51. Why does your glass bottle contain microplastics?

SPEAKER_00 0:01

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 discuss microplastics in glass bottles. Are cocktail sticks rubbish or not? And I have a question about whether we need to use bin liners in our rubbish bins. I'm James Piper, author of the rubbish book, and I'm joined by Robbie Stanforth, my far from rubbish friend. Hi Robbie. Hi, James. How are you today?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Yeah, very good, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Uh you tricked me. Did I? No. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. That doesn't sound like something I would do. It was very clever. So I think the listeners last week, you know, we talked about the Resource Hop 100, and I think, you know, I admitted that I had sort of taken over our social media to skew the votes in my direction. Yeah. Okay. That was a good it was good to hear a confession from you, James. I admit that. So I went on LinkedIn the other day and I was pleasantly surprised, extremely surprised, to see that you had said, you know, please vote for my co-host. He's an amazing person, should be knighted, I think you said. I can't remember the I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something along those lines.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

I'm not sure I used those words.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yeah, sir Sir James Pipe. Something along those lines. Anyway, so I you were like, here's footage of me voting for James, and you put up a video of yourself voting for me, which is great because you must have actually done that to get the video. And then you said, please vote for my co-host here, and you put a link in. And I commented saying, because I I said to Ellie, I literally went up to Ellie and went, What's the catch here? Why is Robbie being Why is Robbie being so nice? And she was like, Oh, that's lovely of him. So I just went, Well, that's very kind. Thanks, Robbie. A little suspicious, as you would expect, but I can't work out what the downside is for me. You know, we're in this competition. It was so suspicious that you said vote for James. And then you just wrote, click the link. And I clicked the link that you'd put in the post and it took me to your page. And then I shared my link saying for anyone understandably disappointed by Robbie's deceit, please use my link. Right, competition on.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Yeah, resource hot 100. Hopefully we both make it. May the best man win. Best of luck to you.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Trash talk. Today's trash talk is, I think, quite a fun one. It's quite interesting. A little news story that I spotted that I thought, ooh, there's going to be some more detail in there that we can get behind. And this was a news story about microplastics in glass. And the question we are asking today, is there really microplastic in a glass bottle? And how could that be? I guess is the question.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, I mean the headline didn't quite read right, did it? It's like, how can there be microplastic in a glass bottle?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

I did feel a bit guilty about this one because since we've done our little rebrand, we've obviously changed our format and you've now got a bit more work to do. You've got to go and find rubbish news and residual rubbish, and you know, it's not all on me, which is great. And this one was on our LinkedIn for a few days, I think. We both had noticed this story. And you put it in rubbish news as your rubbish news for this week. It is big news. And I put it in as the trash talk, and unfortunately, I get to choose the topics. So you had the casting vote. So uh it's good enough for a trash talk, but I'm so sorry, Robbie, because I made you double your work. You had to go find some other rubbish news. Oh, there's plenty of news out there, don't worry about that. So I think uh I say it was on our LinkedIn. I'm intrigued to know how many people have heard this story. I'm sure there's lots of our listeners who see it in their kind of sphere, because lots of our listeners are really into the sustainability space, so they're going to see it within their sphere. But I personally don't think this one has gone very far, and we'll talk about the media towards the end and why this may be an issue. But um I'd love it if you could let us know in the comments. I think Spotify, we have comments, don't we? So if you're listening to us on Spotify, let us know in the comments whether you had heard this story. If you don't listen to us on Spotify, chuck it in the Discord and we'll have a look at how many people had actually heard this story. Because for me, this was massive news. I saw it everywhere. When we come onto the media bit, you will see that actually I don't think this was a very far-reaching story.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Yeah, no, I I think it's one of those things where you sort of if you're very interested in it, you would click the link and find out. But actually, is it a much-ado about nothing? Well, let's find out.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Oh, well, I don't know. It's very interesting. It's from a study published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, which was published in May 2025. It became news towards the end of June. I think um I think it was something like the 20th of June. There seems to have been a press release that was widely picked up, or not widely picked up, I should say. And it came from now, I'm gonna get this wrong, ANSES Lab. Now that's all capitals, so do we think it's ANSES Lab or do we think it's ANCS?

SPEAKER_02 5:10

I'm going for ANCES.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

They were looking at different levels of microplastic contamination in various beverages sold in France. Now, this is specific to France, but you know, it'll be true around the world, the findings.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

I don't think they're doing anything specifically different in the way that they package up drinks there than anywhere else in the world. D'accord.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

They looked at plastic, glass, cans, cartons, and cubertainer. Ever heard of a cubertainer? No. That's a cubertainer. I think it's bag in a box. I've never heard of it. Cubitaner. They also called cartons bricks, which um I'd never heard the term cartons as bricks. Because they're sort of in a brick shape, aren't they? You know, those like Tetrapack cartons that hold like a portion of water. The whole report referred to them as bricks. And is that a translation issue or something? It was an English report. I don't really know. But anyway, it was cartons. Yeah. Cartons is what they were referring to. Okay. So a lot of drink studies in the past, particularly ones that have looked at microplastics, have focused on bottled water and tap water. So if we think back to episode 11, which I'm going to refer to a few times here, which was the do we eat a credit card's worth of microplastics. That was all about how many microplastics could be in our water. And in that study, they felt most of the microplastics we consume came from our water. So they focused on drink on tap water and bottled water. There are an increasing number of reports looking at soft drinks and things beyond water. From what I could tell, there have not been any in France, which is why this report was seen as really important, because it was within the French ecosystem. And the study went way beyond water. It looked at water, soda, beer, and wine. And soft drinks, so soda, included things like colas, teas, lemonades.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Okay, so quite a wide-ranging study then, most of the drinks that you would buy on the supermarket shelf.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah, and that's literally what they did. They went to the shops in June 2023, so two years ago, and they bought a load of drinks. And they focused on brands that could be found in a wide range of container types, because what they didn't want is like one brand in Tetra, one brand in glass, because obviously you could get some SKUs in the results. So what they did was they looked at brands that could be sold in very in lots of different types of packaging, and they focused in on those brands. They didn't name any of the brands, it was like in the report, they just say brand A, brand B. So I don't know exactly who they bought, but those are the but that's how they did it. And what they did was they took six samples from each of the brands, and all the samples were taken from the same production batch.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Oh, great. I I like the way that they uh just literally went to the local supermarket, well, Carrefour or something. What's your favourite French supermarket, James? Well, you name the only one I know.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

