Hi folks! It’s Aiden writing the blog post this week. It has been a while since I have written a blog as the wonderful Rogues have been doing such a good job. With the last coal fired power plant closing down this week (It’s just outside Nottingham!) I thought I would take a look at the environmental cost of piercing. This is going to be a big old subject focused on the Carbon footprint of piercing techniques. This is going to focus on the elements that can be changed during a procedure, so will not cover elements such as needles, skin prep, studio running costs etc. This isn’t going to say there is a right or wrong way to go about piercing but more an honest look at the effects of our choices. It is also important to note that the Carbon cost isn’t the only deciding factor in choice of technique. The safety of the client and piercer are paramount and will be put before Carbon cost generally. So, let’s get stuck in!
For those of you that don’t want to read through all the data, here is a TL;DR for you
We are going to use the UK average Carbon cost for 1kWh of electrcity in 2023 which was 162g. This is taken from carbonbrief.org. Now, obviously each piercing studio will have a different energy contract from different suppliers so some may be using fully renewable energy and some may use fossil fuel derived energy, but I’m going to use an average for this blog. We will also look at the maximum power use of each item using their listed power draws. In reality, equipment doesn’t run at full capacity all the time but this is the easiest way for us to make a comparison without owning and measuring every device available.
Reprocessing
There have never been as many ways to create a piercing as there are currently. When you head to a studio to get a piercing, your piercer will have already made choices about the tools and equipment they will (or will not) use. The most common way that piercers across the UK work is with tools that are reprocessed after use. This reprocessing will involve the use of chemicals in a disinfecting machine and then sterilisation in an autoclave and as with everything piercing; there is never just one way.
Ultrasonic Vs Instrument Washer
Ultrasonic cleaners are a system where tools are submerged into a bath of chemicals and then an ultrasonic transducer sends ultrasonic waves through the fluid. This method has a two pronged approach to disinfection, as the chemicals will break down organic compounds (blood, skin oils etc) and the ultrasonic will physically remove debris. The “bubbles” in an ultrasonic are small pockets of vacuum which “suck” debris off the tools. The biggest cons of ultrasonic cleaners are that they must be used carefully to prevent contaminating the area around them, they can be used incorrectly by operators so training is required for both efficacy and safety and the chemicals must be disposed of carefully as they can be damaging to the aquatic environment. The most commonly used chemical in the UK is Rapidex. According to the MSDS (found here), Rapidex is not damaging to the environment but should be kept away from drains. This means the most ideal way to dispose would be to use absorbent granules but this is not always the case. Generally, ultrasonic cleaners have a relatively low electricity use compared to other options.
Carbon Cost – A 5L ultrasonic bath is the common size used in UK piercing studios. A reputable machine such as Allendale Ultrasonics 5L ultrasonic is listed as using 200 watts of power (100watt heating and 100watt ultrasonic transducer). Ultrasonics are generally used for 10-20 minutes once a day and will generally be used for approx. 15 tools at a time. This would therefore come out as (200w * 0.16 hours)/1000 = 0.032kWh which equates to 5.184grams of Carbon. This, divided by 15 for each tool, would be 0.3456g.
Instrument washers are like dishwashers on steroids. They are automated systems where once the cycle is started, the error can be minimal. Like ultrasonic cleaners, they use chemicals to break down organic material but instead of using vacuum “bubbles” they will use water jets to remove debris. The Hydrim HIP MSDS states that chemicals are safe to be disposed of through drains as long as they are diluted. The brochure states that water use is between 11 and 30 Litres depending on the cycle type. The biggest con of instrument washers (aside from a much higher purchase cost) is that they require more power use, but their main pros are that: user error is minimised; user safety is increased as it is an enclosed system with much safer chemical handling; the chemicals are disposed of much easier as they are plumbed into the waste water system, and they are much less likely to contaminate their surroundings. The majority of instrument washers can be used in a piercing room because of how enclosed they are.
