56. Is aluminium the ultimate packaging?

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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 whether aluminium is the packaging of the future. Are keys rubbish or not? And I have a question about TetraPack Collections. I'm Jace Piper, author of the Rubbish Book, and I'm joined by Robbie Stanaforth, my far from rubbish friend. Hi Robbie. Hey James. A couple of episodes ago I was asking people to leave reviews, and people have. We've ended up with lots of reviews, Robbie.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Oh, okay, very good. Well, I'm sure we'll hear at least one later on.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Around the world. That's what's been good. We've had the US, Belgium, the UK. Just those three. I'm sure many more. So, guys, if you want to feature in Robbie's review of the week, you know what to do. Just leave us a review. Trash talk. So today we're asking a question. Is aluminium or aluminum for our American American reviewer? Very good. Welcome to the North Americans. Is we just add extra letters, right? Is aluminium the packaging of the future? And I guess it was just a good opportunity for us to talk about A, something that isn't plastic, and to follow up our and B, I should always You can't do A and then just carry on.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

A and secondly That's the one that annoys me most.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Okay, let's do that. Okay, so A, we're not talking about plastic. Secondly. It follows up nicely from our paperization episode where we sort of said, well, look, paperization is happening. Is that a good thing or not? I would say aluminimization.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Oh, minimization. That's good on packaging, isn't it? Gosh, they could really brand that nicely, the minimum amount of aluminium packaging.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Why has nobody told There you go, AlluPro, you can have that for free. Aluminimization is definitely happening. And there are more and more formats coming into aluminium, and we want to talk about the positives of aluminium and also its negatives, much like we did with paper when we did the paperisation episode. So this came from a BBC article, which I'm going to be completely honest, felt like a press release. I don't know if you've seen it, but it was the title of the or the headline of the article was Could Aluminium Become the Packaging Champion? It was on the 29th of July. It caused quite a lot of uh discussion, should we say, on my LinkedIn. We were tagged in lots of posts about it, Robbie, and people were asking our views. Yeah, I remember, yeah. But I guess as I say, it felt a bit like a press release. It was very focused on an organisation called Meadow. Have you come across Meadow in any of your I haven't actually no, nothing? Really? Okay, I've heard about them so many times, and they are really, really interesting. So they were formed in 2020 in Sweden. So they're actually quite new. They're a bit of a start-up at the moment. And what they are looking at doing, how would I describe it? You're basically buying a can. So you go around the supermarket, and I think one of the keys here is coming out of drinks, you know, putting soap, detergent, whatever you can think of that's in a liquid form in a can. And you would buy essentially on the shelf a branded can. But it wouldn't have a ring pull on it, like a normal can. It would it has like a star shape on the top. Okay. And you at home would then have lots of outers. So around your house, you might have an like a pump or a squeeze top or a spray nozzle, and you would basically have those as something you keep in your house, and you unscrew them and you put the can in and the pump, spray nozzle, whatever it is, which are quite tricky to recycle, we'll do them on a separate day pumps and sprays. They're quite interesting. So we'll do a separate trash talk. But essentially, you would keep that in your house and you would just replace the can on the inside.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Okay, so it's like saving you doing decanting into those kind of outer containers that you're calling them. You you just slot in a single-use piece of packaging rather than having to like pour out your liquid soaps into a pump action spray type thing or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah, I'm worried people are gonna think I missed the pun on decanting, but I haven't. Don't worry, we're just not gonna do it. Decan t anyway, I don't know what the joke is, but I feel like there was one there. So the aluminium can is essentially what you buy that's got the product in. Their argument is, well, that's widely recycled, everyone knows what to do with it, it's better than plastic, and because you keep the outer, it should have a lower carbon footprint. It's a really, really interesting idea. I actually really like it. You know, you spend 10 minutes on their website and you will be like, this is great, this is the future. Good marketing job. Yes. Now the challenge, of course, is that aluminium has downsides, and that's what we want to cover today. And actually, in the article, Meadows co-founder was quoted as saying, We realise that the greenest container already exists, the aluminium can. And I guess I want to explore that. Is it the greenest container? And I think it's fair to say aluminium is starting to appear on our supermarket shelves more and more. I know I've started noticing, I don't know if you've seen it, like the pots uh stock brand. They make uh literally stock. Potts.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Is that the brand?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, they make liquid stock, but they sell it in aluminium cans. Whoa. So you you're buying chicken stock or beef stock or vegetable, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

I'm shopping in the wrong supermarkets, clearly, James.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Well, I uh I agree, we should not be transporting water. So if you're gonna buy stock, you know, buy a cube, don't buy a can of it. But but that does exist, and and so it's interesting that people are starting to serve portions in that way. Okay. And I've certainly talked about it positively in this podcast, and in episode two, we talked about coffee pods, and I mentioned that if I was going to buy coffee pods, I would buy them in aluminium. Yeah, sure. That's partly because Nespresso used 80% recycle content in those pods, partly because small aluminium can make it through the process in the form of incinerator bottom ash, and we'll talk on that in a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah, so actually, aluminium I've noticed at my local takeaway has made a bit of a resurgence. You know, the foil the classic foil tray. Over the weekend, actually, I noticed that after years of the classic sort of plastic kind of Tupperware looking container, that uh the dishes came back in those old style, or what I think of. So never mind aluminium being the packaging of the future, isn't it just the packaging of the past that's coming back?