O'Champ. You've named the only one I know. Carfour. Now I think they literally did go to a supermarket. I mean, as with all reports, it's like we established a protocol to procure the uh liquid beverages from you know, it's like we went to the shops. We bought some drinks and six of each. Exactly. And they used over a hundred drink samples in total. So, you know, it's a pretty good study. It I think one of the interesting things about this study is it seems to be quite independent. Often when you get to a study you ha and you see something, you know, you see a result, you often think, who funded this? Yeah, sure. Go straight to the funders. If it's funded by the drinks industry, it's likely to say that whatever packaging that particular funder wants to say is good can be made to look good. And if it's funded by an NGO or an organization trying to say a certain type of packaging is bad, then it's quite easy to tell that story. This one seems to be quite independent. It's actually just a study for the sake of doing a study, just to find out what microplastics might be in our drink. And I think that's quite interesting.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yeah, I think um the more independent the study, obviously, the better. And when it comes to this, you sort of think really, most soft drinks manufacturers, or beers or wines or whatever, they'll sell their product in any container. They don't generally have a preference from one to the other, do they? They just will use whichever is either the cheapest or has the best marketing story, gets the biggest sales and stuff. So even if it kind of was funded by one of these brands, you'd think they're not really looking for a specific result potentially.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

This study is probably one of the simplest methods I've ever read. I loved it. Really? So I'm gonna understand this, am I? Well, we poured out the drink on a filter, we dried it.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Should we have done this experiment ourselves? We could have done some primary research here, James, by the size.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yeah, so interestingly, microplastics were found in all samples. I guess that's not a surprise. We all know the prevalence of microplastics, but every sample, regardless of material, microplastics were found. Now, this is where there's a bit of controversy because they focused on a size between 30 and 500 micrometers. Now, that is the diameter, uh roughly the diameter of a human hair to about a grain of sand. Oh gosh, okay. In the world of microplastics, those are quite big. 30 micrometers of the five.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Those are visible to the human eye.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Just maybe not the 30, but yes, f uh 500 micrometers, definitely. What they said in the study was actually it would be very difficult for them to accurately identify plastics smaller than 30 micrometers.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Okay, so they just didn't have a microscope like amplified enough?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Robbie, leave the science to me. Magnifying inly enough. I think it's more. One should get smaller than that. It might be plastic, it might not be plastic. It's difficult to note. And we're gonna come onto this one day when we do the um episode on microplastics in the brain. This is one of the challenges with those studies is that they use a specific type of uh I'm doing it now. They use a specific type of analysis to assess whether plastic is in the brain, and then it may pick up things that aren't plastic. So once you start getting smaller than 30 micrometers, it is very difficult to know whether the particle you're looking at is plastic or something else. So they didn't go smaller than that. Now, is that the reason that's worth noting is because whenever anyone talks about potential impacts of microplastics, what they're talking about is it getting into our body and into our organs and all those kind of things and the brain, as we've mentioned. And really, for that to happen, the microplastic has to be smaller than 30 micrometers. So they're not necessarily counting microplastics that could be harmful to health. They're more interested in the quantity that are in the, you know, that are in the in the bottle or the can. So the data is fascinating. If we start by just looking at drink type before we get onto material, there was actually a wide variety between drink type. So soft drinks had roughly 30 microplastics per litre. Beers had about 80. Ooh, a lot higher. Wine was down at eight. Ooh, just a tenth of what beers had. And water was at three.

SPEAKER_02 12:49

Okay, so that's quite low compared to the others. Yes. Is that a good analysis?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Or my favourite part was when I said 83 and then eight, and you went about a tenth. Some quick maths. So just to put that water figure in perspective, so three microplastics per litre. Back in episode eleven, when we talked about microplastics in credit card, we were talking about the fact that you might consume 1,769 particles a week from water. That was the assumption to get to the credit card size.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Let's assume you drink two and a half litres a day, which is the recommended amount, and it was all from bottled water, then instead of 1,769 particles, you'd only have 51 pieces of microplastic. Which is actually really easy to remember because it's the episode number. I wish every piece of data was the episode number. And that's before you even get to the size, which was the main issue in episode 11. So if we assumed that all those pieces of microplastics were the size of the biggest piece that they found in the water, so 500 micrometers, then it would take 21 years to eat a credit card. Okay. So I'm completely digressing, but what I'm trying to do is link our comments in episode 11 with this study here to show that literally that study that says we eat a credit card's worth of microplastics a week cannot be true. And we said that back in the day, and we're saying that again now, even with this new study.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Yeah, the way I remember it and talk about it when people ask me, because I do get asked about this one quite a lot, is just they the assumption was that you could see the mic microplastics in the glass of water that you'd be drinking at home, and we just know that that is not the case. That if you saw microplastics in the water coming out of your tap, you probably wouldn't be drinking it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

