process. And I know previously, even in like Rigid plastics like PET bottles that we've mentioned quite a lot in the podcast. They have historically been made from renewable sources, from plant based sources, rather than primary oil. So it is technically possible to be doing that. And I think, you know, we then get into things about, should we be using the land to grow plastic because we're using crops for it, or should be used for food rather than for packaging, which is a debate for another day. But ultimately lots of this plastic can be made from waste material through the process of farming.

James Piper: Sorry, we've gone a bit on our, What are we on soapboxes here or plastic boxes? Anyway, we're on something.

The problem here is about recyclability, not collection points

So the retailers who were on the BBC yesterday, from what I can see co op, said two thirds of their plastic is recycled. M and S said all their plastic is recycled in the uk and Sainsbury said the rather unhelpful, mostly recycled. Here's the problem though. I don't think everyone's blameless in this and I don't think we can just sweep it under the carpet. The problem here is about recyclability. So brands and retailers take the fact that they've got collection points in their supermarkets and then say that flexible plastic is recyclable. And, this is where I think things get a bit sticky and where I completely agree with the report that you can't have a retailer put in place a collection point, not have a huge collection percentage, then not recycle all of it and say, hey, this is all recyclable. You know what it is, is collectible. And I think we need to be clear on that. I think if by putting a collection point in, you are making that, plastic able to be collected, you are not necessarily making it recyclable. And I think you have to prove that what you're doing to it makes it recyclable before you can say that.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah, it's such a tricky balance to strike, isn't it? Because you're trying to make messages simple for citizens to understand when actually it's really complicated. So if you put don't recycle this on it and then in the second breath say, but take it back to a store, that's confusing. If you put recycle on it but then not all of it gets recycled, that's also confusing. And so it's like you sort of, at the moment in the UK we're at a position where only the sort of very green and keen are recycling this stuff. You know, bothering to bag it all up and take it back to a supermarket. The challenge certainly is going to be when these expand into 20, 27 in the UK, it all gets collected from homes and then everybody's doing it. There needs to be a very clear message to put it in this bin and it's going to get collected. How much of it gets recycled is left for another day. And that's the same with all materials, not just with flexible plastics, obviously. Flexible plastics is kind of earlier in its journey to becoming more economically viable and widespread. All of the other materials have done this over the last few decades where it's been mixed up and they haven't been able, there's been rejects, it's too small, as we've mentioned previously, to get through those trommels or sieves or whatever. And you think it's going to be recycled, but actually it isn't because it's too small. So there's lots of reasons why it might not end up being recycled.

James Piper: Rubbish or not.

Robbie discusses whether plastic coated copper cables can be recycled

And we had an email in this week, Robbie, from Paula. Thank you for emailing in, Paula. Paula had had a new aerial installed on her house and this had left yards and yards

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of plastic coated copper. So why, you know, wires, basically, and she was asking whether those can be recycled, what she should do with them. So, Robbie, plastic coated cables.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, valuable stuff that. I'm thinking back to my days at Ikea when I was asking the people who worked in the recycling bay there to clip off all of the cables on any of the electricals we were going to recycle, because if you clips the cables and had them in a separate sort of, tub, if you like, or separate container, it was so much more valuable and you could actually sell all. It's copper, you know, so you could actually get a price for it rather than it just going with electrical equipment. Unfortunately, though, it's just not that common at the home. So you can't put it generally in your recycling containers at home. It's one of those things that you have to take to your local recycling centre, or tip, as some call it. But there are some local authorities that accept electrical equipment at the curbside. For example, in Bristol, we're able to put it out with our recycling. We're very lucky we can put them out with our collections.

James Piper: And yeah, the metals used in cables are really valuable and obviously easy to recycle. We've talked about metals just being melted down super easy. So what will normally happen is a recycler will take the plastic off, that'll probably get incinerated, I suspect, because it's quite small. So they'll use that to generate energy and then they will recycle the metal. just throwing it in your general bin probably isn't a good idea. That's going to go to landfill. It's just not a good idea. and obviously reuse is better than recycling. We always say that. And there are charities that will take old chargers and cables, so definitely worth checking. And because they're valuable, I'm sure people will buy them off ebay or like a car boot sale. So if you've got lots and lots of cables, you could just box them up and try and sell them that way. But reuse is definitely better. we're going to talk about electricals. We're going to like move off packaging at some point because we're sort of getting to the end of the packaging rubbish process. We have to start moving into, like, electricals and batteries. And, we will talk about the electrical called take back legislation as part of that. so if you're sat there thinking, why aren't they talking about shops taking back these cables? That's another episode.