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yeah, I think I agree with you. I'm not sure I'm a fan of those foil trays, because yes, they're recyclable, but with a takeaway, I like the plastic trays because I reuse them over and over.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah, no. Informal reuse.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Very difficult to reuse the foil trays. No, I agree with that, yeah. And I guess let's uh i I mean it is the material of the past, and certainly its development has a huge amount of history, and I guess it's worth just talking about where aluminium actually comes from. And people might be surprised to hear that aluminium actually is the metal with the highest abundance in the earth's crust.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Whoa, I am surprised to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah, about eight percent of the earth's crush. It's the most prevalent. Yeah, about eight percent, as I say, of the earth's crust is aluminium. But and it's a big problem, aluminium is extremely reactive, so it doesn't occur naturally. It's usually combined with other other elements. One of the things it reacts with is oxygen. So the second you've exposed it to oxygen, it's suddenly bonded and it's not pure aluminium. So you don't really, I don't I mean, there probably is somewhere, some form of aluminium that is pure. So I can't say for certain that it isn't, but I think in the main what we would mine would be aluminium that has been bonded to something else. What that means is to get the aluminium out, you have to break the bonds. And so it requires energy, lots of energy, to make aluminium. And the point of mentioning that is that it is expensive to get hold of. It is hard work to get aluminium out. And most of the aluminium that we buy is extra uh is extracted from bauxite, that's the kind of most econom economical way to get it. And bauxite is a rock, it's a sedimentary rock, it's a red-brown colour, and it contains essentially contains aluminium, but as I say, bonded to something else. So we'll just quickly talk about how you make it. But in terms of where bauxite comes from, the top three producing nations in 2024 were the Republic of Guinea, Australia, and China. And just those three make up 72% of production.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Whoa, so big mining in those three countries is how all this aluminium's coming into play and becoming packaging, as well as many other things.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Exactly, yeah. And and I don't want to bore everyone with the chemical process, but essentially you've got to turn bauxite into aluminium oxide, so aluminium and oxygen, and then you use electrolysis to extract the aluminium from the aluminium oxide. And the reason for mentioning that is because it takes about five tons of bauxite to produce two tons of aluminium oxide, which in turn produces one ton of aluminium. So you need five tons of the rock to get one ton of the metal. Okay, fine. And those processes that are involved require heating up to about a thousand degrees C a couple of times. You know, there's a pro one bit of the process requires a thousand degrees, then the second bit requires a thousand degrees. And that is why with materials like aluminium and glass, where they're quite expensive to manufacture and make and they require a huge amount of material, recycling is extremely economical.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Okay, fine. Because you're comparing it against these really expensive processes.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Exactly. If you're recycling aluminium, you only have to heat it to like 700 degrees once. Whereas if you're making it from bauxite, you need five tons of bauxite to make one ton of aluminium. You need to heat it, you need to heat it three times but twice about a thousand degrees C, the first time is a bit cooler, to make that process work to get the aluminium out. So it's way easier to take existing aluminium cans and melt them to 700 degrees than it is to take five tons of bauxite and put it through that process.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yeah, for sure. And I mean sh we talked about this pre on previous episodes, haven't we? The the process of recycling aluminium, and it is amazing that it's taking so much less energy, like so, so much less energy, because it's basically good to go. Let's just quickly get it up to 700 degrees C and away we go again and it can become another product. It's like doesn't really require that much in the process to turn it from a can back into another can or into a car part or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

I guess if we were to liken it to like, let's say time was energy, it's like a ready-meal lasagna versus making a lasagna from scratch. You know, it's gonna take huge amounts of time to make a lasagna from scratch versus five minutes in the microwave or whatever it is. So if you were to liken those two things, basically you're taking something that's already in the form that you need it to be, and you're just eating it up as opposed to taking all the ingredients and trying to turn it into something.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

I thought we were using the lasagna to describe the landfill though, James. Oh yes. We're just using a lasagna every week now.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yes, lasagna was layers, I'm sorry, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

We should eat more breakfast before starting this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

And as you mentioned, it requires less energy. It's actually 90% less carbon and less energy if you're recycling aluminium compared to getting it from its raw materials. 90%. Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

So you can really see why if you sort of park to one side how much energy it takes to get the stuff out of the ground, and you just focus on look, there's loads of aluminium about, let's just make sure we keep recycling it into uh more and more packaging use cases so that it just goes round and round and round, it's quite a compelling argument.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Absolutely, yeah. And and the cost is compelling. So recycle cans at the moment, I was having a look at time of recording, it's about a thousand pounds a ton. There's a big range, I'm sure I'm gonna get lots of aluminium guys go, no, it's 1300. So let's say a thousand pounds a ton. But virgin aluminium can be double that. So recycling just makes sense. It is a an example where recycled product is cheaper than virgin. Now, plastic does not have the same story. You know, the recycle content for the recycled material for plastic is typically more expensive than virgin or is at the moment. So let's debate, Robbie, the credentials of aluminium. Let's sort of imagine, first of all, that we are in a company and we're in a board meeting or something and we're trying to decide whether to move our product to aluminium. What are the pros? What are we l what are we saying, hey, this is why we should be moving to aluminium?