And it was like big microplastics, like big shard uh big shards of it. Not like this, not like a grain of sand. Exactly. So they couldn't explain. I mean, it's worth noting at this point that the researchers have said we can't explain why water is so much lower than everything else. So just as a reminder, soft drinks 31 microplastics per litre, beer 83, wine eight, water three. They could not explain why water was so much lower. And they felt this needed more research. They could explain wine, and we'll come on to that in a second. The big news and the thing that shocked them, the thing that they said just went against all their expectations, was that drinks that were sold in glass bottles had more microplastics than any other container.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Which they must have been totally shocked by. Yeah, they uh they came out and said we expected the exact opposite result. We expected to find microplastics in plastic bottles, and we expected to find very few in glass bottles.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Yeah, and I mean that's totally logical.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Yeah, so if we if if we move away from the drink type and into the actual material, they found an average of a hundred microplastic particles per litre in glass bottles, which was five to fifty times higher than the rate detected in plastic bottles or metal cans, depending on the drink type. So a hundred microplastics per litre compared to something between two and twenty microplastics in the other materials. Wow. That's crazy. So the question is, why would glass bottles have more microplastics than anything else? And why was wine so low if wine is sold in a glass bottle? So these th you know these things aren't adding up.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah, and I I definitely, when I saw the headline, I just couldn't get to what the heck it could be.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Okay, so it's actually to do with the lid. It's to do with the cap. And this is why wine has low microplastics because it typically has a cork, and why other glass has high microplastic levels because it has a metal cap.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Metal cap though.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

This is the bit that totally confused me. Okay. How is a metal cap causing microplastics in a glass bottle?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Okay, let's talk about it. The cap is uh always fascinating. I once went to a conference, I think it was in Prague. I spoke on a I I spoke, I did a talk around around it, but the conference was called the Closures Conference. It was entirely a whole conference dedicated to the lid.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Oh my gosh. I I hope whoever was chairing the conference made the closure joke at the end in his closing remarks.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Yes. God, they m that must be a really exciting conference since the tethered bottle caps come in.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

Oh gosh, yeah, it's been big over the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

All they talked about. It's like, should we should we merge the closures conference and the bottle conference? Because we're now we're now joined together.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Oh, the two conferences come together. Isn't that great? Across the divide.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yes. And I actually remember attending a British soft drinks event many years ago, and I think at the time, I think it was again that morning I seemed to go to conferences at the time that reports are released. There'd just been a study released that showed that the act of twisting the cap off a bottle released microplastics into the drinks. And it was all anyone could talk about. You know, you open the cap, bits of microplastic come off. What does that mean? And so caps have long been a a discussion point about how they could transfer microplastics. So how does that happen with glass? Because you're not really doing that, and there's not really plastic, it's a metal lid. Well, I guess the uh revelation here is that actually those metal lids do have plastic on. And they have a plastic paint coating. So if you were to buy a drink, you know, so like a beer bottle or something like that, if you look at it, it's coloured. It's not normally a metal colour.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Oh yeah, so what the underside of the lid Oh the whole lid in general. The whole lid they paint the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Yeah, the whole lid. Yeah. And those lids basically have a paint on that's plastic based. And I guess when you open it, f flecks of paint can come off in the same way that they can come off, you know, it can come off on a plastic bottle. Now that is actually not what's causing these microplastics here. What's causing the micro plastics or the significant contamination is the way the lids are transported and stored. So lids are transported in bulk, and you know, they they're painted and they're put in whatever a bag or a box and they're sent off for capping. They enter what is known as a uh what was it? A yeah, they enter what is known as a cap hopper, which I spent way too much time on YouTube looking for the process. But basically a giant funnel that has all the caps in, and then they sort of come out the right way up and they get put on the bottle. So all these caps are rubbing together, and the paint that's on them is scratching off, and it's come you know, it's getting stuck to the underside of the bottle. So then when you put it on the bottle, you've now got a cap that's got quite a lot of microplastic on it.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Okay, so it happens in transit when these bottles are on their way but haven't actually seen a soft drink or a beer yet.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah, it's the cap it's exactly that. It's the cap. As the cap is moved around, it's causing scratches. And they did find that. So what they did was they put the caps under a microscope, they looked to the colour of the plastic-based paint, and they realized that the plastic that they were finding in the glass bottle was the same colour and the same type of plastic. So they said with some degree of confidence they felt that this was a likely thing. What they actually ended up doing was once they'd removed the lids from the glass bottles, they put some new yellow lids on them, and then they just checked that the yellow paint was going into the bottle, which it was. So they were able to test this.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Okay. So so basically though, but are they saying that in the process of opening the bottle it's releasing microplastics or not?

SPEAKER_00 20:53

No, they're not really saying that. That was a bit of a red herring from me, I think, just to mention that that was a big deal back in the day, and it still is a big deal. I mean, that is something that happens as we open bottles, particularly with these metal ones, you know, you use a bottle opener, it's going to bend it a bit, a bit of plastic's gonna come off, it's gonna enter the air. So those are still concerns, but I think this report was actually more focused on the transport and how it gets there, because what you need, I guess, is the microplastic to end up on the underside of the cap in order so that when you're bottling it, the microplastics are coming off into the drink.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

It's dropping into the drink. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

