103. PFAS - what you need to know about forever chemicals

James Piper 0:01

Hello, welcome to Talking Rubbish, a weekly podcast where we deep into the world of recycling and discussing the truth and snappy headlines and one side of the stories. In this episode, we will finally be discussing PFAT. Ziploc bags, rubbish or not? I have a question about whether PPWR will stifle innovation and how will baked beans be packaged in our dream shop. I'm James Piper and I'm joined by Robby Stanaporth, my far from rubbish friend. Good morning, Robbie. Hey James. How are you today? Very good, thank you. Very good. Very big week for bins.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Yes, I know what you're talking about.

James Piper 0:36

Count bin face. I know, he's absolutely everywhere at the moment. He's fighting his enemy, Nigel Farage. And that has led to many interviews with bin puns, which has just been great because often I'm thinking, have we covered all the bin puns? So it is absolutely brilliant to see the memes that are coming out. I saw one yesterday that was, you know, that meme of Martin's Corsesian cinema, and he's going absolute cinema. It was Campbin Face, but with absolute binamar. So good. Like Thanos.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

When you sent me, it was the Thanos one. I am benevitable. So good. And he's representing the party recyclons. Oh. So it really does feel like he's kind of stepping on our terrain here a little bit with the influencers.

James Piper 1:24

I had a WhatsApp from someone today saying, could we interview Count Binface and maybe, and I'm just going to be a little bit careful because I'm not 100% on the political leanings of our audience, decide whether Nigel Farage is rubbish or not. Oh shame. You prepared to make that decision. Anyway, very cool. And I like that bins are getting so much attention.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Yeah, maybe there's going to be a halo effect, and lots of people are going to be talking about recycling as a consequence. Hopefully so.

James Piper 1:54

Or politics and how rubbish it is. And as we said, well, as we've said since episode 100, we're now on video.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yes.

James Piper 2:03

And so if you're on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, you can watch us as well as listen to us. And I'm pleased and amazed that 15% of our audience are doing that. Which I actually think is quite high after a couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Yeah, so people do actually flick it across to video. That's how it works on YouTube. You just sort of span it across. You can switch between audio and video. Oh, really? Yeah, you do seamlessly.

James Piper 2:25

Yeah, you do the same with Apple. So yeah, 15% of our audience watching us, which I just think is great. So hello if you're watching us out there, just do our weekly wave. So our PPWR discussion, uh, which was a couple of weeks ago, where we talked about PFAS levels and the EU putting restrictions on PFAS levels, made me think, gosh, we haven't actually done an episode on PFAS. We've spent a long time talking about them, but we've never actually done a deep dive into it.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yeah, it's one of those things where you hear it all the time now. It seems to be everywhere talking about PFAS and certainly in a negative context. So finding out what it's all about is seemingly pretty important. And I must confess, this is going to be another one of those trash talks where I just listen with intent because I don't even know what the acronym is.

James Piper 3:22

Oh, really? Although I'm sure you've got things to say, but this isn't just about educating you, Robbie. It's also because there was a study done by the University of Birmingham into Tesco, and they took 30 products, meat and dairy and fish and those kinds of products, tested them for PFAS, and found PFAS in every single sample they tested. Really? Yeah. So that made me think we need to look into whether that's bad or not and what's going on. And so we'll come on to the Tesco study. But yeah, let's first talk about why PFAS has suddenly hit the mainstream. And I actually found a Guardian article that made me laugh. That was the um comment that someone had made was PFAS is in the dust. Yeah. And then PFAS is in the thing I use to clean the dust. It just made me think of like that moniker from Friends scene where she's got the vacuum and then the small vacuum for the vacuum. To clean the vacuum. That's a bit how it feels with PFAS, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

You just get stuck in a loop. It's like looking into a mirror that's looking into a mirror and it just goes on forever.

James Piper 4:21

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll tell you what it stands for, Robbie, but I'm only going to do this once in the episode because I'm going to mispronounce it. I hate it as a term. It's much easier to say PFAS. And it stands for per and poly. So there's two different types, per and poly. Fluoroalkyl substances. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

It's just substances at the end. Even I can get that one. Yes.

James Piper 4:42

The S is easy. The P is quite easy. It's the fluoroalkyl that really throws everything. It's like quite hard to say that. But that's what it means. And I wanted to have a quick look at when Google became big for PFAS. Oh, yes. That's a terrible way of wording it. When PFAS search trends increased. Okay. So do you want to have a guess what year people started searching for PFAS and maybe when it got bigger?

SPEAKER_02 5:05

It's been a few years now. I reckon it's in the early 2020s. 2022.

James Piper 5:10

Okay. Very good. Well, when I looked at the Google Trends globally, people started searching for PFAS around 2016. So it's actually been around for a while, like 10 years, as a term that we think about. But you are right, then the last four years is when it's significantly ramped up. So from 2022 is when you see this big ramp in the Google trends when you look globally.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

So I'm just following the mainstream media, clearly. I'm just jumping on the trend late on.

James Piper 5:36

And I think it's fair to say that forever chemicals has become a huge media phrase, right? It's way more um dare I say it, sexy than PFAS saying forever chemicals. It makes everyone think, okay, I know what that is. That's something that's going to be around for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Yeah, and it's used in the same sort of breath as plastics is as shorthand for really bad stuff that we don't want getting into our system type language. And although PFAS is very different from what plastics does, the headlines are very similar. They're equivalent. Shock, horror, plastics found in X, shock, horror, forever chemicals, PFAS found in X.