SPEAKER_01 13:43

We've got to start with exactly what we've just discussed: the fact that it recycles over and over again. It also doesn't lose quality like some of the other materials, paper fibres get s shortened over time every time they recycle. Same with plastic, you know, eventually it just becomes too weak and you need to add in some of the primary material. Uh aluminium just doesn't have the same thing. It can go round in a loop, uh in a much more circular loop, I suppose. And and that's probably one of the big pros and what they lean into on the marketing, I should imagine.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Yeah, and as people like to say infinitely recyclable, right? I mean, that's not really a thing, because you've got a plastic liner in there or something that's going to disappear in the process. There'll be some impurities, eventually the aluminium will start disappearing. But I think it's as close to infinitely recyclable as something can be. I just don't really like that marketing spin. And you're right, you know, compared to paper and plastic, it doesn't degrade. So that would be top of my list if I was really excited about aluminium and wanting to promote it. I think another thing is that it's lighter than glass, and you know, it's got a lot of the properties of glass in terms of its recyclability and the fact that it's not losing quality, but it is lighter, and that means it requires less energy to transport and melt down. And actually, when you look at like the EPR fees, which I was looking at just to try and work out what was better, the fees for glass are I think of £192 the latest fees, and for aluminium it's £266, that's per ton. So aluminium is more expensive, but aluminium is so much lighter that on an individual container it will cost a lot less than EPR. So if you're comparing a can, an aluminium can and a glass bottle, the EPR cost for aluminium can will be way smaller, even though the pound per ton rate is higher.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah, and even though there's that argument, isn't there, that transport and things like that, the the energy used will reduce over time, it will be electrified, it will be renewable, like renewable energy is not free. It will never get to a point whereby uh you don't want to try and decrease the amount of stuff you're trying to ship around the world. You know, the less is less is more in that case.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

And I guess its biggest pro, and the thing people don't really talk about very often, it's the one material where it's got a route to recycling even if you don't put it in the recycling bin.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, that's the such a huge upside compared to any of the other materials, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Absolutely. And we talked about this before, so this is incinerator bottom ash. I think this was our rubbish question on episode 17. People were asking why do you need to put it in the recycle bin if you can get it out of the ash at the bottom? So what happens is when our waste is incinerated, if it's not been sent for recycling, they can actually take the ash out from the bottom, they can use magnets or eddy currents to extract the things they want, like aluminium and steel, and then they can smelt that back down because within the ash will be metal components. Now, we should always recycle. There's a number of reasons, but essentially a summary of our question on episode 17 was you're using energy to extract it from the ash. There's going to be impurities, it's not going to be great in terms of the quality that comes out of it. So it's much better to sort and recycle. But what an amazing material that its recycling rate can be significantly boosted by the fact that it can be extracted even in an incineration process.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yeah, so like it's that one of those but what about in the worst case scenario? And the worst case scenario is not terrible. It's quite good.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Now, interestingly, I read a lot where people were saying, Yeah, but people know what to do with aluminium. That's one of its pros. And I think actually, I'm not sure. Like uh we had on Discord last night someone putting up a uh like you know the yogurt tops are sometimes sometimes metal.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, metal, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

And they were like, Oh, I'm not sure if these can be recycled or not. And they absolutely can. I mean, you just need to make things bigger than a tennis ball, so scrunch loads together. But I'm not sure. I think with foil and foil trays, people get quite confused as to whether they can be recycled or not.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah, I think there's also just things like the printing, like, is there plastic on this? I'm not I'm used to it being a plastic lid. Uh is this like fake aluminium or real aluminium? I think there's a bit of that going on, probably.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yes, I agree with you. Now, according to AUPRO, aluminium has a recycling rate of 68%. Now that's for all aluminium packaging, and drinks cans are up at 81%. Now over a quarter of that recycling is from incinerator bottom ash. Really? I didn't realise it was as high as that. Uh I believe 42,000 tons came out of the ash compared to 157,000 tons in total. It's very high. I was also quite surprised as to high that was. I have actually asked Alupro a question. Now I think last time you asked Alupro a question, you messaged them at like six in the morning when we were recording and didn't get a response. Well, I emailed them at eleven o'clock last night and did get a response. No, I have not had a response. So I might get one as we're recording, at which point I will pause and we will say whatever the answer was. But the question I asked them is why isn't the recycling rate higher? You know, if most of our waste is recycled or incinerated, which I think is like 95%, because only 5% go to landfill, why isn't our recycling rate 95%? Because we should have Where's it going? Exactly. We should have the metal that's recycled, and then the rest of it that's incinerated should come out of the ash. So there must be losses in quite a few of those places for us to only have 68%. And I was comparing to other countries like Germany, I think, has a recycling rate of 99% on their cans. And I suspect they are counting ash within that. So I don't really understand, and I know they have deposit return schemes, so they probably have a higher capture rate. But because there's a route to getting aluminium out of the kind of out of the ash and out of the system, I don't really understand why it's not higher. So I have asked the question, I'm waiting for an answer.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Where's where's that extra stuff going? What uh 19% of the drinks cans is not being directly recycled or ending up in incinerator bottle mash. Where is it? Exactly. That's the question, is it?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah, and we might get an answer during this recording. We might not, in which case it'll be an addition and correction next week. These poor folks at Aliapro getting our last-minute questions.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

They got the rough end of the stick.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

We have to get that. It was just one of those thoughts, you know, you're lying in bed and you're like, what happens to the aluminium? I better email them. And just some more stats from ALUPRO. By the way, I haven't mentioned obviously you may know if you listen to previous episodes, but ALUPRO is basically the Aluminium Trade Association. They represent the recyclers and producers of aluminium, so uh they tend to publish stats obviously that are quite favourable to aluminium, but I think uh they do hold quite a lot of truth behind them. So some more stats here. So 75% of all aluminium is still in use. That's not all in packaging. Cars will have a lot of our recycled aluminium, and obviously it will last in a car for a long time. So about 75% of all packaging is still in use, and 50% of the aluminium used is made from recycled aluminium input. Okay, so of all the aluminium that goes through the system, 50% of it will be on its second life or beyond. I believe worldwide, so I'm talking about the UK here, I believe worldwide that is about 35%. So we're actually quite high compared to the world average. And remember, all these stats are UK focused, pretty much, other than the one I just mentioned as worldwide and the German one. And when we compare it to like the US, US recycles just 20% of their aluminium or aluminum, I should say. That's crazily low, isn't it? And a lot of that will be because the US has this focus on landfill, and that does get lost. Have the opportunity to come out of the ash because they're not incinerating. And it is a very, very low recycling rate.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