I see. They did go further. So they the reason they did this recapping with the yellow caps, the new metal caps, is because they wanted to compare different types of cleaning. So what they did was they blew air onto some caps and they tested the difference. And they also blew air and added alcohol. So they had three methods like a normal capping process, a capping process where you blow some air over it beforehand, and a capping process where you blow some air and wash it with alcohol. There wasn't a huge amount of difference between the blowing air and washing it. Washing it with alcohol. It wasn't worth that extra step. But there was a huge difference between cleaning the cap first and not cleaning the cap first. And just putting it straight on the bottle as they had been doing. Exactly. It dropped the quantity of microplastics by 60%, 6-0. So their conclusion was actually it's definitely worth just transporting them slightly differently so they don't scratch. And blowing air over them before you do the capping. So that was the conclusion of the report.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Wow. Okay. So I can see why people would be very frustrated by the headline of microplastics in your glass drinks container.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah, and I don't blame the glass industry for being annoyed about this. I think the glass industry, their reaction has ranged from silence, a lot of them haven't commented on it, to completely annoyed. Because the headline focused so much on the glass bottle, and it's actually the cap. Yeah. It's actually the plastic paint. Yes. And so I feel sorry for them in that regard, but at the same time, I do think but one comes with the other. You have the metal cap, because you're in a glass bottle, they sort of go together.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

As we said, the closures and the bottles have aligned.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Yeah, their conferences joined And and I guess they feel the results are probably more nuanced. I found some press releases to say, hey, these results are way more nuanced than the headline is saying. We should be focusing on the cap, not the bottle. You know, I completely understand that. Now I I wasn't actually a hundred percent sure if the cap actually required the paint, because my recommendation was going to be stop painting on painting.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Painting them, yeah, just have a nice sort of metal coloured lid.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Particularly because a lot of these caps have like a little plastic you know, like when you open a beer bottle and it's got that little bit of plastic on the inside stuck to the inside?

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Yes, like a a a sort of disc, plastic disc on the inside.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Exactly. I assumed that was the food contact piece. So you you actually didn't need to paint them because I guess the reason for painting is that you're stopping steel, you know, the steel cap, reacting with the liquid. So you paint it to give it a protect a protective coating. Um I did wonder if it was just for branding and marketing. I did spoke speak with an industry expert who would like to remain nameless, and of course we will honour that, who said food safe coating is applied to the steel caps to prevent rust, and then brands do utilise the space for branding. So I guess it's because it's dual purpose, it's unlikely to go away, and it does sound like it's potentially needed to keep us safe for food contact. So I think my recommendation is okay, if we need to keep using the caps, then let's clean them before they get capped onto the bottle, because in transit they're likely to release bits of plastic.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Okay, yeah. So and that seems like something that c they can very easily implement that's gonna decrease microplastics by 60%. Seems a worthwhile activity to me. Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

And I mentioned at the start that I am intrigued how far this story went, and that is because I think this story was massively under-reported. I had I think it's fascinating. I think it's a genuinely interesting story. It ticks all the boxes for media in terms of it's got microplastics, and you know, you just expect these things to go quite wide. I had a quick look, let me run through these. The Daily Mail and the Independent reported it. Yeah. And the Daily Mail, classic headline. It's a classic headline. Your beer's killing you, that sort of stuff. Here's all the people who didn't report it: The Daily Mirror, The Guardian, The Telegraph, the BBC, The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Express, The Eye or Sky.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Wow. Okay, fine. So they probably exercised their editorial skills and said this is a non-story?

SPEAKER_00 25:52

I would bet my house and all my life savings and my pension and everything that if this study had concluded that there were more microplastic in plastic bottles, all of those people would have reported it.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Okay, I see. So they're sort of saying, look, this isn't why would we go and shoot down a glass bottle? It's a nuanced story that really isn't in the public interest or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

I think there is a fear that if you've spent a lot of time saying plastic's really bad and we should all be moving to glass and aluminium, and then you have a story that says, actually, in this instance, if you're trying to avoid microplastics, then this specific format is complicated. And I'm just going to say that, I'm not going to say it's better or worse, it's just complicated. I think that makes the media a bit afraid of the story that they're trying to tell because they want to tell a story about how plastic is bad and everything else is good. And I, as we've always said, this podcast is about truth, it's about finding the truth. I think this study is fascinating. I think the results that have come out are really interesting. I certainly do not blame glass, I blame the cap. You know, so I recognise the issue here. I recognise that there is quite a quick fix. And actually the advantage to these kind of reports is that we can implement those quick fixes. So the glass industry or the bottling industry can now go, let's clean the caps before we put them on the bottle.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Yeah, and I I saw a great quote from the Five Gyres Institute that said the real takeaway is that the processing and packaging of food and beverages as a source of microplastics contamination and improvements can be made to have a big impact in our exposure. While no packaging is perfect, they say glass remains a better option than plastic, but reusables remain the gold standard for a healthier future. So it was quite interesting to hear people coming out and saying, look, let's not get too over excited about this. It's a great thing that improvements can be made and the study was done, but we shouldn't all mass panic and stop using drinking out of glass bottles.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