James Piper 6:21

Exactly. And it does feel a little bit like that microplastic situation where the science is really complicated and the headlines have to be really snappy. PFAS are a family of chemicals. That's a key point that I kind of want everyone to realise. It's the same as plastic. So when people say plastic is bad, you instantly know that they're not talking in the right way. Because there's PET plastic, HDPE, LDPE, PVC, they all have completely different properties, completely different merits and criticisms. And there is an argument to say some plastic in some contexts is good and some plastic in other contexts is bad. And so if we just say plastic is bad, it's way too oversimplified. And PFAS have exactly the same thing where you've got thousands of fluorinated chemicals, some of which won't be harmful to human health, some of which will be very useful, some of which will be much better than the thing they're replacing. And if we just say PFAS are bad, again, we end up accidentally falling into that category of oversimplifying everything.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Yeah, and certainly plastics in many medical contexts, in terms of just our day-to-day lives away from packaging, are actually very, very useful. And when they create things like different types of PFAS, people are doing this in a laboratory or wherever, in their RD um studios and things to try and advance things for humanity, not to try and create something that's going to cause a problem down the road. And I think a lot of what these term PFAS means is actually oversimplified into why did they ever create these things anyway? When actually they created them to serve quite often a meaningful and useful purpose.

James Piper 8:09

Yeah, and in this case, they are brilliant at repelling water, oil, grease, stains, heat. So they're not just used in packaging. I mean, they're used in so much. We've talked about them in paper straws before. I mean, they're often used in places where you are replacing plastic with paper because ultimately paper has to be moisture resistant or waterproof. And so you're using it as a essentially part of your liner to make sure that the moisture doesn't get to the paper because it's resisting the moist, it's resisting water or oils. Um, and you've got a similar thing with like um nonstick pans previously will have had PFAS in them. And again, that's to stop the oils and grease sticking to the pan. That's how it works. That's the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Okay, so it's part like a barrier coating, part a lubricating barrier coating. That's the kind of thing we should think about it as.

James Piper 9:00

Yeah, I sort of uh I liken it to sort of fairy liquid or something like that, you know, which again, just to be clear, I'm not suggesting it's a PFAS, fairy liquid, but I'm saying imagine that kind of property that you're using to get grease out of something. It stops grease sticking to the surface. So so often when we have a positive, there's also then a negative that comes with that. And so with plastics, you know, there's so many positives that it brings, but the negatives are the thing we all talk about: the degradation, the pollution, all those kind of things. It's quite similar with PFAS because there's they have to be strong. The chemical bonds of PFAS are strong, we'll come on to that in a second, which makes the degradation less likely, hence the term forever chemicals. And then what can happen is they can accumulate over time. So they can land in a spot, you know, if they're if they're moving around your body, eventually they find a spot that they can land in, and then they're gonna accumulate there because more and more is going to come in because it's not breaking down. And it's this accumulation that really scares people. And it's sort of similar with plastics. We've had the same sort of discussion that if microplastics get into your body, they're either going to get expelled or they're going to accumulate. And depending on the type of plastic, depending on the size of the plastic, it can do either of those things. And often people will then study it and say, well, this accumulation is going to be really dangerous. And there's a big question mark as to whether it is accumulating to the level that people are saying.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Yeah, and I suppose that's the bit, that's the hard science that's really difficult to translate into media headlines, isn't it? It's just too nuanced. And when these studies come out, as you say, the headline around the Tesco study, it's literally in everything they tested, immediately unworried. Yeah, absolutely.

James Piper 10:41

And as they accumulate, they can cause all sorts of health issues. So PFAS have been linked to high cholesterol, impaired immunity, and even some cancers. But like with plastics and the chemicals that we add to plastic, not all PFAS is created equal. You have a group called the uh fluoropolymers.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Okay, yeah.

James Piper 10:58

Uh, which is which is just one group of PFAS. And these are the ones that we use for things like Teflon. So where you had non stick pans, you would use a fluoropolymer. And there has has yet to be anything to suggest that fluoropolymers cause harm to consumers. So often when you see like lem limits on levels and stuff, they won't, they will exclude things like fluoropolymers because they're like, well, there's no evidence that that's causing an issue.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Okay, so actually, PFAS, we need to not think of it as a collective term as generally all bad. Some might be good, some might be bad in terms of uh harm to human health. I, in my mind's eye, genuinely think of it like, have you heard the term POPS, persistent organic pollutants?

James Piper 11:44

Yeah, of which I think PFAS is within that grouping.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Yeah, and I just think of them as a pollutant, bad in all scenarios and harmful to human health, rather than question mark, maybe harmful to human health, some of which has been proved, some of which is yet to be proved.

James Piper 12:03

And this is where the media really have a part to play because uh take Teflon as an example, it's a fluoropolymer, so uh the nonstick property of it. And so the media would say, oh, Teflon contains PFAS. PFAS is bad, therefore Teflon is bad.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Okay.

James Piper 12:18

And we and we do have a duty with all these things, plastic, PFAS, all of them, to get specific on which ones are the bad ones. Have they been banned? If they haven't been banned, why haven't they been banned? Rather than focusing on brands and products that actually, just because we know the term forever chemical and PFAS actually don't have the same issues. And so when we talk about groups that cause us issues, we the main grouping that people talk about is the fluorosurfactant group. This is one that does have evidence of harm, but even then, it's broken down even further. So the two substances that are seen to be very bad and have been proven to cause human health issues, is PFOS and PFOA. Okay. And I'm not gonna go into what they stand for because we'll just be here all day describing what acronyms mean, but PFOS and PFOA. So you've got PFAS, which is the overall group. Sure. You've then got fluoropolymers, which are sort of okay. I'm not gonna say good because nothing's good, and there will, I'm sure, be issues with them, and issues will get revealed over time, inevitably. But fluoropolymers is generally seen as quite a low toxicity group. And then you have fluorosurfactants, and within that you have two called PFS, PFOS and PFOA. Now, these two are bad enough that they've actually been banned under the Stockholm Convention. The UK specifically bans them under REACH, which is our piece of legislation that controls chemicals. And so we we have already banned or we've started to ban the things that we realise cause problems. And so you what you're unlikely to ever see is kind of this complete ban on PFAS because of their usefulness. What you're more likely to see is complete bans of subcategories and then a restriction on the overall. So, like the EU, and we'll talk about levels in a sec, the EU are saying we want to reduce the amount of PFAS in packaging overall, and these ones are banned. You can't ever use those.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Okay, so then there's gonna become a categorisation of PFAS, the chemicals underneath PFAS, where they're either in the band or in the restricted stroke can-be used category.