So those landfills are a gold mine? Aluminium mine. Oh, definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

And we uh there was a discussion actually after our landfill episode about potentially mining landfills, but that's for another day, I'm sure. But it is a really uh you know, some of these landfills, particularly in the US, will be extremely valuable.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Yeah, better than going digging for that bulk site, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Why might we not move into aluminium? So what are the downsides to it? All of that sounds really good, right? It's easy for the consumer to understand how to recycle. You're able to get it out of the incineration, it's super it's a good material. Why might we not want to move into it?

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Well, I suppose if 50% in the UK is from of aluminium circulating is from recycled content, there's also that 50% that's coming from a very, very energy-intensive industry to mine that bauxite and all those various processes to sort of distill it down into the aluminium that we use. So surely there's got to be something on the mining of aluminium.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah, now aluminium production is energy intensive. I think it's about twice as much as glass on a gram for gram basis. So obviously it's lighter, so gram for gram is a bit misleading. But as a material it is very energy intensive. Now typically aluminium cans, or aluminium itself, is about a third the weight of glass. So even though it's twice as energy intensive to create, it's a third of the weight. So it is technically, from a carbon perspective, better than glass.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

If you're doing it container by container, you you're doing a like for like, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Yeah. If you decide to switch out materials that had been bottles, like glass and plastic into cans, then we need a lot more aluminium. And so the production of it is negative, and we will have to think about how we do that. I'm going to come on to that in a second. It is a criticism commonly levelled at plastic. You know, production increases and we need a lot more virgin plastic, and people say, hey, this is terrible. We're using a lot more plastic, we're creating a lot more virgin plastic because there isn't enough recycled content. That could very easily be aluminium if we switched traditional bottles into aluminium cans, we would then need loads more virgin aluminium, which means lots more mining and lots more difficulties that come with that.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Yeah. And what about the carbon footprint? Surely, because of all of that, it's got to be higher than plastic, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

An aluminium can has a carbon footprint about two to three times higher than a PET bottle. If you are talking about buying a drink, typically, if you're just looking at carbon footprint, which we shouldn't, but if you were, plastic bottles come out the best, then aluminium cans, then glass bottles. Now then you have to overlay environmental impact. It's ended up in the ocean, it's caused a problem, it's not collected, there's no DRS. Whatever the layer is for your country, you apply that in and you say, Well, actually, I'm going to put some weighting on littering, or you know, the difficulties with that material degrading over time, like a plastic bottle will, and I'm going to layer that in. But from a carbon footprint perspective, if you're just trying to reduce your carbon, then a plastic bottle is better. Now, because of its energy intensity and the production of it and the complexity, cost is an issue. It is about a third lighter than glass, as I mentioned, but the material costs four times as much.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Ah, yeah. And so when we're in the board meeting, we're going to be definitely thinking about how costly is this? How many more units are we going to sell as a consequence of switching to it? Because it's going to need to be a lot.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Yeah, absolutely. And it's still, you know, as we mentioned in episode 44, it still needs plastic. If it's containing liquid, it will need a liner to stop it rusting or degrading, and so you will end up with a plastic liner. So you've got that automatic confusion with the customer who thinks they're buying something really good and then discovers that it's got plastic inside. And finally, I think for me, the fragility is quite a big thing. We were looking at aluminium for our reuse project. We were thinking, should we make our packaging out of aluminium? Every example we looked at got dents in through the supply chain or scratches in it. And once you started trying to reuse it, you were like, actually, people won't buy this because it's it looks worn. And that and actually, from studies that have been done, that's a big issue with reuse. You need things to look like they've been washed and menu, unfortunately. And so it's very difficult to kind of see the application of it in a in a reuse environment compared to something like glass.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

And that's probably why they've doubled down on this uh use it to refill something else or to slide into one of these outers and just keep going with the single use and recycle model rather than flipping to reuse like potentially other materials such as glass will start to do in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