Carbon Cost – The most common instrument washer found in UK piercing studios would be the Hydrim C61. Common is somewhat of a misnomer, as these are still quite rarely used due to their price point being higher than ultrasonics. The Technician Service Manual (not linked as info generously shared by a technician) states a 2.7kW max load. This seems a lot more than an ultrasonic, but more tools are able to be decontaminated at once and to a more uniform standard than an ultrasonic, and more tools can be decontaminated at once. According to the operator’s manual, a Hydrim C61 can decontaminate up to 120 tools at a time. It would be unusual for a piercing studio to be able to use this many tools in the time frame that they would need to be decontaminated and re-used, so to allow for real world use this figure will be halved to 60 (this would still be high for a UK piercing studio). The Carbon created breaks down as (2.7kW * 0.53 hours) = 1.404 kWh which equates to 227.48g of Carbon. This divided by 60 tools would be 3.79g.
Class B vs Class S
Class B and Class S are different types of autoclaves. They both achieve sterilisation using steam, heat and pressure but they use them differently to get their results. A Class B will generally fill a boiler with steam and store the steam until it is required, whereas a class S will generate the steam as it is required. Class B is the most common type of autoclave found in UK piercing studios, but class S is the most common in high quality piercing studios.
Understanding the environmental impact of these autoclaves requires looking into more than just the power use. Most Class B autoclaves are larger and can sterilise more at once but the tools, equipment and jewellery will need to be bagged in sterilisation pouches for later use. Class S autoclaves, however, tend to be smaller and sterilise less but run “naked” cycles where the tools, equipment and jewellery is used as soon as the sterilisation cycle is complete. Sterilisation pouches are normally half paper and half polypropylene plastic. A box of 200, 35mm*75mm sterilisation pouches weighs 194g. As one side is paper, we will half this value to 97g for 200 which is 0.485g per pouch. The Carbon cost for producing 3Kg of polypropylene is 3Kg according to this website so that would be 0.485g of Carbon per small pouch. Tool pouches used for forceps are larger, so as it is 0.485g for 0.002625m^2 (35mm * 75mm) for small pouches, and forceps pouches are 135mm*255mm which is 0.034425m^2 this equates to 6.36g of Carbon, per forceps pouch.
Both types of autoclave require distilled water. There are two options for sourcing this. It can be purchased, or it can be distilled in-house. I have been unable to find information about power use for purchased distilled water, so will look at in-house distilled water. This Carbon cost will need to be added on to both autoclaves’ Carbon use. A distiller creates 5L of distilled water at a time – this can last for approx. 20 cycles in a Class S and approx. 5 cycles in a Class B.
Distiller Carbon Cost – (0.75kW * 4 hours) = 3kWh which equates to 486g of Carbon per 5L water.
Class B autoclaves found in UK piercing studios will generally sterilise around 12-20 tools at a time, so we will take a median value of 16 tools. We will use the Excel Enigma 12 Litre class B for our information, as this is a commonly used autoclave in the UK.
Carbon Cost – (2kW * 1 Hour) = 2kWh which equates to 324 grams of Carbon. The distilled water needs to be added to this, which would be 486g / 5 cycles = 97.2g making the subtotal 421.1g. Then, this is divided by 16 tools, so the total per tool sterilisation is 26.31g of carbon, but the pouch cost must be added so the final total is 32.67g of carbon.
Class S autoclaves generally sterilise 2-4 tools at a time so we will take 3 tools as the median value. The Statim 2000S is the most commonly used Class S autoclave found in UK piercing studios, so our data will be based on this machine. The power use is listed as 240 Volts and 6 Amps which equals approx. 1.4 kWatts. The cycle time for a hollow unwrapped cycle is 8 minutes.
Carbon Cost – (1.4kW * 0.13 hours) = 0.182 kWh, which equates to 29.484g of Carbon. Plus the distilled water carbon cost, this is 53.784g. This then needs to be divided by 3 for the number of tools, so the final total is 17.928g of Carbon per tool sterilised.
Disposable Piercing
A relatively new option open to piercers now is disposable piercing. Disposable piercing removes the requirement for reprocessing and sterilising tools, as the equipment is purchased pre-sterile from the manufacturer and is then disposed of through incineration or recycling. There are 4 main ways a piercer can pierce in a disposable manner. These are plastic disposable tools, metal disposable tools, using needle blanks and freehand (aka tool free).
Plastic Disposable
Plastic disposable tools are generally made from acrylic and are EO gas sterilised in sterilisation pouches. There has recently been a move by some companies to move to biodegradable and plant based plastic disposable tools. Wheat straw is listed as the material for one manufacturer’s biodegradable tools, so we will use these for this option.