James Piper 14:24

I think this is true, definitely in the EU. Um, however, what we have to remember, because I'm sort of making fluoropolymers sound good, which isn't my intention. What we have to remember is when we talked about plastic and chemicals that are added to plastic, and it's quite easy to remember because it's sort of halves every time, there's 16,000 chemicals that are added to plastic.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Yeah.

James Piper 14:44

There's 8,000 of them that have been studied, and of those 8,000, 4,000 have been shown to cause some human harm. So the challenge with plastic is we've still got 8,000 to study. Yeah, sure. And you've got the same issue with PFAS that what has happened is people are studying the ones that are widely used. That's just inevitable, right? It's like, oh, it's in everything, let's study that one. Oh, it causes human health, let's ban it. Someone then replaces it with something else. But that one hasn't been tested because it wasn't the popular one. And now it is popular, people will go and test it.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Okay.

James Piper 15:16

And they'll go, oh, that causes human health, and you just keep going down this cycle. So I'm not suggesting that anything under the category of PFAS or plastic is like good or should be used because ultimately it just comes down to how much has that thing been tested.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Sure. And in the future, you might be made to eat your words because as testing improves, what we make as a bold statement today about whether something's safe or not may well be proved in a year or two's time to not be true. It does show the magnitude of difficulties that governments have controlling this, though, the testing environment to try and keep us safe. We've only tested half of those plastics, and more will be invented at a similar rate to those that are getting tested, I imagine. So it's one of those challenges where you just have to go with a best case, best endeavour scenario rather than going for absolute perfection, because we do actually need these chemicals.

James Piper 16:13

Yeah, and so I guess the question at this point is, well, why not just ban them all? And the truth is because it would be very, very difficult to replicate the properties that they deliver. And if you were replicating the properties they deliver, uh the category of PFAS, if you were to find something that would replicate it, it's it can often be prohibitively expensive because uh it's just a newer technology, it's a novel technology, it's not as invested. I mean, PFAS has been around since like the 1950s, so it's a well-defined thing, sort of similar to plastic. So you have this kind of there's definitely a cost issue, and that can become a barrier to actually getting something onto market. But the understudied thing is significant, whatever you're replacing it with might be just as bad, but just not studied enough. Yeah, and this is a byproduct of the anti-plastic movement. We should note that you know paper straws, every paper straw that was tested was found to contain PFAS when we discussed that back in whichever episode the paper straw episode was. And we should just recognize that we're in this position of going, oh, maybe we shouldn't be using this chemical because we decided not to use another chemical, you know, and that is the problem with all this stuff. When you're replacing and changing and evolving, often people don't really understand what they're moving to. Oh gosh, it feels like whack-a-mole, doesn't it? Yeah, that's exactly how it feels. Exactly how it feels. Because as we always say, if there was a perfect packaging, then you can bet when you go into a supermarket, everyone would be using it. Sure. Because why wouldn't you? You'd just say, hey, this is the perfect one. There's no harm, it's great, everyone loves it, it's low carbon, it ships really easily.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

That'd make our green grocer segment really boring.

James Piper 17:56

It would, we wouldn't do it. And uh I wanted to look into I was fascinated by this concept of forever chemicals and why PFAS don't break down. And uh to be completely honest, my A-level chemistry only got me so far. So, from what I understand so far, it's a carbon-fluorine bond, which appears to be one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. And there is something to do with electromagnetism that makes it strong. But basically, carbon a carbon-fluorine bond is extremely strong and so unlikely to break down in the short term, and that's why you have this concept of forever chemicals, it doesn't break down.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Okay, so it's one of those things, just for the lay person, it's very difficult to re-separate a part of these molecules.

James Piper 18:46

Yes, that's basically it. Like so many of our discussions with chemicals, and when we talk about chemicals, and we talked about this with chemicals that have been added to plastic, there is a massive difference between detecting PFAS, being exposed to PFAS, and then harmful exposure. Those are three completely different things, and often the media will join those three things up. They'll say, Oh, you've got a rug in your living room that's got PFAS in it, right? So that's detecting PFAS. Sure. You are not okay, you are exposed to it in that you're in the room with your rug, but it's not the PFAS is not coming out of that rug. You are not the rug. You're not being exposed. And you're certainly not getting a harmful exposure level. So you might have an article of your house is full of PFAS, but you've then got to always take the next two steps, which are okay, I know there's PFAS here. Am I being exposed to it? First question. And then is there a harmful exposure? And toxicology and the things we talk about with toxicology are almost always about dose. And detecting something is not the same as being harmed by it.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Okay, and so the dose bit, I mean, it sounds like there's a lot of testing that needs to happen then in order to get to that very end third step, because it's very easy to just go around and look at the chemical composition of things and say, is PFAS in it? It's then much harder to do effectively presumably medical studies about what accumulates in the body and what does constitute the time, the kind of um exposure in terms of is rubbing against your skin enough, or do you have to ingest it in some way, breathe it in, etc.? And suddenly the science gets much more complicated and the testing gets much more expensive.

James Piper 20:33

It is worth saying that current evidence suggests the biggest exposure for most people comes from contaminated drinking water and food. So if you're thinking about how is it getting into my body, it's most likely coming from contaminated water and food rather than a household product. I found a Guardian article that I thought was quite interesting about a chemicals company called AGC Chemicals Europe who were releasing almost a ton of PFAS into the river wire each year. And this was completely legal, and they they weren't the two banned substances. So, again, just getting into the detail, they're discharging PFAS into river. That's obviously a bad story from a Guardian perspective, but it's not the two substances that cause us significant concern. And the company said, hey, we've been monitoring the river for 40 years with no significant impact from our activities. Because presumably they're monitoring for the two legacy PFASes, the ones that have been restricted and banned. And obviously they're not going to find those if those have been banned. And because we haven't found the next thing that's causing the human health issue, they're not monitoring for like, oh, what's the next thing that's being studied that might cause human health? So they might be saying, Hey, we're monitoring, and I actually don't know this, but my assumption is they're monitoring the river, going, We've got no significant levels of these two banned chemicals. Rather, but obviously they do have significant levels of PFAS because they've been putting a ton in every year.