I do wish they had a little asterisk on that glass remains a better option than plastic. What do you mean? Like in what regard? I think you can't Yeah. We gotta get NGOs and organizations a bit better at this. Like, glass remains a better option than plastic. Asterisk. Because it's reusable, I agree. Because it's recyclable, I agree. Because it's low carbon, no way. You know, and we need to you I'm gonna call I'm just gonna say, because I I suspect they listen, the five got five jars guys, because we talked about them quite a lot of our ocean plastic stuff. We can't just make blanket statements that one thing is better than the other without qualifying it. Because there are lots of examples where that's true, and there's lots of examples where that isn't true. Additions and corrections. So in episode 45, we talked about the meal deal. Had lots of movements on this meal deal. This has become a new talking point for us, I think, Robbie.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Uh yeah, it was about the sort of you d you feel guilty about getting a coffee cup, but you wouldn't necessarily feel equally as guilty for getting a plastic bottle or aluminium can with your meal deal.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Well, I think the challenge is that they make it cheaper, don't they? I've had this when I forget my pat lunch and I've bought a sandwich, and I go, oh, now I've got to get the drink, now I've got to get the snack, because or side or whatever we called it, because um it's cheaper. And I it is extremely frustrating when you don't want to drink.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Yeah, no, and and we had a photo sent in from Nick, one of our listeners, and I can identify the supermarket, but I won't, because I think it's the same across all of them. And Nick was saying that he always brings a water bottle and a reusable cup, so he only gets the mane and doesn't take the drink. Um, but the difference here was six pounds for a drink, a snack, and your mane, a sandwich or whatever, versus four pounds fifty for the mane or sandwich on its own. And he definitely thought that it encourages consumption and isn't the behaviour we need.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Yeah, now we had a user on Discord called Mint in it. Mint in it. Okay. Mint nice in it. But like in it spelled like allergy, you know, I think. Oh, okay, in it. Yeah. Mint in it. Who said I feel a bit guilty about the drink that comes with the meal deal because I don't need it. I'd really rather drink water. But the sandwich snack combo is cheaper if you get a drink. So I do a bit of reverse stealing. I get a sandwich or salad, a bar of chocolate and a drink, pay for it as usual, then I put the drink back on the shelf. I'm sure security have watched me do this and haven't been challenged yet. What do the supermarkets think to this?

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Wow, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Yeah, now we uh that's gonna affect some stock control, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 30:59

You think you It definitely is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Now we know the supermarkets are listening to this podcast, so can you guys email in? What do you think to reverse stealing? Because I'm up for this. I'll do this too, if they come back and say it's fine. I suspect they're gonna come back and say you're really affecting our stock control. But let's let's find out. If you're listening to supermarkets, tell us if it's a problem. I actually had a really funny story about this meal deal thing because uh we were filming this week. I've been doing some work on reusable cups, we're gonna talk about this and reusable food packaging. And we were filming uh people in Bristol and asking them what they thought about reusables. And I was having this really nice chat with this lady. I just sat on a bench with her and started talking to her about reusables. And I said, What about the meal deal? You know, what about when you and we were filming, you know, she was on footage. I'm gonna have to dig this footage out. I said, What do you think of the meal deal? Because I feel really guilty when I get a drink with the meal deal. And she turned to me and just went, Why don't you bring your Pat lunch? I felt like I'd been so told of. I was like, literally looked to camera and went, I don't know what to do with this. I'm gonna get this footage and I'll put it on my socials because it's it was so funny. Sudden panic. She's got me. A few episodes ago we talked about when you bring your wheelie bin in and we said it's very British to have a look in the wheelie bin first before you bring it in. Well, we had an email from a listener in Bristol, Zoe, who said when she used to have a wheelie bin, she'd always check before bringing it in back from the street because sometimes a random passerby would use it as a street bin. There'd either be something recyclable in there or some food that would go rotten before the next collection. Ugh, the dreaded bin juice, she said. Therefore, a quick check is a sensible thing to do.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Ah, yes, yeah. Make sure that there isn't recyclable stuff going in there by mistake.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Yeah, but now Zoe's what, climbing into the wheelie bin to get it out? Like, what's the plan here? It's quite deep. Tip it upside down. Tipping it out into the street. Okay. And leave it. Just let it blow away.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

Blow away in the wind. Definitely not. I do not think Zoe's going to be doing that. Thank you, Zoe.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

As always, 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. Robbie, do you have a review of the week for us?

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Yes, I do. A very good one. And I think it was uh this is nice because it was directly related to the episode that we did on flat recycling. It it came in from Titanic Translator. It was about episode 47, and it says Invaluable. Such an accessible episode with inexpensive, easy to implement, tried and tested ideas to combat the issues we face in our block. Contamination and dumping. Have forwarded to residents and manager. I've repeatedly asked for signage, so I love the four clear communication points in the evidence-based report. So we were amplifying a report from Re London in that episode that talked about how you can improve recycling rates in flat recycling. And it's brilliant that Titanic Translator found it so useful, and hopefully so will those residents and the manager of the block that he he or she forwarded it on to.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

I actually received quite a lot of emails from people saying they'd forwarded it to the people who manage their block of flats. So that's really nice. Thank you so much for that. And you can follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkinrubbishpodcast 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 you've probably noticed we're referencing a lot of things from our Discord because it's where we get a lot of communication with our listeners. The link to all those things is in our show notes, as is the link to our petition, which is about banning the word composteborn. Dog poo bags which can't be composted. Please take a second to go and sign that. As I said, everything that you need is in the show notes, so just click through on the episode. Robbie, I've been listening to lots of podcasts recently, and I thought I'd recommend one to our listeners. So it's the How to Academy Podcast. Have you heard of it?

SPEAKER_02 35:31

That's a new one on me.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

Very, very interesting. So they invite the world's most inspiring leaders, activists, scholars, and artists to share ideas on transforming our lives and the world. Some of the speakers they've had, I mean, Jane Goodall, we've mentioned on this podcast before, big fan. Christina Figueras from Outrage and Optimism, who we have also mentioned on this podcast before. And Robert McFarlane. So just at some examples of speakers that they've had. They've had all sorts of conservationists on how we can rewild different corners of the world, how to nurture the planet, all those kinds of things, looking at things like climate crisis and how it affects us. Just a brilliant, brilliant podcast, well worth checking out. It's available wherever you get your podcast. So have a look. That's the How to Academy. Rubbish or not? So I had an email, Robbie, from your daughter via your partner. So remember the email address is talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com asking whether cocktail sticks can be recycled.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Okay, so they did write in. Did you expect this? They were sort of chuckling away in the background when talking about were toothpicks and wooden skewers rubbish or not after a recent barbecue. So they must have gone away and wrote this in. I'm glad we're covering it because I don't think we actually talked about it in real life when they asked me the question. I I brushed it off as they're mocking me, I think.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Oh really? Yeah. Oh, I'll look out for more emails in the future then.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

Don't encourage them, James.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

So what do you reckon? Cocktail sticks, rubbish or not?