EO gas sterilisation is used for both disposable material choices. Unfortunately I was unable to find data for how much carbon is produced during EO gas sterilisation, so cannot add this into the calculations. EO sterilisation isn’t a method that can be used in piercing studios as it is a large scale industrial process. This method uses sterilisation pouches, so we will need to add in our Carbon values from earlier on.
As we can’t look at the sterilisation cost and there is no reprocessing of disposable tools, we will look at the production cost. Disposal or recycling Carbon costs will have their own section further down.
Acrylic (PMMA) plastic being made from oil means it inherently has a high Carbon foot print. According to renewablematter.eu acrylic produces 5.5Kg of CO2 for every 1Kg of acrylic produced. We weighed three of the acrylic tools we have in stock and they came in at 8.91g, 5.08g and 10.22g. We will take an average across these to get a single figure for our use. The average weight we will use is 8.07g. Taking the Carbon production cost, it means that 8.07g of Acrylic equates to 44.385g of Carbon. When we add in the sterilisation pouch, it brings our Carbon total to 50.745g (44.385g + 6.36g).
Wheat Straw-derived plastics are a new innovation in the piercing world. In the industrial world wheat straw plastic is named polybutylene succinate (PBS). Wheat straw is a by-product of the farming industry that would normally be disposed of by either composting or by burning. Also, the process of growing wheat is removing CO2 from the atmosphere, so this method should be more of a closed loop. Wheat has been shown to absorb more Carbon than it emits (link) but I unfortunately could not find data to equate how much Carbon is absorbed by the wheat straw, nor how many hectares of wheat straw goes into a given weight of wheat straw derived plastics – so the figures for this section need to be taken with a pinch of salt. According to sciencedirect 1kg of wheat straw plastic produced 3.43Kg of Carbon. I do not currently have any wheat straw based tools, so looking at the material density it is very similar to acrylic at 1.26g/cm^3 vs PMMA at 1.18g/cm^3. So, taking our average acrylic tool weight of 8.07g and multiplying it by a ratio of 1.06, our average wheat based tool weight is 8.6g. Knowing this, we can then work out that 8.6g of PBS equates to 29.5g of Carbon. When we add in the sterilisation pouch, that brings our total to 35.85g (29.5g + 6.36g).
Needle Blank Disposable
Needle blanks are needles that have not had a sharp end ground into them. They can be very useful for piercing procedures as they can be used as receiving tubes, as snips (a method of connecting jewellery to the needle for insertion) and for making our own disposable tools. Available in sizes ranging from 26g up to 2g means that they offer piercers a lot of options to make the equipment they need quickly and cheaply. Needle blanks were an innovation that fulfilled a need for piercers who did not reprocess tools, before companies were producing disposable tools. They are not an outdated method and are still very much in use today, as they are a very versatile option.
The most commonly used needle blank sizes used in piercing studios would be 8g 2″ and 26g 1″. They would normally be sterilised in a Statim as needed. We will look into the production Carbon cost of these tools. The amount of carbon released from the production of steel varies greatly depending on where the ore was mined, where the steel was produced, the process used to make the steel, the grade of steel produced and whether the steel was recycled or made from virgin ore. We will take an average of all the steel produced around the globe to try and get some figures we can work with. According to carbon chain the production of steel in 2020 accounted for 8% of global Carbon emissions, at 1.88 tonnes of Carbon per 1 tonne of Steel produced. This makes the steel industry one of the top 3 global Carbon emitters. This includes the mining of iron ore and coal and then the production of steel.
An 8g 2″ needle blank weighs 1g, equating to 1.88g of Carbon.
A 26g 1″ needle snip weighs 0.015g, and this would equate to 0.0282g of Carbon.
If the blank and snip used for a piercing are sterilised in a Statim, no plastic packaging would be required so the Carbon cost of the tools alone would be 1.88g + 0.0282g = 1.9082g
Metal Disposable
The newest form of piercing tool supply in the market is metal disposable tools. Aces Supply have recently entered the UK market with a form of closed loop supply. They provide pre-sterile metal tools and sharps/tool bins that are reusable and they reclaim the metal and recycle it back into new tools. With this system being a closed loop, we are going to look at disposal and production as one cost as the processes are combined.