SPEAKER_02 21:59

Yeah. I it's hard to know what is worth monitoring in that context and what would constitute it tipping over into something dangerous when potentially the PFAS that they are using and that they are permitted to put in to the river, do we know that they are safe or not? Question mark.

James Piper 22:20

Yeah, big question mark. And and uh I guess their argument is it's not enough to cause an issue. But I just think I can't believe that companies are permitted to put PFAS in the river. That to me is just crazy.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Well, this is the reality of chemicals and manufacturing, and lots of things get discharged into our rivers because that's the way we're kind of set up to say this is how we get rid of much of our waste. And it isn't something we often talk about because we think of physical and and and uh solid waste rather than liquid waste.

James Piper 22:56

So to summarize where we've got to so far, we have a family of chemicals with a very strong bond. We have international bans on two, which is PFOA and PFOS, and it is difficult to ban PFAS more widely because they're extremely useful. So, what we now do is talk about the levels of PFAS, which is something we discussed in our PPWR episode a couple of weeks ago, because ultimately what we're trying to do is reduce how much PFAS is in any given product or packaging. And in the EU, they have restrictions on PFAS levels in drinking water and they work in like micrograms per litre. So it's very small amounts that are allowed in drinking water. I had a little look, and in the UK, I don't think there's any statutory standards for PFAS in the drinking water. But the drinking water inspectorate did say on their website we help develop the EU standards, and we broadly agree with them. So even though there's no statutory targets, I guess they agree with what the EU are saying. So you would hope they would be monitoring to that sort of level. And then the EU have also, so they've that's drinking water, the EU have also looked at food contact packaging, and here they talk about parts per billion. And so there's kind of different rules depending on whether you're looking at a specific PFAS chemical or an overall PFAS level. But basically they say you can't have more than 250 parts per billion total PFAS in food contact packaging.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

So this is like essentially saying the ones that are banned are banned. You won't see those anywhere. There are some that are legal for use, but actually we don't fully know what the problem might in the future be with them. So therefore we'll allow certain parts per billion, a certain small, and it I mean it is a very small amount, isn't it? If you're talking about parts per million, parts per billion and stuff, then they're they're kind of saying that's how you limit that exposure by just not allowing it in the food packaging.

James Piper 24:52

Yeah, absolutely. And if you live in the US, as we so often say, good luck to you.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Really?

James Piper 24:57

Absolutely, because Joe Biden in 2024 did put a restriction on PFAS in drinking water, and they were limiting it to four parts per trillion, which sounds good, but the four parts per trillion were actually on the banned substance. So the PFOA and the PFOS. Ah. So it's not like they were saying, oh, this is the PFAS limit. They were saying this is the really bad PFAS limit. So that was obviously under Joe Biden, so I'm sure people are wondering what's happened under Trump. Well, in May 2026, the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, announced it would repeal the limits and delay the regulations. So for example, the um PFOA and PFOS ban has been delayed to 2031. And so it is for this reason I think that Eric's interview is so important in episode 90. Sure. Where he said, Look, I have a US lens and I've realized there's PFAS in drinking water. And so when we talk about levels, it brings us nicely onto the Tesco story because we mentioned at the start there was this um Tesco study. It was commissioned by Food Rise and conducted by the University of Birmingham. You can tell from the Food Rise press release that was that came out in June this year, so last month, where they're coming from and what and what their views are just from the first line. So the first line was the UK's biggest supermarket is profiting while selling us food containing forever chemicals and keeping customers in the dark. It's time to stop Tesco selling us toxic food. And they also had a subheading which was every little hurts, which I just think is you don't want to be having that, do you? That they obviously have their position, which is this is bad, we shouldn't have any PFAS. They looked at so the University of Birmingham looked at 30 meat, dairy, and fish products that were sold in Tesco, and as I said at the start, they found PFAS in every single one. And the highest concentration was in cod fillets at 1.198 nanograms per gram. Okay, now nanograms per gram is the same as parts per billion. Oh, okay, great. Right, parts per billion. It's the same thing, right? There's that there's that many zeros after a gram if you're looking at a nanogram. So it's the same as parts per billion. So what they basically found is 1.198 parts per billion in codfillets. And that was the worst one of the 30. Okay, fine. Now the EU are putting in restrictions of 250 parts per billion. So we're at less than 0.5% in the worst thing they found in Tesco. And as we discussed in episode 101, companies are already nervous about these PFAS limits and whether they can meet them or not. So I actually think, and I haven't spoken with Tesco, but I'm assuming Tesco are like, hey, this is pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Yeah.

James Piper 27:40

We're at 1.9198 and the limit's 250.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Yeah.

James Piper 27:44

And so I can understand why there's a headline that's PFAS has been found in all 30 samples, but in all 30 samples, it's at a level that would just not cause any concern, either to the regulator, to the supermarket, and really shouldn't cause concern to us, because you're always going to get some residual uh PFAS because they've been used since the 1950s. They're in the environment. There's nothing, they're forever chemicals. You know, the definition of that means that 70 years later, they're still going to be in the environment, they're still going to be consumed by the things we eat, they're still going to enter the food chain. And so inevitably, uh I would be surprised if we find food that doesn't have trace levels of PFAS. So it is really important the regulators are saying, well, this is how much we're going to allow, you know, and this is how much and you have to restrict it in your food chain. You have to test for it, etc., etc. It's all good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

And so when you read through the study, then by the time you got to the end of it, you were sort of like, oh, okay, I'm not so worried about shopping at Tesco in this example, because they're not letting through, you know, gross amounts of these chemicals that are going to bioaccumulate in my body.