SPEAKER_02 37:16

I think that they are rubbish, because you can't get wood picked up to recycle at home. Although Yeah, it could be home composted, maybe. I'm gonna go with rubbish. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Yeah, I think you're right. There's two problems with cocktail sticks. They're made of wood, which is not widely collected from the home, and they're small. Yes. As you say, they do actually have an advantage for home composting because that's where wood and being small work really well. You know, if you were to put a massive stick into your home composting, it would take ages to break down. But a tiny twig, it's going to break down much faster. So I do think that is the best route. If you've got a home compost, I would put it in there and see what happens. I suspect it won't do any damage and it would probably be quite good for the compost. You could, in theory, take them to your local tip and put them in the wood bin. That would be okay, because it's pre-sorted, and so you could just do that. I found lots of websites and manufacturers of cocktail sticks who go, All our cocktail sticks are recyclable, and then don't give any information of how to recycle them. They just say just check locally. It's like, well, that is not helpful. No local council tells you what to do with cocktail sticks, trust me.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

They're wood, so naturally you do think it's recyclable. You know, can be sort of used for a multitude of purposes. The problem is the collection, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Yeah, and unfortunately what this means is Google AI is so skewed. Because if you search are cocktail sticks recyclable in Google, Google comes back and says, Yeah, they're all recyclable, because obviously all the manufacturers write on their website they're recyclable, and Google's just summarising what it reads online. So it's just one of those things where it's like, I do feel like these AI summaries can be gamified. Because if you just manufacture something that isn't recyclable, but write that it is. Google will pick it up and say, Yeah, that's recyclable. So just a watch out that I had, I think, in terms of Googling this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

Not exactly a source of truth there, is it, particularly? But on the reusable equivalence, don't let my daughter make you think that I don't walk the talk, by the way. We were using metal kebab skewers that are reusable.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Not what she said in my email. She said, Don't listen to my dad. He hates the planet, she said. I think it's a words to that effect.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

There was not a single kebab wooden skewer to be seen in the household.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

I need to say I'm joking, because she will be listening to me. She'll be like, that's not what I said in my email.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

She absolutely would not have said that.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

I'm joking.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

So yeah, the alternative, obviously, to those long uh kebab sticks, the wooden skewers, is metal ones work actually better to be honest, because they transfer the heat through the kebab and cook the middle a bit better than the kind of charred wooden sticks you get. So there's a reusable one. And I also had a quick look and saw that you can get metal cocktail sticks too. And I literally saw a picture of one of these being used with an olive on the end in a martini, and I thought that advertising piqued my sort of James Bond uh wannabe interest. Looks suave with a reusable metal cocktail stick uh in my martini.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Rubbish news. So this week I spotted uh quite an interesting story actually about the Green Claims Directive, which is a piece of legislation coming out of the EU. And this was a bit of an odd news story. So I just was writing it up and I thought actually it's worth just talking about what's happened here because it's very weird. And you may read the wrong news story that gives the wrong impression on this one. So the EU is often top when it comes to environmental issues. They've done lots of things like banning certain chemicals and focusing on reuse and focusing on EPR, and the EU generally does a really good job with environmental stuff. Their research found that 53% of green claims give vague, misleading information, 40% lack evidence, and 50% of green labels had weak verification. So they were pretty dismissive of quite a lot of this greenwashing that we discussed in episode 46. They were working on a directive which would have required companies to substantiate those claims. And the sticking point for this directive, so the reason it's not progressing, is because it includes micro enterprises, which are companies with fewer than 10 employees who also have under 2 million euro revenue. Now, unbelievably, that makes up 96% of companies in the EU.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Oh wow. Okay, so the vast, vast majority.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Yeah, and I guess the feeling from the EU officials is let's not make all these micro companies have to do this stuff, because what we actually want to stop is the big companies just making greenwashing claims and affecting the micro companies who are trying to do really good stuff. So that was kind of their logic. Yeah, so this would create a crazy admin burden for small companies, which a lot of EU officials feel isn't necessary. Now, this led to a commission spokesperson saying the commission and intends to withdraw the Green Claims proposal. So you will find a lot of news stories saying the EU is withdrawing the Green Claims Directive, which was a real concern because it's actually a good bit of legislation, we should have it. I was excited to see it progress and then devastated to see it stop. And then suddenly the commission came out and said, Oh no, we don't actually mean that. That spoke person's wrong. We only mean we we don't think we should continue the Green Claims Directive if it includes micro enterprises. So we're back where we were. It's still out there, it still could happen. And we wanna I can't wait to see what happens. I'm hoping it progresses through. I don't think it necessarily needs to include micro companies. So I hope they resolve this. But a very odd story that, you know, a spokesperson went out and said, hey, we're deleting this piece of legislation. The commission then had to come out and say that person's wrong. And that led to a load of news stories about it being withdrawn, which in themselves, those news stories haven't been withdrawn. So if you search it in Google, you might think that the Green Claims Directive is withdrawn.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

Yeah, okay. So it's not gone forever. It just needs to be amended so that it can pass through.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Yeah, I don't think anything's changed. So this news story is no news.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Nothing to see here. Thanks so much for updating us, James. You're welcome. So the news story that I found was that scientists have been using bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol. Now, James, did you know that paracetamol came from oil?