Okay, onto the rubbish question. So rubbish question has come from someone called Chris

Okay, onto the rubbish question. So rubbish question has come from someone called Chris. Now, Chris has emailed us a few times about our episodes, so thank you so much, Chris. And he's one of our original American listeners because he was emailing me back in episode one, I think, he really likes the sound of Bristol. He said, we've made it sound lovely and we're wonderful ambassadors for Bristol. So that's very kind. Chris, reach out to us if you're ever in the city.

Robbie Staniforth: I should say that for sure. It's a great, it's a great city. Good, I'm glad.

James Piper: Maybe we should say that about any listener. You and I love a free coffee, don't we? So, you know, if anyone wants to have a chat with us about recycling, just reach out to us. If you're ever in Bristol, we're always around.

Robbie Staniforth: But you have to buy the coffee. Let's make that clear.

James Piper: Yes, that is the deal.

Is glass made melted immediately upon collection or is it melted twice

Okay, so Chris's question and Robbie, I felt so stupid with this question, I can't tell you. I'll read the question first, then I'll tell you why I felt stupid. So Chris's question was, is glass made melted immediately upon collection and then again at, the container manufacturing facility, or do the recyclers leave it smashed as sharp bits until the moment is turned into a container? So in other words, is it Melted twice. And literally, you would think, I know the answer to this question because I'm a recycling expert, but it really got me thinking. Originally I was like, of course it's not melted twice. But then you start thinking, you think, but then who's doing the melting? And what do the recyclers do? Are the recyclers just smashing it up? Because we've always talked about the recycling process being smashing up and then melting it, and I sort of got myself a bit confused as to which company is doing which. So I'm, hoping you can sort this out for us.

Robbie Staniforth: Yeah. So it's in the process of, recycling it. It's different. Parties are doing different things. So what we've got is the, there's people sorting the glass, as we mentioned before, and smashing it up into those bits. Those bits are then transported back to glass manufacturers who are then melting it to remake it into bottles. So effectively, what we would call the, like, waste managers or the recyclers are cleaning up the glass so that it's just one uniform material, just green glass, for example, or clear glass. It then gets sent to the container manufacturers who are melting it and it takes less energy to melt that glass, as we've mentioned previously, and they're making the new container, so they are the ones who melt it.

James Piper: And thank you to Tom Wood from Rawlings, who helped us with that question. Because literally last night I was panicking and I was like, I thought I knew the answer and I wrote the answer, which is the answer you've just given, you know, in terms of just, creating something for my notes. And then I had to reach out to Tom because I was like, what if we've got this wrong?

Robbie Staniforth: Well, I'm glad I got it right. Yeah.

James Piper: You're not even reading the notes. So, you know, these notes are only

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James Piper: just, I mean, a little peek behind the curtain here. These notes are only for my benefit. Robbie just turns up. And as you all know, you all know this Robbie just turns up and talks genuinely. let's expose us here a little bit, Robbie, because I said, robbie, we know loads about flexible plastic. Let's not do any notes. And that's where I left it last night. I phoned you, I said, I don't know what time this was, like half nine. So an hour before you told me about the newspaper, I was like, robbie, we're not going to do anything on flexibles. We're not going to write anything down. We're just going to talk because we know all about it. And Robbie has turned up today and I've shown him my notes, which are about four pages, and I was like, I've absolutely betrayed you.

Robbie Staniforth: I'm so sorry you stitched me up there. But anyway, it's no change. You're the encyclopaedia of knowledge and I just shoot from the hip.

James Piper: Thank you all for listening to us chat. And remember, if you want to reach out to us, you can get us on social media where we're obbishpodcast. You can get us on YouTube by searching for talking rubbish. There you go, David. Stan, you can email us@talkingrubishpodcastmail.com we're getting good about now. We haven't made a mistake in weeks. That's good.

Robbie Staniforth: Oh, yeah, Maybe that's because you're doing it, James.

James Piper: No, no, I've made plenty of mistakes. I think one day we might have like, maybe we'll have like a subscriber level where literally the bonus episodes are just all the mistakes Robbie and I have made, you know?

Robbie Staniforth: yeah, nice clip together. There's plenty of them. You could get an episode out of that for sure.

James Piper: Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Robbie, for joining. It's been a good episode. I really enjoyed talking about flexible, good episodes. See, now normally I say it's been a great episode, so I feel like I've down cycled this one. Let's upcycle it and say, look, it's been an amazing episode. I've really enjoyed chatting to you. I'm hoping you've all enjoyed listening to us. Thank you so much for, tuning in. Thank you so much for leaving us your reviews. Thank you for emailing us. Thank you for everything.

Robbie Staniforth: Bye.

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