James Piper 28:53

Yes. Well, I'm going to give one big however, which is what you just said about bioaccumulation, because of course the nature of accumulating in your body means that even small amounts add up. And over the course of your lifetime, even the tiniest amounts will contribute to your overall profile of what's in of substances and chemicals that are in your body. And so when you combine that small amount that's in quadfillets with drinking water, your environment, environmental exposure, I think it's here that restrictions start falling down. And every individual is so different. You know, I don't eat much fish because of um because I think fishing is a major source of plastic in the ocean. I don't eat much fish. But someone you might eat codfillets every night, for example. And so you and I have very different profiles in terms of how much PFAS we're taking in from that very specific because that's the worst thing they found in these Tesco samples. Whereas I might be eating the thing that's the least. And so just inevitably we have different profiles. And so I understand why you have to do levels on a per-product basis, but I don't want to pretend that that solves the problem because everyone is different and what people consume is completely different. And even in tiny amounts, PFAS can have a big impact. So I guess the question is as we're wrapping up this section, what what should you do? Should we throw everything away, replace every nonstick pan, start drinking bottled water? Probably not. I mean, I think if I lived in the US, I'd probably drink bottled water.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

I'm going to be going home and saying, I'm sorry, I can't do the vacuuming anymore. It's simply too unsafe.

James Piper 30:28

Absolutely. And so as we discussed back in our Black Plastic episode, which was episode 26, replacing perfectly functional products simply because they've appeared in a headline often creates more environmental problems than it solves. And in this example, that's almost definitely true because I just don't think we're experiencing enough PFAS in our environment to be personally concerned. I think as a as a society we should be concerned about what we're doing to our environment. But I don't think we as individuals should worry too much about it because I just think we are now in a position where there are so many restrictions coming in. But again, I'm talking from my EU perspective, not my US perspective or elsewhere in the world. I'd personally take away three things from today's trash talk. So hopefully this is useful. First, PFAS is not one chemical, it's thousands of different chemicals with very different properties and different levels of evidence behind it. Second, finding PFAS isn't the same as proving harmful exposure. So we need to read studies like this Tesco one with a pinch of salt. We need to think, what does that actually mean? And remember, a nanogram per gram is the same as parts per billion, so that's quite helpful. And I really wish everyone would just use the same terminology, it'd be much easier. Um, you know, we have modern analytical equipment that's incredibly good at detecting very small amounts of chemicals. So inevitably we will get more reports of things like we found this tiny amount of chemical in this thing because we've just got better equipment at detecting it. But I wish the media spent more time on dose. I've said that so many times in this podcast. And finally, the real challenge, I guess, isn't whether your frying pan contains a fluoropolymer, it's that accumulation of PFAS in the environment and particularly in water. And we need to know that compounds, we need to basically get to a point where compounds that are problematic stay out of the ecosystem and ultimately us. And so we need governments to really take the lead, and particularly uh the EU in this case, but we need the US to listen to the EU and learn from it. I think governments have to be much stricter at restricting it and ignoring companies who are saying we can't do this. Because we're hearing that in the EU. They're still doing it. 12th of August, it's coming in, you know, and there's not much these companies can do about it. And so while they're kicking and saying, Oh, we won't be able to do this, I guarantee they will. They will by the deadline because they have to, otherwise, they can't sell their products. And as always, our job isn't to tell you what to think, it's to give you enough context so that the next time you see a headline that contains the word PFAS, you know what questions to ask. And this is one of those topics where the science is still evolving. I'm sure we'll come back to it again and again. And there are definitely genuine concerns, still big unknowns, and plenty of headlines that oversimplify an incredibly complicated subject. We had Moira on Discord who was commenting on our panini stickers. I'm not sure she thought this would make an addition and correction, but I thought it was hilarious. Um, because she said that her partner isn't allowed to collect panini stickers for the same reason as me. Uh, you know, once you start, it's like Pringles. Once you pop, you can't stop. And if you're collecting stickers, you're screwed. And so when they were watching us on video, oh yeah. This is why this is this is quite funny. So they were watching us video, and Moira's partner saw me put this pack, you know, just over my shoulder here on Ron. And her partner had turned to her and said, There might be a rare shiny in there. It's now Schrdinger Shiny. You heathen. And I just thought that was a really nice description of what the Ron Wall means to Moira and her partner, you know. And it will stay there forever. So maybe like on if we ever get to a final episode, like the episode we know is final, we'll do like an unboxing of the new sticker.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

Is that the Was there a shiny in there?

James Piper 34:23

Yes. And then um, I got an email into the bin box from Molly, and the subject line was just dead bird. And I thought, if you if you want to get on the show, just put dead bird as your subject line. I'm instantly like ready to read this.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

I mean, I'm definitely interested.

James Piper 34:39

Yeah, so Molly works for a charity in London that has a beautiful garden. On Monday, she came into work, tired and a little hungover, and found her colleagues were chatting. And at her arrival, they turned to her and said, Molly, there's a dead bird. There was a lot of chat about double bagging and food waste, but as a proud influencer, she went straight to the local council's website where she was directed to gov.uk. Now, this is another edition. So we had live was it two weeks ago or last week? We had your fox no two weeks ago, we had your Fox ID edition. Yes, absolutely. But if it's a large mammal, you can get it chipped. With birds, because of avian flu, all dead birds need to be logged with defra and then they get picked up by a, and I'm using quotations, bird guy. And she just wanted to add that in for any B influencers who also have to face a dead bird on a Monday morning. Oh, very useful. How good's that? And finally, as all Ub Influencers will know, we exist on the cutting edge of sustainability communication here at Talking Rubbish. And despite me learning how to video edit, which brings our recordings and release frighteningly close together, brands will still make changes that invalidate our episodes at the last minute. And just before our episode last week went out, so our greenwashing episode went out, I went onto the Added Ads website the day before just to check everything and realized they'd taken off the recycle content filter. Really? And that definitely wasn't us because it was the day before our episode meant. So it just doesn't exist anymore on then. It doesn't exist, yeah. So if you uh shame it. Well, yeah, I mean, I must admit, I felt this was a step backwards because I was like, I actually quite like the recycle project. Just get it right. Just get it right. This does occasionally happen. So if you were listening to my episode thinking, I'll check the added ass website, and it happened to be four in the morning when the episode went out, and you thought, gosh, they'd taken it down quickly. It was gone the day before the episode went out. Okay. We'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, EcoSurety, who are on a mission to rid the world of unnecessary packaging. They help brands navigate the tricky world of extended producer responsibility, but that is not all. They also collaborate on some incredible recycling projects and consumer awareness campaigns for those tough to recycle materials. If you're an organization looking to make smarter packaging choices, check them out at ecosurety.com. And the best thing you can do to help our podcast to grow is to tell your friends and family about it, or you can leave us a review. And if you leave us a review, you could be Robbie's review of the week.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Great, yeah, and we've got one in a five-star on Apple from West of You. Up to date at 100. I am now up to date with your marvellous pods. Did it on episode 100. Problem with that is that I am now rationed to one a week instead of two or three. It's great the in-depth descriptions you give of the process of recycling. Most descriptions on any process always leave me with more questions than answers. Not with yours. You have covered all angles. The laugh. Well, any laugh that makes you laugh is a good laugh. Who wouldn't laugh at that laugh? That's the most number of laughs in one sentence. You definitely get read out if you're going to talk about laughing that much.

