Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been accused of misleading customers over their front-of-store recycling schemes after an investigation found that most soft plastic returned to stores was burned.The Everyday Plastic campaign group and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK) tracked 40 bundles of soft plastic waste – such as single-use bags, films and wrapping – through supermarket take-back schemes across England.The bundles were tracked after they left the stores from July 2023 to February 2024 and collectively travelled more than 25,000km across the UK and overseas, and the majority of the waste was burned for energy, not recycled. Sainsbury’s said it has recently improved its signage to help encourage more customers to recycle soft plastic waste in its stores, including which items are accepted and the condition they should ideally be in to allow the supermarket to recycle them.Tesco said that while the investigation found materials were sent to an accredited processing site in Turkey, this was a supplier error as the supermarket’s materials should not have been sent to that location.“Where it is not possible to recycle the collected plastic, we put it to alternative uses to avoid these materials going to landfill, for example using it for energy recovery.“We know there is a lot more progress to be made, and the infrastructure to recycle soft plastics at scale in the UK and the EU still has a way to go.”
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00At big supermarket chains like Tesco and Sainsbury's, you'll find soft packaging recycling schemes
00:04like this one, where conscientious shoppers can bring in things like single-use plastics,
00:09film and wrapping to give them a second life, avoid landfill or ultimately do better by
00:15the planet. But an investigation has found that some of these take-back schemes have
00:19been misleading customers. The Everyday Plastic campaign put tracking tags on 40 bundles of
00:25plastic waste from Tesco's and Sainsbury's over the course of a year and found that most
00:30of it was burnt for energy, not recycled and some of it was shipped overseas. Now the campaigners
00:37say that these recycling schemes that do go towards the supermarket's green targets are
00:42misleading customers and that it's diverting attention from the main issue, that is too
00:48much plastic is ultimately being produced. In reaction, Sainsbury's has said that recently
00:54they have improved its signage to tell customers what sort of condition that plastic needs
00:59to be in to be recycled, adding that the burning of plastic only takes place when materials
01:05are soiled or damaged. Tesco said that while the investigation found that materials were
01:10sent to an accredited processing site in Turkey, they say this was a supplier error on their
01:16part. They added, we know there is a lot of progress to be made and the infrastructure
01:22to recycle soft plastics at scale in the UK and the EU has a way to go.