The "waste" made of waste plastic (left) is obviously much darker than the "good material" (right) in appearance. They are mixed together to produce foam tableware. This edition photo was taken by Beijing Times reporter Hu Xiaohong

After the Beijing Times recently exclusively reported "The lifting of the ban on foam tableware has caused controversy" and "The 4.5 million yuan public relations contract was accidentally exposed", the question of "whether foam tableware should be lifted" has attracted great attention from all walks of life. According to the news previously announced by the National Development and Reform Commission, the ban on foam tableware will be officially lifted on May 1. So, what is the current status of the production of foam tableware industry in terms of hygiene and safety? In mid-April, the reporter secretly visited some foam tableware manufacturers and found that neither the source of raw materials nor the production and processing process could reassure consumers.

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Raw materials

Good materials and waste materials are mixed

Industry insiders told reporters that the production process of foam tableware is very simple: first, the food-grade polystyrene raw materials are "pulled" (processed into foam sheets more than one meter wide), and then the sheets are processed into foam tableware using molds.

In mid-April, with the help of people familiar with the matter, the reporter entered a foam tableware factory in Yangzhou, Jiangsu.

The machines roared in the factory building of several thousand square meters. At one end of the pull-sheet machine, the reporter saw a funnel-shaped container filled with black and gray plastic particles the size of rice grains. The reporter grabbed a handful and checked it out. There were both white and black in it, with black being the main color. The worker told the reporter that this was polystyrene, but it was not all "good materials", but a "mixture" mixed with various waste materials and a small amount of good materials. The reporter put the plastic particles he grabbed back and found that his hands were covered with white powder. "That's talcum powder," said the worker.

In the factory, the reporter found bags of raw materials, most of which were black, and most of the bags had no clear product information on the outer packaging; a small number of bags were marked with "polystyrene", and the raw materials in them were white and transparent, which the workers called "good materials".

"Generally, we put 15 bags of materials into the funnel at one time, including 5 bags of good materials, 5 bags of purchased waste materials, and 5 bags of recycled materials." The worker said.

Waste plastics as raw materials

In another foam tableware processing factory in Yangzhou, the reporter also found similar problems.

The factory owner told reporters that 30 bags of raw materials were added to the funnel of the factory's puller each time, including 12 bags of good materials, 8 bags of purchased waste materials, and 10 bags of recycled materials processed by themselves. "Good materials cost 13,700 yuan per ton, and purchased waste materials cost 8,000-9,000 yuan per ton." The boss said that if all good materials were used, the cost of each lunch box would have to rise to 8 cents, while the cost of processing with poor materials would only be 4.5 cents. Where were these waste materials purchased from, and what raw materials were used to process them? In this regard, the two factories refused to disclose.

Dong Jinshi, Secretary General of the International Food Packaging Association, told reporters that the association had previously found that some foam tableware manufacturers used a large amount or even all of the imported waste plastics or recycled waste tape boxes, waste foam lunch boxes, shock-absorbing blocks, insulation boards, advertising boards, etc. for production. In order to cover up the impurities in the waste plastics, some companies also artificially added toxic and harmful fluorescent brighteners and toxic masterbatches. The foam tableware they produced has serious safety hazards and poses a great threat to consumer health.

Recycling of scraps

Among the raw materials of foam tableware, there is also a part of recycled materials, which are made from the scraps produced during the sheet processing process.

The reporter saw in the factory that while processing foam tableware, a crusher connected to the processing machine directly crushed the scraps and then transported them to a large furnace (granulator) through a pipeline. The scraps scattered on the ground and stepped on by the workers were finally swept together. The workers said that these should also be crushed and transported to the granulator.

The reporter carefully observed the processing process of the granulator-the crushed scraps were softened by the process and turned into lumps of gray paste, which flowed into the black pipeline ditch below through a dirty black outlet; the paste was pulled into a row of wire-like threads through a machine; after the threads passed through another machine, they were cut into rice-sized plastic particles, which looked the same as the raw materials used for pulling the sheets.

"This is recycled material, that is, the waste material processed by ourselves." The worker told reporters that the waste recycling machine runs almost 24 hours a day, and the amount of recycled material processed every day is not small.

The talcum powder used is questionable

In a relatively hidden small house in the backyard of the factory, the reporter found two small pools filled with powdered materials, and a lot of powdered materials were scattered on the ground. The powder in one pool was relatively white, and the color in the other pool was a bit black, and a rusty shovel was inserted. A worker who followed in told reporters that these powdered materials were talcum powder.

Dong Jinshi, secretary general of the International Food Packaging Association, told reporters that the use of talcum powder in the production process of foam tableware has two functions: one is to act as a nucleating agent to increase the foaming ratio; the other is to assist in whitening. Regular foam tableware companies also use talcum powder, but the talcum powder used is food grade. The talcum powder used by informal enterprises is not necessarily food grade (industrial grade talcum powder often contains harmful ingredients such as heavy metal cadmium and lead), and they often use a lot of talcum powder, with whitening as the main purpose.

At the foot of the hut, the reporter found a packaging bag marked with the words "talcum powder". Like the polystyrene packaging bags the reporter saw, the talcum powder packaging bags did not have any "food use" words on them.

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