James Piper 37:59

It's very good. Thank you so much for our review. And the review does go on to discuss an email the reviewer sent with some calculations about dental floss and dental tape. But I will save that for another day. So thank you for the in-depth email with your own calculations. Thank you, West of you. You can follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. Also join our Discord, it's the easiest way to engage with us and listeners of the show. And the link to all of those things is in the show notes. Rubbish or not. Today's rubbish or not comes from Discord, someone called Sin Sua, the username Sin Sua. And they were asking about ziplock bags. And I found a stat. I'm not sure I believe this stat, but it was something that five trillion are used every year.

unknown 38:53

Wow.

James Piper 38:54

Which I think was about 600 a person, so a couple every day. I'm not sure I could believe it, particularly because the same report then went on to say that an American family uses 500 a year, so just over one a day. So I couldn't quite understand how Americans would be less than the average, because I would imagine they're using a lot of Ziploc bags. So I'm not sure I agree with the 5 trillion, or maybe even the 500. But one thing is for certain, we use a lot of Ziploc bags. Not us personally as a world. And the brand Ziploc is actually owned by SC Johnson. Like the Hoover before it. The brand becomes the product, doesn't it? We call everything a Ziploc bag.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

What would the alternative be? Resealable plastic sandwich bags.

James Piper 39:37

Sandwich bags or freezer bags. Oh, okay. Freezer bags, what you see often.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

Um in terms of are they rubbish or not, I think increasingly, like many of the soft and flexible plastics, this is one where the tide's turning. Maybe five years ago we would have said rubbish, and now I'm gonna say or not. Okay. Just like other flexible plastics, it can go in your however you choose to collect up and take back to the local retailer. There are ten local authorities in the UK who are already collecting these. So maybe you're lucky enough to live in somewhere like South Gloucestershire, and you can already get it collected from your home uh in the blue bags that they give. So I'm gonna say this is uh recyclable or not.

James Piper 40:24

Very good. I would agree with you. I guess the question is what do you do with the zip? Do you a rigid? Because I think if you've got like a join, you know, one where you pin pinch them together. Yeah, then I completely agree. It's just completely flexible.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

That's the one I'm thinking of.

James Piper 40:41

The zip, like the rigid zip on top.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

The one that has that hard piece of plastic that runs along the top. I think cut off the rigid zipper. Well, reuse it, probably is the first thing we should be doing. Reuse the bag, wash it out, reuse it. We do at home.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Uh, this is one of those things I do occasionally smoke a cigar, um, which you may or may not know. Do you? Yeah, I do. And sometimes you don't want to smoke the whole cigar, you know, buy like a Cuban, quite a large cigar. And so what you're supposed to do is chop the end off once it's gone out, so that you can smoke the second half on a different day and put it into a ziploc bag, an airtight ziploc bag, to relight it. So I reuse a ziploc bag for this purpose.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Why are you having cigars?

SPEAKER_02 41:24

I think you've just lost all the audience.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

It's nice.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Not a celebration, just like a Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a celebration. Yeah, special occasions. Okay. But it probably happens maybe three or four times a year. Okay. And I don't always want to smoke the entire cigar on that one moment.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

That's thrown you, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 41:48

It's really thrown me. So, okay, reuse the bags. Use them specifically if you smoke cigars.

SPEAKER_02 41:56

There are other uses for ziploc bags, but I wouldn't recommend reusing the cigar bag for then food or something like that.

James Piper 42:04

I don't I don't use them very often because I've got a drawer full of old takeaway containers which I use more than anything. Yes, we agree. Reuse if you can, use old washing-up water to wash them out, cut the zip off if you're going to recycle them, and if you can't reuse them, find an end-of-life use like collecting up dog litter or whatever it is, um, so you don't have to buy dog bags. Rubbish news. I have some exciting talking rubbish news this week. Oh, yes. Yes, we have been long listed for three British podcast awards. Yes, this is big news. This is massive. Yeah, it's amazing. It's huge. And uh so the British Podcast Awards is a huge event uh in the podcast industry. So much so that if you get shortlisted, I think there's last year there was a BBC News article about who'd been shortlisted, you know, akin to like the BAFTAs. Whoa, okay. If we get shortlisted, prestigious. We might end up on the BBC, like just as enlisted as a finalist. So the long list is something they've introduced this year. It's sort of got through the first stage of judging. So if you get through the first stage of judging, you end up on a long list. And we are one of only eight podcasts out of, and it's a lot of podcasts because there's 27 categories. So there's 355 podcasts overall that have been nominated, and we are one of eight that have been nominated for three categories. So we've been nominated for lifestyle, impact, and education.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Oh, so we're hoping for a clean sweep, like one of those really successful films at the Oscars that just wins everything.

James Piper 43:38

Oh, I'd like to win one. That would be nice. But we have to wait and see. And so we'll find out in a couple of weeks whether we've been shortlisted. And if you follow us on social media, we'll just keep everyone up to date on that. But if we get shortlisted, that will be very exciting. Yeah, that would be cool. Because then we'll be kind of in the top four or five podcasts in those categories. At the moment, depending on the category, we're like top ten. And so I'm excited for a couple of weeks' time when we'll find out whether we've been shortlisted.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

Oh, well, it's great to make the long list all the same. It's awesome. It's so good. Fingers crossed. And my rubbish news this week comes from. I think you might have seen this one because I saw it in multiple places. New Forest Man handed £1,000 fly tipping fine for leaving a cardboard box next to an overflowing bin in Tesco.