I guess one of the big questions that I don't think is asked very often when these things happen is how much aluminium is actually available? So the BBC write this article saying, is aluminium the package in the future? It's amazing. At no point in that article do they talk about but actually do we have enough aluminium? If Coke said we're going to stop making plastic bottles, we're gonna stop making glass bottles, we're gonna put everything in aluminium, what would that do to the market? What would that mean for production? And so I had a quick look at it. I looked at the MPWD, which is the National Packaging Waste Database, and looked at how much glass there was, plastic and aluminium. So glass is 2.2 million tonnes. Plastic is also 2.2 million tonnes, and aluminium is about 230,000 tonnes.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Oh wow, okay. So it's much, much smaller than the other two major packaging material types.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Way smaller. So if we hypothesise a world where this BBC article is right and aluminium is the best packaging and it comes out of drinks and into everything like soap and detergents and shampoo, suddenly we are replacing plastic and glass at a huge scale, which, based on those tonnages, so without wishing to go into all the calcs in detail, based on those tonnages and weight differences of the packaging, we would need about ten times the amount of aluminium in this country compared to what we have today if it replaced glass and plastic. To get 10 times the amount of aluminium, we are going to need huge amounts of bauxite mining. So now we have to go and get loads of bauxite. Mining of bauxite, just uh to cover that off quickly, comes with habitat destruction. Uh deposits of bauxite are normally near protected areas, tropical forests, those kinds of things. So, and to get to bauxite you have to clear it, clear the land. You have the infrastructure linked to the mining, so roads, power lines, they require a lot of water, and they are usually in areas where water is scarce, so you've got to now ship water in and all those kind of things. And we are contaminating and polluting the soil. So you've got this the bauxite mining that you would have to do if the world started saying, Well, we're going to come out of glass and plastic and into aluminium would be significant. And of course, you have a supply-demand issue. At the moment, the price of aluminium is linked to those tonnages. If we suddenly put everything in aluminium and other countries were doing the same, and remember a lot of these companies and their products are multinational, so if they make like with the tethered bottle caps, we have it because they sell it in Europe. So if Coke said we're going to stop making plastic bottles and glass bottles and move everything to aluminium, they would do that across Europe, I suspect. So the price of aluminium would skyrocket and the price of plastic and glass would absolutely crash, particularly plastic, which is the you know a byproduct of the oil industry, so gonna come anyway. The price would crash. How long would that last? Suddenly you've got a situation where you've got a massively expensive packaging material, aluminium, and a really cheap alternative in plastic. I'm not sure how long companies would hold their nerve and stay with that. So I guess just to summarise, because we talked a lot about aluminium there, my golden rule is there is no perfect packaging. And in the world of drinks containers, it is extremely complicated. My summary of kind of the three main materials are that glass is heavy, high energy to produce and recycle, but doesn't degrade in quality and is perfect for reuse due to its strength and washability. Plastic is lightweight, has the lowest carbon footprint due to the weight and low melting points, but it does degrade when recycled. And aluminium is kind of in between the two. It's lighter than glass, it's got a lower carbon footprint than glass, but it's got a higher carbon footprint than plastic, and it does not degrade in quality. But to hold food and drink, it does require plastic, it does require a liner. So if I was you know, you've sort of got that the three extremes, haven't you? Glass on one end, plastic on the other, and aluminium sits very neatly in the middle, and depending on what you're trying to measure, could definitely be better than plastic or could be worse.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Yeah, it's such a complicated thing. And the problem with these articles is they tend to look at things in splendid isolation when we need to think about the right packaging for the right product. So aluminium obviously has its place. Uh, we're both fans of it, aren't we? You know, like for certain things, it's great, but it is more carbon intensive than a plastic bottle. And if it doesn't get recycled, there was no point using it in the first place. Because that's really the big contingency on using it, is the fact that it can easily be recycled.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

And having said all of that, I love this Meadow solution. I think it's a really neat solution to a problem, and standardising packaging is always going to get a vote from me. So if I could walk into a supermarket and all my soap detergents were in like cans, but they were just branded, so I could pick my brand, that would be amazing, because then we could massively increase recycling rates and everything would be standard. It's not really how the world works, of course, but I like the idea. And it's worth noting that Meadow have partnered with Ball Packaging, Ball Corporation, who make aluminium cans. So they have some big backing behind them. So there could be something in this solution. I think it's really interesting. However, we do need to consider the impact of bulk site mining and energy use if aluminium were to take over the world. And we need to recognise that right now there is not enough aluminium in circulation to cover the demand were we to switch to it, and reaching that demand that could happen if like this meadow solution or something else takes off could be very damaging. Additions and corrections. We had Kay on Discord who had seen the not sure box, which was something we discussed in episode 52, and used it as inspiration for a similar bin in their office. I really liked this.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Go on then. So what what came up in the bin?

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Well, so just to remind people, this is a bin for anything you're not sure about. You've got your recycling bin, your general bin, and then one in the middle that's like, I don't know. And then Kay was able to give them a bit of info as to whether it was right or not. I did ask Kay what was stumping people, and she said it was mostly the soft or flexible plastic. They had a terracycle bin for it, but unfortunately that bin had filled up and they were waiting for a replacement, and suddenly the not sure bin became very important. Yeah, but the backup bin. Exactly, yeah. It became the wait for terracycle bin very quickly. Another thing they said ended up in the bin is blue paper. So Robbie, rubbish or not, blue, you know that kind of this is like kitchen towel, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Yeah, exactly. So not. Sorry, rubbish. Ah I said the wrong thing.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

It's okay, it's confusing. I definitely think it is rubbish. Um Kay was saying no matter how many posters they create, and there were a lot in the picture they shared, a lot of posters, it always ends up in the not sure bin.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Because it is paper, and people just think paper's recyclable unilaterally. I I get it, it's complicated.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Yes, not all paper is created equally. But thank you, Kay. That's I I loved it. Thanks for sharing that. We also had, and I wasn't sure how to explain this one. The username is just a series of emojis. So we're gonna call this person emojis. So emojis on Discord shared a report on the tethered bottle caps, and we're now one year on from the tethered bottle caps, as we know, because it was our episode one and we've celebrated our anniversary.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Oh, there we go.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

And we had this article shared, and I just thought it'd be worth looking at that. It came from Packaging Insights, so I'll put the link in our show notes. Basically, they were interviewing someone or some people about the bottle caps, and the person they were interviewing said they had found in Litapix 47% fewer caps. Now, this was in the Netherlands, so they did also say that could have been because of DRS, not actually because of the tethered bottle caps. Yeah, anecdotally they felt there were fewer caps. I think it's worth noting that the article had a general feeling of dissatisfaction from consumers. Most people do not like the caps, and we know that just anecdotally, you speak to people, they go, Oh, these are so annoying. And they were talking about actually a lack of standardization, you know, the fact that different manufacturers you diff use different caps, so people don't really understand how they all work. Yeah. They likened it to the introduction of speed bumps, saying they're annoying, but we got used to them and we all know why they're there. Which I thought was a really nice summary of the tethered bottle cap.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Um, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