Just like with the plastic tools, we are going to take the weight of three types of tool and take an average across these. The three tools we weighed were 36.7g, 27.7g and 43.34g which gives us an average of 35.9g of steel. When we calculate the Carbon cost of these using the data from the needle blank section, it gives us a Carbon cost of 66.9g.
Metal disposable tools arrive to studios pre-sterilised in sterilisation pouches, so we would need to add this Carbon cost too. This would bring our total up to 66.9g + 6.36g = 73.26g.
Disposal
The final aspect of the piercing process we need to take a look at is disposal. The waste generated from piercing is classed as clinical waste and therefore must be disposed of carefully. There are different categories of clinical waste and this defines how it should be disposed. As piercers, our waste falls into 2 categories; Offensive Waste and Sharps. The offensive waste can go to landfill, but the safety of this would be questionable. This means that one of the big pros of PBS is negated, as it doesn’t go to landfill to biodegrade, and would be incinerated for the safety of staff working in the waste stream. At Rogue we use waste collection services that send our waste for incineration. Sharps waste also goes for incineration, but the metal from this can be recycled as there are no pathogens that can survive the process of melting steel. The metal tools that are recycled would be recycled through the sharps waste system.
Offensive waste is the category into which the paper and plastic elements of the piercing process would fall when it comes to being disposed of. As we are not covering the paper elements in this blog (due to them being the same across all piercing methods) we will look at the Carbon cost of incinerating plastics. Sadly I was unable to find data on individual plastics and the data available varies greatly, so we will have to look at an average.
Oil-derived plastics – According to QMRE, for every 1 tonne of oil-derived plastic burned, 2.9 tonnes of Carbon is released. So for our oil plastic disposable tools, the Carbon cost for incineration would be 147.16g (50.745g * 2.9)
Plant-derived plastics – As these are such a new material to the market there isn’t huge amounts of data available. The main aim for plant-derived plastics is to have them biodegrade, so this limits the data for incineration even further. Taking data from this research paper we can see that the Carbon cost is approx. 2.8kg per kg of plastic. The carbon cost of incinerating plant derived plastics would be 103.97g (35.85g * 2.9).
Sharps – Sharps covers the needles that we use as piercers, but it would also cover metal disposable tools such as snips, blanks and disposable clamps. These are all made from steel.
Steel – The Carbon cost of recycling steel is significantly lower than producing virgin steel. Data from 8billiontrees shows us that the Carbon cost is 0.88Kg of Carbon per 1Kg of recycled steel.
Blank and Snip – The combined weight of a needle blank and snip is 1.015g so the Carbon footprint of recycling is 0.89g (1.015g * 0.88).
Metal disposable clamp – The average weight we used above for disposable metal tools was 35.9g which would give us a Carbon footprint of 31.592g (35.9g * 0.88)
Freehand aka Tool Free
There is one final method to mention here and that is Freehand, aka Tool Free. As this method just uses the needle and the jewellery and they would be used for every other technique mentioned above, the Carbon cost for this method would be 0g (on top of the standard items used by all the other techniques). This is unsurprising, as it will always be more environmentally friendly to not use an item than to use an alternative item.
Summary
To put all of this into a format that is more digestible, I have used this data to show the Carbon cost of a septum piercing using the various methods available to us. The choice of septum is because every method of piercing we have looked at can be used. As we are only looking at the differences, this doesn’t include the Carbon cost of the paper products, cleaning products, studio running etc. It is also important to remember that the safety of the client, practitioner and the ease of use of the products needs to be thought about – so the Carbon footprint isn’t the final decision maker for choice of technique. A disposable tool hugely reduces the risk for the client and the practitioner, and as it is long term health that can be affected, this can be a much more important factor than Carbon use. The table below is showing measurements in grams.
The limitations of our results are that we cannot find data for EO gas sterilisation, or the amount of Carbon absorbed during plant-based plastics’ plant growth stage. Even so, we can see that a class S reprocessed tool comes in as the least Carbon intensive, and oil-based disposable comes in as the most Carbon intensive of the tool techniques.
I hope you all enjoyed me being a nerd this week. This is a subject I have been trying to write about for a long time but haven’t been able to get the data – I hope that in the future I can get that missing data. Until next time!