James Piper 44:26

Oh, really? I didn't see it.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

I have not seen this. So this guy had moved house, basically, and um was clearing out uh the cardboard boxes after having moved house. And so he went to his local Tesco where they have like community recycling facilities in the car park that's actually serviced by the council. Okay. But Tesco's let their car park be used for it. Now, rubbish was overflowing everywhere, and so he couldn't leave it into the bin, like a sort of 1,100-litre wheelie bin uh for cardboard boxes. So he decided to clear the litter around the cardboard litter and put it into his own box and leave the box neatly in front of this bin. However, he left his address on the box. So when they came to clear it, and they obviously saw, look, it's a mess here, they looked through all of the waste outside of the bin, found this guy's address, and then posted uh a fine to him for illegally depositing waste outside of his designated recycling facility. And that could have carried up to a thousand pound fine. What they said is they clear these bins a couple of times a week, which, judging by the evidence from the photo, can't have been very true that particular week. I don't know whether the heat wave or something caused them to be a bit slower on their services in the new forest. However, they did when he appealed, they downgraded it to failure to control household waste rather than this illegally depositing it. And that meant that it reduced the fine down to £300, £150 if he paid it by a certain date. Now, what he should have done is gone to a proper recycling facility or left actually a small bundle of cardboard next to his bin at home. So if you're going to leave a cardboard box next to a recycling bin, it's your one at home you should leave it next to because most councils accept a small bundle of extra cardboard outside of your box or bin or whatever it is you have to collect cardboard at home. So strangely, this chap in leaving his home, that was the problem. He could have just disposed of it at home more easily or gone to a full household recycling centre. This is just one of those mini ones in a car park. So while I do feel sort of sorry for this chap um getting a fine, especially given he was clearing all the litter and trying to do the right thing, it does show that fly tipping, if you're not putting it inside a bin and you don't have permission to leave it somewhere, it is still fly tipping.

James Piper 47:13

Yeah, better to do a large-scale fly tip, you'd be paying £4.50 a ton instead of £300 for a cobbled box.

SPEAKER_02 47:19

We cannot endorse that, James, just to be clear.

James Piper 47:23

People have listened to previous episodes where they've seen my sarcasm at least. Rubbish question. So we had a question on YouTube from Seminoff Nikolay. So thank you very much for this question. Oh, very good. More questions on YouTube, maybe because of the video. Yes. Now our video's up. People are watching it. It's great. We're getting some questions. And this one was actually very, uh, very good. Um, this has come up a couple of times just in our professional life, but not so much on the podcast, which was a question around PPWR. And specifically, how will startups developing new packaging materials for which there is no established recycling stream, how will they work? Because if if PPWR is all about creating sorting, genuine collection sorting and recycling, how can you set up a new packaging material that doesn't have those things?

SPEAKER_02 48:16

Yeah, and this made me think of a new ish term to me that I've been hearing PACUK in the UK talk about in the context of what about new niche and novel materials that don't fit into our normal recycling system. And they're thinking about how to create an innovation pathway.

James Piper 48:34

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 48:35

So basically, through uh the fees that you pay through EPR, they're sort of saying, what is the kind of glide path to something becoming recyclable? And at the moment, we're looking at the more obvious things like flexible soft plastics. You know, we say on the podcast they're not rubbish, they are recyclable. You can take them to a um uh retailer and uh to your local council site, but actually to the average person who's just looking at their council services, they're saying this is a niche and novel material and it doesn't fit with our current waste management systems, therefore it's rubbish, and it kind of will always be rubbish until I'm given a service provision that changes that. And for in this example of the question, if you're a new business coming up with a new format that's much more niche and novel than just say flexible plastics, it does pose a significant problem for how you can get adoption of your material when frankly the people that you're trying to sell this new packaging format to are saying, does it comply with PPWR? Will it be collected or not?

James Piper 49:45

I guess the short answer is it does make market entry more difficult. It does. If you've got to prove the collection sorting and recyclability, having something new under PPWR will be much harder if it's a truly novel product. Because you get this chicken and egg situation, recyclers are unlikely to invest in infrastructure until some sufficient volumes of material exist. Brand owners are hesitant to adopt material unless it already meets PPWR. The startup can't generate volumes without those two things being true. So you just end up with this horrible situation of I don't know how to bring my product to market. So what is likely to happen, I think, is a trend towards new packaging that fits in with existing systems. So if you take something like Knoplar, you know, Knoppla is a coating that's applied to cardboard and they've developed it so that it doesn't change the cardboard recycling. You can still put it in cardboard recycling. So it's it doesn't actually affect PPWR. They meet that requirement. And so you're more likely to see coatings and layers and things like that rather than like compostable packaging, maybe, which is like a whole new system. I think we're unlikely to see developments in those areas, but more likely to see developments in areas that don't change recyclability.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

What hopefully, if people listen to the advice on greengroser, they'll start to see that this is what everything should be packaged in anyway. Absolutely. And we'll start to see more uniformity in systems.

James Piper 51:16

Greengrosser. Speaking of which, that was a nice way to end that one, to lead into this one.

SPEAKER_02 51:23

Uh so I was thinking this week, and we have talked about it in previous episodes. Well, you talked about your love of bold beans. So I thought we would go for beans, but then I thought we probably do need to be specific. So we should just be going with baked beans. Baked beans, okay. So what's my favourite. What do you think?

James Piper 51:44

Gosh, well, we have so many options, don't we? We could do the glass jar, the steel can, the plastic pot, plastic pouch.

SPEAKER_02 51:51

And that's before we come to any niche and novel innovations that might not have a pathway into PPWR.

James Piper 51:58

I think actually a lot of our decision is going to come down to portion size. So um uh it was interesting because uh snap pots, you know, the Heinz snappots, they were introduced in 2007, and I was looking at the press release from when they were introduced, and Heinz basically introduced them because they were like, more people are living alone and more people want convenience. So the whole reason for snap pots coming into existence was portion size. Sure. Which I hadn't actually appreciated. Not wasting half the tin.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

I very often do I buy it mostly in steel cans, and very often I'm putting the Pringles top on top of the can half-filled can because I'm not eating all of them in one go.