SPEAKER_00 43:54

I genuinely did not. And this news story also came across my desk because we had someone, I think it was on Discord apologies if it wasn't, saying, Can we please turn the tents from Glastonbury into paracetamol because the campers will need it after all the drinking that they're doing. So, you know, we were having this conversation about what happens with the tents, and there was this let's turn it into paracetamol for the festival goers. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

That's brilliant. Plastic tent waste into paracetamol.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Maybe that'll come again soon. Oil-based paracetamol, tell me more.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

Yeah, well, I had to go down a wormhole. Now we haven't got enough time to cover it all, and I probably wouldn't be able to do it justice. But effectively, paracetamol is traditionally synthesized from oil. And that that is true. There are other ways of doing it, more natural forms from uh sort of wood-derived things, but that is the traditional way that paracetamol has been made. As we know, there's not a lot of natural stuff in many of those kinds of medicines. They're synthesized in a lab and therefore things like oil are totally part of the process of making them. But what this news story said is that chemists have discovered, and this was from the University of Edinburgh, that E. coli bacteria could be used to create paracetamol, which is also known as acetaminophan, from a material produced in the laboratory from plastic bottles, basically. And the Professor Stephen Wallace, who was the lead author up there in the University of Edinburgh, said people just don't realise that paracetamol comes from oil currently. And I think that is totally true from anyone I've spoken to about this story in the last week, uh, and obviously on Discord with those tents and things. So I can confirm, Professor Stephen Wallace, you're absolutely on the money. Most people don't have a clue that paracetamol traditionally comes from oil. But what researchers did was they incubated PET, so that's the plastic commonly found in drinks bottles, with a harmless strain of this E. coli. And now they had to genetically modify this E. coli so that it would translate into what would become paracetamol. And they did that using two genes, one from soil bacteria and the other from mushrooms. So clearly they were using some uh natural things uh rather than uh raw crude oil or whatever, to convert this plastic that could become paracetamol. Now, scaling it up, they were very light on the detail as to what it would take for this to become the norm, but it absolutely has been scientifically proven that you could potentially start using plastic waste to create paracetamol.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

Great. I mean all these things are super interesting until you get to the scale question. And also, is this a good use for our plastic? You know, if you can take PET, which is widely recycled, and recycle it back into a plastic bottle. These kind of applications are really good for end of life. So you've recycled that bottle ten times and it's got to the point where its structure's so weak that it can't be turned into a wassel again. Great, let's turn it into paracetamol. It's better than incinerating. But I don't want to be taking virgin plastic and turning it into paracetamol, which I suspect is what they're doing in this lab, because they're gonna want the quality control of the plastic. So it gets them a headline and it is very interesting. And learning paracetamol comes from oil is something fascinating. But I bet any money is difficult to do with recycled material.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

Yeah, not necessarily something that's gonna happen in the next couple of years, but it's brilliant to see more research on the plastics issue, and hopefully, we will find more and more uses so that this plastic doesn't just have no home at the end of its life.

SPEAKER_00 48:00

Rubbish question. So we had a question in from Emily on Discord who was asking about bin liners in general bins. So she said, I don't tend to use black bin liners for my rubbish, I just put whatever rubbish I have in the black wheelie bin loose. I always wonder though if this is right or not. I just don't see the point in adding another plastic bag to the waste stream, and my bin is always collected. So I wondered if this could cause issues in the handling process in the energy recovery centre. I did actually ask Emily how she does this because for me I was thinking to my waste, I could probably do it, but I would have some liquid or something in there that, you know, would mean that I needed a bin liner. So she said that she only ever has a very small amount of actual rubbish. She throws it loose into the black bin, and all food waste is wrapped in paper, which she gets from the local market when she buys bread. She doesn't throw any liquids into the rubbish bin, it's always dry and always cleans rubbish before putting it in the bin, so has just got into the habit of very clean rubbish, so doesn't need a bin liner. We also had Louise on Discord coming in to say she also does this, has a very small bin and empties it not very often. She was saying the last time she emptied it was like three weeks ago and it was only half full, and also has the habit of cleaning everything to avoid contamination. So again, two amazing listeners. Thank you so much, Emily and Louise, who are putting in so much effort, not just with their recycling, huge amounts of effort with their general waste, which means they don't need bin liners. What do we reckon? Do we think that's okay?

SPEAKER_02 49:34

Well, I have literally never thought about this because I do exactly what Emily and Louise are doing. So I also have a small ten-litre bin for my general waste inside the house, and what and it has a liner in it. So I put the liner inside that bin, but when I take it out to my wheelie bin, I don't pull out the liner with it. So the liner stays in my bin for like six months inside the house, and I just tip out the rubbish into the wheelie bin. So I'd literally never thought about could this cause a problem further down the line in the energy recovery centre? And mostly because the bin just gets tipped into the back of the truck, it gets squashed and compacted by the the various sort of claw um inside the machine, and the bag might get split almost straight away on the street, I assumed. But what do you think, James?

SPEAKER_00 50:33

I also thought it was fine. It's not something I do. I do take a bin liner out to my wheelie bin. But I'm now questioning whether I need to do that. I don't I could definitely not do that. Um I don't have enough liquid in my in my bin for that to be a problem. I do wash everything. So I think that could work. I certainly for like bathroom waste, we don't have bin liners. You know, we would just put that directly in the bin. So I thought it was fine. I had a look at a few council websites, none of them stipulated that you had to use a bag. The only thing Bristol Waste said was if you've got like nappies or pads, it's worth putting those in a bag. So that'll be for hygiene reasons. So that was okay, that made sense. I was completely ready to wrap this up, and then because it was on Discord, we actually had Stephen come in on Discord saying actually his curbside waste has to be in bin liners in the wheelie bin or they won't collect it. Oh. I asked him where he's based, and it was Cornwall, and on their website they say you need to ensure all waste is contained within a rubbish bag or sack before placing it in your wheelie bin. So I'm throwing this out to Cornwall Council. If you're listening, because there will be listeners from Cornwall Council, why? Why does stuff need to be in a bin bag? And anyone else, any other listeners who have found their council say I can't go through all 400 websites. So if you're listening to this, why don't you have a look and see if your council will let you put it in unbagged? And if they don't, let's compile a list and let's ask them why.