And for the record, uh Mr. or Mrs. Emoji on Discord did not feel in their litter picking that bottle caps had reduced. So they felt they were seeing as many bottle caps as they did before the tethered bottle cap came in. 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 remember to leave us a review. And if you do, you could form Robbie's Review of the Week, which, as I mentioned earlier, we've got quite a few now. A little backlog, which is really nice. So if you can come up with a better review, maybe you'll leapfrog some. Feel free to leave us one.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

And here's my top tip. Don't use a tricky username. Because this one's just unpronounceable. I'm not even gonna try. Thank you for the lovely review. No thank you for the tricky username that's a series of letters.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

It's just not gonna help us.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

It's not gonna help us, so I'm not even gonna give it a go. Anyway, this was a five-star review. Headline informative, easy listening. I've been a lifelong recycler, but that hasn't been without its fair share of naysayers and doom theorists. James and Robbie are demystifying the other side of the recycling bins we use, explaining how and why our efforts are making a difference. And then they go on to say, sad I'll never be able to match Ethel's review, so this must be someone who's uh listening regularly. Might mark a star down for that in brackets, won't really.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

It's amazing. We had lots of positive feedback about Ethel's Review. If you haven't heard that, it was episode 49, I believe, that we mentioned Ethel's review. Oh my goodness, I still laugh thinking about it. So good. And you can follow us at rubbishpodcast, you can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us and join our Discord. It's the easiest way to engage with us and listeners of the show. The link to all those things is in the show notes, as is the link to our petition, which is about banning the word composter on dog food bags, which can't be composted. Please take a second to go and sign it. Rubbish or not? Another one from Discord. This was Tori. So thank you very much, Tori. Uh they're moving house soon and have ended up with a lot of mystery keys. We've all been there.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yeah, classic.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Often people think I'm a janitor. I have loads of keys. And like I've had it so many times where I put my keys on a day that people have gone, are you a janitor? You know, you've got why have you got so many keys? I don't really know why I've got so many keys. We've built up over the years. They mentioned that some are broken bike lock keys and others they've got no idea. So I guess, Robbie, keys, rubbish or not?

SPEAKER_01 38:45

I think that I'm gonna they're rubbish at home. You can't recycle them from home in your your recycling bin, uh, most places in the whole of the UK. But I'm actually gonna go with or not, because it's metal. If you can find a mixed metals bin, such as at your local household recycling facility, they will be able to be smelted down and recycled with mixed metal, surely. And like the scrap metal merchant would take a load of keys, and that would be a useful thing, I reckon.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

I completely agree. I mean, they weren't always made of metal, it's worth noting. When keys were first created, they were made of wood, but those really wore down quite fast, so very quickly they needed to move into metal. I think it was replaced with like bronze and iron, but modern keys are made of brass, uh, which is an alloy of copper and zinc, or they're a nickel-brass alloy. Could definitely go into a mixed metal bin at the tip or dump. The key thing here from a security perspective is obviously make sure you've taken off tags and addresses before you recycle them. Don't put your key in the bin with your address attached to it. It's good advice, isn't it? Very good advice. I ended up down a rabbit hole of why keys are made of brass and not steel, because I was thinking surely you could just make it with steel and that would be easier. And actually, it was quite interesting because keys need to be strong but not too strong. And what they were finding, steel is stronger than uh brass, and what they were finding is those keys would wear down the lock over time. So you actually want your key to be quite malleable so that it kind of doesn't rub against the lock and wear it down, so that's why they're made of brass. And it's like brass is easier to cut than steel, so when you've got like a locksmith, it's much easier for them to be able to cut brass than steel. So, yeah, actually quite interesting. I was trying to find ways of reusing keys. I was wondering if there were any things we could do to move it up the waist hierarchy. Uh someone put they might be of interest to local artists or designers. I thought that was quite nice. Don't forget to take your address off. Uh use it as a letter opener. Now I often do that, you know, you get a cardboard box with a bit of tape, you get your keys out and take the tape up.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The turn the cardboard box upside down and to recycle it.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Letter opener, box opener. I thought that was pretty good. Perhaps the worst reuse idea I found, by some margin, was tie keys together and create a wind chime. Oh, that'd be so annoying, wouldn't it? The rattle of keys. I think it's more that presumably the wind chime is hung outside your house.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

You gotta make sure you've got the right selection of keys out there. There's one for the front door and another for the back door.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Just luring burglars in with its nice noise that it's making. So yeah, I didn't feel like that was the best idea. I guess you could make a wind chime and then give it to someone else who lives Mars away, and they could make a wind chime and give you theirs, and you'd be okay. But I I don't think you should take the keys of your house and turn them into a wind chime. Rubbish news. My news is frustrating today, and uh and sad actually, because uh this is a site I visited very often. So Virador is closing its Rochester plastic recycling site. Uh uh genuinely sad when this stuff happens, because I I know there's lots of people who have jobs in the plastic recycling space, and we seem to have had a lot of these recently. The site opened in November 2014, I think it was about 12 million pounds that was invested into it. It was sorting and processing PET, HGP bottles, PP pots, tubs, trays, so you know, but lots and lots of different types of plastics it was dealing with. It was a very big site. We actually mentioned Virador before all the way back in episode 18, because they were closing their Avonmouth plant, which we were saying was equally frustrating too.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

I remember that. Yeah, we were just as sad back then too.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

We're just losing UK recycling. And this news, this Virador news, the Rochester site, actually comes a day after Biffra announced they were closing their Sunderland plant. So guys, the plastic recycling market is in turmoil. You know, I think it is awful that these UK plastic recycling plants are closing and we do not have the capacity to deal with our waste. And we need to look into it.