James Piper 52:36

So so much of this is who's our customer? Are they a family, single person? So there's a bit of a we've got to just part that for a second. Snap pots are actually multiple layers like a carton. They're actually more like a toothpaste tube because they're a layer of polypropylene, EVOH, I think there's other layers in there as well to stop oxygen and light getting in. Because actually, whatever the format, they all have quite long shelf lives because they're essentially treated like aseptic packaging. Okay. So everything goes in sterilized, and then they're sealed really tight. So the snap pots have a have a very tight seal on the top. Cans, they actually cook beans in the can. So you put beans in half cooked. I mean, this is the same with all canned products. You're putting things in essentially half cooked, sealing it, and then you cook it in the can. Okay. And um, and so all these things are very sterile. And so I think I think really it it completely comes down to portion size here. What are we designing for, Robbie?

SPEAKER_02 53:31

Oh, okay. Wow, challenge back to me.

James Piper 53:33

The family of four. Okay. Well, with a family, I'm a big fan of the can. Big fan of the can. Even though it's got a plastic liner, I think because you can extract the metal from the incinerator bottom ash. Yeah. And because there is value in the steel, I think in this instance, when you're looking at a family of four, the can is probably the best option. Yeah. I think if you're looking at a single portion, the snap pot's fine, but I actually just prefer a pouch, which they don't really do bake beans in a pouch, but they do do Heinz do like chili beans and stuff like that in pouches. Yeah. It's probably just a bit too liquidy to put it in a pouch. So I think the snap pot serves a purpose, you know, the single person. Yeah. But I think for a family, I'm I'm up for the can.

SPEAKER_02 54:20

Okay, so the can goes into our greengrocer.

James Piper 54:28

Residual rubbish. This is something that has happened to us this week that has made us feel like an emoji. And mine was, I don't know what emoji I was. I feel like every week I'm frustrated. So I don't want to say frustrated. It's not frustrated, I think surprised is more what I felt. And I mentioned last week that I'd been posting out books to listeners. So thank you, Binfluencers who have asked for a book. Um, they've all got or they're all going out. I'm not gonna say they've all gone out, but in the next couple of weeks, everyone's I can see a few on the desk over there.

SPEAKER_02 54:58

They definitely haven't all gone out.

James Piper 54:59

They need posting, but they are packed up. Um, anyway, the envelopes I used to post them have proven to be more interesting than I thought they were gonna be because I looked at this book and I thought I can't put it in a cardboard box. That's a lot of cardboard, unnecessary cardboard. I just need to get them posted. And I found in my local corner shop like these plastic envelopes that are LDPE and that said on them made with 50% recycle content. I thought that's perfect. I want anything that's more than 30% recycled content. They fit the book. Oh, hand in glove stuff. Yes. So I landed on that. I thought I don't want one of those envelopes that's got bubble wrap on the inside. I don't want cardboard. Great, found this thing, 50% recycle content, thought I need a load of them because I'm giving away a lot of books. And so I just bought a stack, you know, and I didn't really look at them. I looked at the top five, bought a stack. Brought them home, looked through them, started packaging them up, and realized it went from 50% recycle content in the top few to 30% recycled content in the bottom view. They were a different batch or something. Different brand. Oh, different manufacturer. And so the 50% ones had on them like uh make sure you take this back to store for recycling or words to that effect. And the 30% have nothing written on them about recycling. So, first of all, this is a plea to influencers to forgive me when you get your envelope and you think this is only 30% recycled content and there's no instructions on what to do with it. Because some people have got that. Some people have got 50% with instructions, some people have got 30% without instructions, and I can only apologize. But I sort of decided that rather than returning the 30% ones and replacing them with 50, which would have just been extra trips to the store, someone's going to use the envelopes anyway. I might as well just use up what I bought. So I have decided to do that. But if you're wondering why it's not quite as good as I perhaps could have been with the envelopes, it's because I was tricked by a corner shop.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Very good. And uh funny that I start this section laughing because my emotion this week was rolling around laughing and shocked, actually. Shocked and laughing. That's quite a nice way to be shocked into laughter because last week you shared a picture with me uh that was absolutely hilarious, and this was uh the folks at Polytag, Alice, who we interviewed in episode 25, they ran a summer quiz dressed up as James and Robbie from Talking Rubbish. It was unbelievable. It was so good. Two women with very good fake beards, and I even got a uh a sort of bald uh cap or whatever over the top of their hair, and it was very, very funny and well received. I saw it going up on social media too, with our blessing. Uh so great to see that they're entertaining the troops at Polytag uh with a quiz, presumably all about rubbish and recycling. Uh, I know they're big fans of the podcast and they're doing great things in the world of waste. So it was just so brilliant and funny to see our images uh out there in the real world.

James Piper 58:09

When we started this podcast, we there was not even a remote possibility that I would suggest, well, maybe one day someone will dress up as us as a company quiz. Like, can you imagine how bizarre that would have sounded? Less than two years later, here we are with people dressing up as us.

SPEAKER_02 58:30

We now are a fancy dress option.

James Piper 58:32

The thing for me is Alice's beard for me was actually quite big. And uh I thought, well, I mine isn't that long, but just the day before I turned to Ellie and said, I think I'm gonna grow my beard a bit longer. So I got the opportunity of showing her the photo, going, What'd you think? Oh, that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 58:50

I must admit they got my beard. You look absolutely spot on. It looks like me.

James Piper 58:54

And the beauty is now we're on video. I can put this photo. So let's just give everyone a moment to load up their videos, okay? And if you've loaded up your video, you'll see the photo now. That's a great residual rubbish. Thank you, Robbie. As always, thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We absolutely love getting to do this podcast each week. Join our Discord, follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. Everything we've discussed today can also be found on our Linktree, and the details to all those things can be found in our show notes. There is nothing left for me to say other than see you next bin day. Bye. Bye.