The hill the Brexiteers are prepared to die on? Ketchup sachets

Yes, every silver lining has a cloud, and so with Andy Burnham increasingly nudging Britain back towards the European Union, this week has seen the press return to one of their favourite occupations, one which has been denied them for more than half a decade. For the tabloids, a cruel irony is that the Brexit they campaigned for so fervently denied them the chance to report on “barmy Brussels edicts”. Now they can – and what a hill they’ve chosen to die on.

“Andy Burnham could ban ketchup and mayo sachets to get closer to EU”, fumed the Daily Express this week as it sought to strike fear into the hearts of its readers with the news that, were Britain to realign with European rules it would be forced to implement the ban on single-use plastic packaging for condiments which takes effect on January 1, 2030.

“Ketchup sachets risk being squeezed out by EU rules,” ran the Daily Telegraph, which got to indulge in its bashing of both the EU and net zero. The Sun even deployed capital letters with its headline “Sachets of popular condiments may be BANNED from cafes in move to align with EU”.

The Daily Mail, which ran with “Ketchup and mayonnaise sachets could be banned as Labour gets cosy with EU” even enlisted a big hitter to rage against this impudent imposition – none other than shadow Cabinet Office minister Mike Wood.

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A furious Wood submitted a written question in Parliament to environment minister Emma Hardy demanding that the great British sauce sachet (invented in Connecticut in 1955) would never be banned.

“We’ve seen the Government’s approach to these EU negotiations is to give way on absolutely everything that adds to the flavour of British life,” he actually, genuinely said. “But now obviously they are giving away the flavour of our sausage sandwiches as well.”

Mike! They’re not. You can still have sauce. It comes in bottles. Plastic, glass – whatever you fancy. You know this! You’ve got a degree in Economics & Law and everything.

Here’s the science bit. Standard household and commercial recycling systems cannot process condiment sachets, largely because they are rarely just plastic. Most are a composite of plastic (polyethylene) and aluminum foil fused together and standard recycling facilities can’t separate the microscopic layers.

What’s more, even if they were made of pure recyclable plastic, they are too small and flexible. They slip through the grates of Sorting Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) and jam the machinery. And here’s the killer: in 2021, a report from the Earth Institute at Columbia University found that every single condiment packet produced since 1955 still exists somewhere on Earth today.

So that’s why the EU wants to do away with them, quite rightly. And in none of the articles castigating this do the journalists take on these arguments, quite apart from the ban being three years away and its implementation in the UK being, at best, tentative.

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It’s just that they love this stuff, and have been denied it for so long. We have also seen it this week, with synthetic fury over EU moves, under pressure from livestock farmers, to ban meaty names such as steak and bacon for vegetarian and vegan foods, outlawing the use of words such as bacon, beef, chicken, drumstick, loin, ribs, steak, T-bone and wing.

“Bacon Fries face being RENAMED under ludicrous Brexit rules that could also hit Monster Munch and Pot Noodle,” roared the Sun, in a story which must have shocked people who assumed Bacon Fries were discontinued sometime around 1991.

But you know what? If this is really all they’ve got in terms of opposing any moves toward rejoining Europe, us Joiners aren’t in a bad place, are we? Fighting for the rights to squeeze ketchup from a very small plastic bag is not really £350 million a week for the EU, or every single man over 18 in Turkey moving to Lincolnshire.

In fact, here’s a deal: let us rejoin the EU, and you can have your fun again. Banning bendy bananas, fry-ups, Sunday roasts and Stilton are all non-existent legislation which nevertheless provided good fodder for the right wing press during the decades we were members. We go back, and you can do it all again! Who knows, you might even get some readers.

Incidentally, an aside. As a piece of actual journalistic research, ahead of writing this piece, I visited four different cafes within walking distance of where I live in East London, the greasy spoon’s spiritual home. Not one had sachets, with all of them having condiments either in their original glass bottles or decanted into colourful plastic ones.

I asked a member of staff in one cafe why. She thought briefly, and said: “I don’t think people like them.” Something for Mike Wood to consider, maybe.