SPEAKER_01 43:15

At the same time that they're closing, there's also conversations in parallel in the UK about we need more plants, we need more capacity to recycle more of our stuff. It's like, well, there's a whole load of them that are closing. So this needs some careful thought so that the economics stack up, or that we're just using less plastic so that we don't need quite so many of these plants.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

Yes, I just wanted to acknowledge this news.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

This is going to be a slightly depressing section, James, because my news is also not the best, and it comes uh from an announcement that uh and the figures released by DEFRA in the UK, that's the Department for Environment, that single use carrier bag usage has increased. Increased in England. We talked about the single use carrier bag way back in episode four, so go and have a listen to that. But yeah, so the news just in in the last few days is that this charge started way back in 2014. Gosh, where's time's gone? But actually in the year uh twenty twenty-four-twenty twenty-five, it's gone up quite significantly by seven percent, and that's up to four hundred and thirty-seven million bags. So there was a hundred and two retailers that all reported, and it came to four hundred and thirty-seven million bags, a seven percent increase. Now, I'm not sure what's caused this increase, but there was definitely uh an increase amongst the likes of Asda, Marks and Spencer's, Morrison, Sainsrees, Co-op. They all showed a six percent increase from last year, selling nine million more bags between them. So it's partially the supermarkets, partially all of those other retailers that are reporting it.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

I've I wonder what's caused this. I think uh like the co-op, for example, they moved to compostable bags nationwide, which I suspect are probably classed as single-use bags because of their thinness. So that might be a good thing. I wonder whether because uh so many of them have moved to bags for life now, they wouldn't count that as part, you know, as we said in episode four, that's not counted. I'm wondering if this is an increase in, you know, like uh deli stuff, because uh, you know, if you were if you were buying something from a deli counter, they might use a thin plastic bag which would count as single use. I wonder if like as a result of COVID, because we know plastic use increased after COVID because people wanted things to be more hygienic. I wonder if we're just seeing like people going round the shops and instead of grabbing their veg loose, they're going, actually, I better put that in a bag. I think we need to look into this. I'm trying to understand what could possibly cause an increase.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Yeah, I had a quick look around, but there's no information available on exactly why. So maybe we'll need to speak to some of the retailers themselves to see what the consumer habits are. But just before we end on such a sour note, for context, it is still a 79% reduction on what happened in 2016-2017, that financial year, which was a couple of years after the charge came in.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Although not really. And listen to episode four if you want to find out why that is not the case.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

It's quite a misleading statistic, but at least it's a cheery one.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

Moving on. Rubbish question. So our rubbish question comes from Rich from Leeds. Every time I hear Rich from Leeds, because Rich from Leeds did a uh voice note for our episode 50, and it was just so cheery and happy, and it just had to, it's Rich from Leeds. I can't do the Leeds accent. And it just makes me so happy now that he writes in with like that. So thank you, Rich from Leeds. He said he had a baffler. It seems recently my local council Selby has changed the rules for what can be put in the blue bin. Previously it was glass, tins, plastic combined, and now it includes tetrapacks or cartons. The question is, is it better to now put the tetrapacks at curbside, which is in the blue bin, or continue to save and deliver them to the tetrapack bin, which is at the local community centre?

SPEAKER_01 47:35

Oh, very good question. It's one of those like uh eventually I imagine that that tetrapack bin at your local community centre will disappear, won't it? Because it's probably unlikely that you'll be having two options for how to recycle something. But it begs the question: all of that stuff in the blue bin is having to go through many more processes, it all gets jumbled up, it has to get sorted out at a materials recovery facility and and basically separated. It feels if if you can be bothered, Rich, it feels like quite a good shout to just continue to take them and it's just liquid carton board, and that's all going into those containers, and it will go off and very easily be recycled.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Yeah, that I mean the community said to think might continue with curbside coming in because if they're getting value from that material, if they're able to sell it, I guess it would be better than putting it in your curbside bin. But if they're c if it's costing them to take it away, then yeah, it won't continue because why would you keep doing that? We actually had a similar question in episode six, which uh was also someone from Leeds, so thank you, Natasha from Leeds. And that was about glass. So uh she asked, they've introduced curbside for glass. Oh yes, I remember this question. Or should I continue to take it to a bottle bank? I've had a look at what we said, and we did advise what you've just said, Robbie, which is it's better to pre-sort something, it's better to send something to a recycler already sorted than it is to mix it in.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

So I may have an awful memory, but at least I'm consistent in my class.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

And cartons can be tricky to sort, and historically it would have been done manually, that's sort of changing with AI and robots. But I remember going to Murph's where they had just a big hole with a sign essentially written on cardboard with Sharpie that said cartons. Yeah. And you know, these guys were just throwing them into the hole next to a conveyor. It was all just done really manually. So things are gonna get missed that way, they're gonna get contaminated with food or other materials. So generally, if you're able to sort it, it's going to be better. It's better to take it to a bottle bank than it is to have it collected at curbside if we're talking about glass. It's going to be similar with cartons. Having said that, the council do need economies of scale. They do want people to use this service. So, you know, I think as it develops and as the council can prove that things are getting collected and recycled, it's probably a good thing to use the council. But we know that with cartons, they're not all sent for recycling. Remember, we said in episode 54, 69% of councils collect cartons. And we have the capacity in the UK to recycle about 40%, but way less than 40% are recycled. So we know that not all the stuff that councils are collecting is getting sent off for recycling.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

Yeah, and the stuff that gets collected most favourably that's really good quality, that they really want to feed that plant that that makes up to about 40% of what's placed onto the market, is probably comes from places like that community centre where discerning recyclers are making sure it's nothing but liquid carton board.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

Residual rubbish. I've just checked. There's still no email from the aluminium guys. I think this is gonna form an additions and corrections for next week.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

I'm sure they'll have something to say when they get to it.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

I'm sure. So residual rubbish, something that has happened to us this week that has made us feel like an emoji. I'm going with smug, I think. I don't know what the smug emoji is, but I'm gonna go with that.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

Yes, you do.

