Saturday 15 December 2018

Quibans 86: Recycling Ferrero Rocher


This is interesting because it contains an error, a lack of clarity and something misleading.  Perfect for a Quibans!

Article from the Daily Telegraph:
Ferrero Rocher shamed as Christmas chocolates with the least recyclable packaging 
12 DECEMBER 2018 
Ferrero Rocher has been named and shamed as the Christmas chocolate box with the least recyclable packaging. 
The vast majority (89 per cent) of the packaging in a 359g Ferrero Rocher Collection box may be destined for landfill as it is made from non-recyclable plastic and foil, a study by consumer group Which? found.
By contrast the most recyclable chocolate boxes were Waitrose Christmas Chocolate Favourites 240g which is 96.3 per cent recyclable) Cadbury's Milk Tray, which is 92.5 per cent easily recyclable. The second least recyclable packaging was for Marks & Spencer's The Big One Selection 600g, which is 71.4 per cent recyclable. 
In addition Which? analysed chocolate boxes for their packaging to chocolate weight ratio, and found boxes of Ferrero Rocher Collections had by far the highest. 
Nearly half of the weight of a 359g Ferrero Rocher Collection box is made up of packaging (42.4 per cent), with the rest constituting (67.6 per cent) the chocolates themselves, it found.  
The boxes with the highest proportion of chocolate weight were Marks & Spencer's The Big One Selection 600g (just 8.5 per cent packaging), and Lindt Lindor Assorted Mix 384g (just 11.5 per cent packaging), the study showed.  

Questions:
1)      What is the error?
2)      The lack of clarity is that ‘359g’ is the weight of the chocolate (and nuts, etc) in the box.  The packaging weighs more on top of that.  42.4% of the total is the packaging, so what is the weight of packaging?
3)      The misleading part is that an implication of the two mentions of M&S is not followed up.  What is going on there?

(Answers are below.)

Further info:
Here are screenshots of the tables from the Which? report:



Here it is as a single table (to be pasted into Excel?)
Chocolate
Official weight (g)
Weight in packaging (g)
Packaging weight (g)
Percentage packaging 
Percentage easily recyclable
Cadbury's Heroes
660
808
144
17.80%
88.90%
Cadbury's Milk Tray
360
470
106
22.60%
92.50%
Cadbury's Roses
660
810
144
17.80%
90.30%
Chocolate Treats By Sainsburys
650
806
154
19.10%
88.30%
Ferrero Rocher Collection
359
642
272
42.40%
11%
Lindt Lindor Assorted Mix
337
384
44
11.50%
90.90%
Marks & Spencer The Big One Selection
600
662
56
8.50%
71.40%
Mars Celebrations
650
812
150
18.50%
90.70%
Mars Malteaser Teasers
275
364
70
19.20%
88.60%
Morrisons Mega Mix
1050
1216
162
13.30%
81.50%
Nestle Quality Street
720
846
130
15.40%
83.10%
Thorntons Continental Selection
284
408
120
29.40%
86.70%
Waitrose Christmas Chocolate Favourites
240
356
108
30.30%
96.30%

Additional questions:

4) What should happen when you add up the Official Weight and the Packaging Weight columns?
5) Do any of them mis-state the amount of chocolate they contain?
6) Work out the percentage of the Total Weight for each product that cannot be recycled. How does M&S compare?


Answers:

1)      The error is that 42.4% plus 67.6% doesn’t equal 100% (and it should).  The former figure is correct (as seen in the Which? tables).
2)      The chocolate in the Rochers are 57.6%, so when we divide 359g by 0.576 we get the total weight (623g) and this leads to a packaging weight of 264g.  This doesn’t agree with the figures from Which? because there is slightly over 359g of choc.
3)      M&S may have the second-least recyclable packaging, but there is much less of it, so maybe they have cut down on the packaging overall (which seems like a good thing: just because something is ‘recyclable’ doesn’t mean everyone will recycle it!).
4)      You should get the ‘Weight in packaging’ column. 
5)      Most of them give us slightly more chocolate than advertised, with only Nestle falling under (but that is presumably only on the single box that Which? tested).
6)      I used Excel to work this out.  38% of the weight of the in-package Ferrero Rocher is non-recyclable, but only 2% of the M&S.  The median was 2%.



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