SPEAKER_02 51:54

Yeah, no, that definitely seems a mystery to me, especially if they're using one of those compact uh bin lorries that you mostly get for wheelie bins. I'm wondering if sometimes when you see the uh litter waste uh from street bins, they take those black bin bags out and it goes on a cage on the back of a truck and they're not crushed. I'm wondering if parts of Cornwall have that kind of service instead of one that compacts. But I can't see any other logical reason.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

Yeah, I can't imagine that from houses. But I actually really like this idea. What if we stopped selling bin liners once food waste is mandatory? Like once every council has to collect food waste, what if you couldn't buy bin liners anymore? That would make everyone use their food waste collection service. So you were allowed food caddy liners, of course, you could buy those, but you couldn't buy bin liners. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_02 52:44

What just say there's no need for a bin liner?

SPEAKER_00 52:47

You don't need it, you're using your food waste. It'd be so bold. I think if I was in charge of a council, that's what I'd be doing. Thank God I'm not in charge of a council. Residual rubbish. So this is something that has happened to us this week that has made us laugh or cry. As we have mentioned, sometimes I get my food, some of my food, not all of it, some of my food delivered through a meal delivery kit. I use Mindful Chef, and sometimes they send me a freebie. This week I got a sample.

SPEAKER_02 53:21

Not because of the podcast. Just to clarify, this is not a paid advert.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

We get no freebies from the podcast. This week I got a sample of olive oil from Citizens of Soil. Okay and I was so excited because it was a little pipette of oil made from nopla. Oh, cool. Pierre, who we had on. Yeah. I got the pipette out and I thought this is not normal plastic. It feels very unusual. And I looked at it and I looked to the side and said, made from no plah plastic. It's the first time I've seen that pipette in the wild.

SPEAKER_02 53:51

Amazing. So seaweed-based plastic pipette.

SPEAKER_00 53:54

Yeah, so we interviewed Pierre in episode 20, and he was telling us that the reason they can make these oil pipettes, because one of the challenges they have with their technology, because they use seaweed-based plastic, is it sort of dissolves in liquid. So you can't really use it for long-term storage. You couldn't use it at the moment for like a plastic bottle, but you can use it for food containers where you're just putting the food on and eating it within half an hour. That's fine. But oil is very different to water, so they can store oil in it and it doesn't affect the plastic. So I was so excited to get this, I went to the Citizens of Soil website straight away, and it said the puppet is even edible. So I did what any self-respecting investigative journalist would do. I am not sure of the nutritional value of this pipette. It's probably quite high in calories because it was coated with oil. I ate the thing. The whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

Really? Just on its own. Just on its own.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

Not with a side salad or no, knife and fork, cut it up. The taste was surprisingly sweet. I think that might have been the oil, I'm not sure. But it was quite sweet, quite pleasant, I want to say. I quite enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02 55:02

As in like sort of like a dessert sweet, or just a little bit sweet.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

Just a little bit sweet. Okay. Yeah. Not like a dessert. Like a little bit sweet. It could have been the oil, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

But um but pretty tasty. Not part of the balanced diet, definitely not. It was only after eating it I thought, I better email Pierre and check I'm not gonna die. So I did send him an email to say, is this definitely edible? And he did come back to say yes it is. So phew. That's all good. What was really funny about this is on Discord last night, literally last night on Discord, we had a message in from DJ Blagg. DJ Blagg is the username, who said, I only discovered the podcast about a month ago. I'm up to episode 25. No spoilers. I don't want to know if they've now ingested too much plastic to be able to continue. No, it's like you have no idea how relevant that is.

SPEAKER_02 55:53

Oh, that's very timely from DJ Blagg. Oh, brilliant. Okay, well, you're still standing now. Hopefully, uh that seaweed's all part of a balanced diet. You know, just think of it as a nori or something. Uh yeah, so in terms of residual rubbish from me, this made me laugh. It's a very quick one. The MetOffice have launched uh a poll to name the storms to the British public. And those who remember this was done to name a boat, wasn't it? And the British public came up with Boatie McBoatface, which unfortunately didn't find its way through.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

I mean, it was a great PRC. Name this research vessel.

SPEAKER_02 56:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

Boatie McBoatface. Why did they not call the boat Boatie McBoatface? They would have got so much credit. I think they called it David Attenborough in the end.

SPEAKER_02 56:39

It was the Sir David Attenborough, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

I love David Attenborough, but I love Boti McBoatface more.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

But I think one of like the smaller vessels, smaller research vessels, or something on the boat itself or something, a smaller little boat, was called Boti McBoatface. Okay. So something did get the name, just not the big one. Anyway, so the thing that's been trending, obviously the joke is stormy McStormface, and I'm sure that will be pretty high up there when the votes are finally cast, and the Met Office will have to work out what they do about that. But there was someone that I saw on social media put we should name the storms after the oil companies who've created them, and I did have to laugh. And given that we've been talking a lot about oil on this uh episode and uh potential effects on climate change and more storms, I think that would be quite amusing.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

ExxonStorm coming soon. As always, thank you for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. As we always say, it's the best way to help us grow, leaving us a review. We love getting the opportunity to do the podcast and chat to you guys. So 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 and the links to all the ways of communicating with us can be found in our show notes, where you can also find our link tree, which has all the links of the reports that we've discussed today. Nothing left to say other than see you next bin day. Bye. Bye.