Our Contribution

"A sustainability expert says supermarket schemes that encourage us to return plastic carrier bags and soft plastics, offering in-store collection points, green labels, and feel-good messaging, do more to protect a brand’s image than the planet.

In the UK, we throw away around 290,000 tonnes of plastic bags and wrapping every year. Only 6% of this is actually recycled, and just 7% of plastics put on the market are collected at the kerbside, leaving supermarket takeback bins to do most of the work.

John Small, sustainability expert at Ty Eco, said: “We’ve reached a point where recycling is being used as a marketing tool rather than an actual solution. The infrastructure simply isn't there to handle the amount of soft plastic we’re producing, and supermarkets aren't being honest about where it ends up.”