SPEAKER_00 51:11

Now smirk, it's that like sort of smirky So I'm using the smirk emoji. Now I know we've talked a lot about receipts and they've become one of our things that we talk about all the time. So I apologize for that. But they do just wind me up, because as I say often, most of the time I don't need one. I'm buying something that I'm definitely not going to return. You know, I'm about to consume it or whatever it is, or I'm cooking with it. And then you find out that eleven point two billion receipts are used in the UK, and you just think, why is nobody talking about this? We have to talk about this because no one else is.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Oh, you you're wound up about receipts, are you?

SPEAKER_00 51:48

And then in episode eight, they were a rubbish or not, and we said rubbish in the main because they use thermal paper, and you scratch the receipt to find out, and if it leaves a mark, it's not recyclable, and if it isn't, it is recyclable. If it doesn't, leave a mark. And in episode 49, I talked about supermarkets that make you take a receipt to leave the store. Well, I went to Smith's Toys the other day, I'd bought a present for someone from Smith's, and I had to return it. It wasn't the right thing, it wasn't quite right, so I decided I'd return it and get something else. I I'm not 100% sure where the receipt went. I did actually keep this one because I thought maybe I will return it. It's a gift, you're never quite sure, so I kept it.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

The one time that the receipt would have been useful, James, and you didn't have it.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Well, let me tell you, Robbie, this is what happened. So I walked in with this toy and they said, Do you have the receipt? And I said, No. I said, I'll just have a gift card, because I knew I was gonna go and buy another receipt. Uh another receipt. I knew I was gonna go and buy another toy to replace this one. So I thought I'll just get a gift card, which is typically what they do if you don't have the receipt, right? And he said, No, no worries, do you know when you bought it? And I just quickly opened my banking app. I was like, Oh, it was the you know 13th of July or whatever it was, and I said, you know, and I spent this much, this was the cost of the item. And he literally on his computer just put the date in, put the cost of the item, pressed enter, my receipt popped up. It was not like a it was not just in the database as like a line, this guy made a purchase, it was an exact copy of my receipt. So before it's printed, they must save a copy of it as an image on their computer systems. I was absolutely astonished. And so they just gave me the refund there and then he said, Yep, there's your receipt. He gave me another receipt to confirm the refund.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

You were fuming. You were absolutely you chewed this guy's ear off.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

He was like, Before you go, here's the refund receipt. I was like, oh my god, is that now saved in the system? So we like, this is like inception. We could end up in a never-ending loop. But other than that, other than the fact that I did get another receipt, um, absolutely amazing that they have those kind of systems. So that's what there we go, that's what we need. All those people on social media who were saying, you need a receipt to return something. I have proved you wrong. No, you don't. We just need everyone to use whatever system that is. So well done, Smiths.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Yeah, very cool. So my one, the the uh emotion was definitely shock. Actually, it might be the mind-blown one, you know, the exploding brain. Because I put a little post up on social media on LinkedIn about upcycling and kind of informal reuse, you know, where you repurpose jars for things and stuff like that, giving some examples, asking other people for ideas, and I was absolutely shocked with one that got posted up by Emma Sampson. You know the goo pot, don't you? The classic goo pot. Lots of people reuse those for many things, like a sort of tea light holder is one thing, uh, but also just as little dessert dishes to make your own desserts in make your own mousse at home. Uh beautiful little pots. Apparently, and I've not checked this, so please, wasters, go and uh if you've got these things, go and try. The lid of a Pringles tube, which is still plastic, even in the new design, the pop lid, uh r uh reusable lid if you like, uh, to keep them uh from spoiling, fits perfectly on top of that goo pot, apparently.

SPEAKER_00 55:27

Yeah, I have tried this. Have you?

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Yes, it definitely works. Wow, okay. So my I maybe I'm late to the party here. Is this just well known? Everybody knows about this.

SPEAKER_00 55:39

Uh I don't know if everyone knows, but I certainly I've seen it a few times and I have tried it, and it does definitely work. But I'm not you know, I think we're in the industry, right?

SPEAKER_01 55:49

So I should know. I should know better, is what you're saying, James.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

Oh yeah, I'm proud of you discovering it even now. It's all good.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

So there we go, folks. Single use packaging doesn't have to be single use. Uh, use the top of a Pringles tube to stick on a goo pot and uh let us know the amount of different types of uses for that, because it's a pretty cool thing.

SPEAKER_00 56:12

Absolutely. So, as always, thank you all for listening. Thank you for those suggestions, Robbie. I'm looking forward to so now I have to buy Pringles alongside my goo. This is not great for my diet. Oh my goodness. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for the reviews and engagement. We'd just loved getting to do this podcast. I hope that was interesting. Going through aluminium and all the other things that we had on today's show. Feels jam-packed today. There's lots to discuss. As we mentioned, join our Discord, follow us on social media at rubbishpodcast. You can email talkingrubbishpodcast at gmail.com or you can WhatsApp us. And everything we've discussed today can be found in our link tree, and the details for all of those things is in our show notes. There's nothing left for me to say other than see you next bin day. Bye. Bye.