Marks & Spencer (M&S), a leading, ownbrand UK retailer, has teamed up with Polytag, a recycling technology company, to enable M&S to trace what happens to its drinks bottles, cartons and other plastic packaging.
(© Polytag).
The Polytag technology consists of an invisible datamatrix code, applied by UV ink to existing label designs, in such a way that the code is repeated across the entire surface of the label. The code is then picked up by electronic UV readers located at recycling centres, allowing for more accurate sorting and cleaner raw materials for recycled plastic packaging.
Products featuring the tags will start appearing on shelves in August. Different aspects of the system had previously been tested with other UK retailers – Co-op, Aldi and Ocado, the online grocery specialist which also invested in Polytag – but the M&S project will represent the first full-scale use of the scheme.
As part of the project, M&S will fund the installation of two new UV readers at recycling sites in Northern Ireland and London, in addition to two existing sites. The Welsh government is also funding the installation of readers at a further three sites in the country.
In a year’s time, Polytag aims to have more than 12 sites running with its technology, accounting for half of all single-use plastic household waste recycled in the UK, as it expects to sign up additional retailers who will fund the installation of more readers. Ultimately, the company hopes to expand to 48 UK sites covering 95% of household waste recycling.
The project launches as retailers prepare to pay new fees towards the disposal of plastic packaging under the government’s delayed extended producer responsibility (EPR) regime. Retailers are already bound to monitor and report the amount of packaging they sell and future fees are expected to be based on those measures.
The retail industry has called for the money raised by the EPR scheme to go towards building better recycling infrastructure in the UK so that materials can be reused locally.
Alice Rackley, CEO of Polytag, said the system would aid the sorting of plastic pots and bottles so that items that once contained food, which are worth more than those contaminated with household chemicals such as bleach, could be separated out more easily.
‘There is a massive single-use plastic crisis and we have got to start collecting data about it and to use that to try and sort it out,’ Rackley said.
She added that the ability to show items had been properly recycled might also be used by retailers as a way to demand lower EPR fees.
The system will not be able to monitor what happens to products sent overseas or show how many items end up in landfill. However, Rackley said the scheme could be used to check that waste disposal partners were handling plastic in the correct manner.
According to an article published in The Hindu, in 2023 auditors from India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) unearthed over 600,000 fake extended producer responsibility (EPR) certificates, issued by four plastic recycling plants. Together, the certificates represented a far higher output than the installed capacity of the plants.
In India, plastic recyclers are required to issue one EPR certificate for every metric tonne of plastic recycled. However, the certificates are only considered legitimate once that metric tonne has been sold. In the case of the four companies under investigation, none of them could provide proof of such sales to CPCB auditors.
Multiple sources from India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the plastic waste recycling industry advised that the potential quantity of fake certificates could be many times higher than the 600,000 so far unearthed, given that there are 2,348 plastic waste recyclers registered with the CPCB.
But why would recyclers want to produce fake EPR certificates?
Under Indian EPR rules, companies are able to fulfil their plastic waste targets by either ensuring that a prescribed annual percentage of their own waste is collected and recycled, or by purchasing EPR certificates from entities that have exceeded their collection targets. In this way, the certificates become tradable credits, much like carbon credits, and, as such, they acquire a monetary value. Hence the interest in faking huge quantities of them.
Since the cost of EPR certificates in India for plastic waste management can range from $25 to $125 per certificate, It’s easy to see why recyclers would be motivated to counterfeit them.
This would suggest that the responsibility for issuing such certificates should be transferred to India’s relevant governing body, ie. the CPCB, in much the same way as other documents of value used in the country are issued.
C-trace GmbH, a German IT company specialising in automation solutions for the waste disposal industry, has developed an inspection system that identifies contaminants in organic waste before they are transported for reuse or recycling.
The system, called c-detect, consists of cameras mounted on four movable arms, two placed outside and two inside the collection – or pouring – chamber of a waste disposal truck, and hardwired to a laptop computer loaded with AI-enabled software. The laptop is installed on board the truck in the operator’s cabin.
The system is designed to inspect organic waste both in the waste disposal bin, before it is dumped into the pouring chamber, as well as in the chamber as the bin empties. The system can also identify who owns the bin through an RFID tag attached to it.
Germany imposes stringent regulations with regard to the quality of biowaste, so collecting and sorting processes need to be optimal. Contaminants in biowaste, especially plastics, lead to high recycling costs and make recycling time-consuming, or even impossible.
Typically, human workers carry out such inspections, in particular waste disposal employees assigned to a truck working a specific route in a town or city. As the truck approaches a bin for disposal, the employee visually inspects it for contaminated materials (eg. plastic) among organic waste. If contaminants are discovered, the bin will not be emptied into the truck.
