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Marks & Spencer has partnered with a recycling technology group to allow the retailer to track what happens to its drinks bottles, cartons and other plastic packaging.
The Polytag system prints an invisible label on containers that can be picked up by electronic readers located at recycling centers.
Products with the labels will begin appearing on shelves in the next three months.
Various aspects of the system have been trialled with The Co-op, Aldi and Ocado, the online grocer, which has also invested in Polytag, but this will be the first full-scale use of the scheme.
As part of the project, M&S will also fund the installation of two readers at recycling sites in Northern Ireland and Edmonton, north London, which will add to two existing sites in Teesside and one in north Wales.
The Welsh Government is also funding the installation of readers at three more recycling centers across the country.
In a year’s time, Polytag aims to have more than 12 sites, which will account for half of all single-use household plastic waste recycled in the UK, as it expects to attract additional retailers who will fund the installation of additional readers at recyclers centers. It hopes to increase this to 48 sites across the UK covering 95% of household waste recycling.
The project was launched as retailers prepare to pay new charges to dispose of plastic packaging next year under the government’s Deferred Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regime.
Retailers are already required to monitor and report the amount of packaging they sell, and future charges are expected to be based on these 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.
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Alice Rackley, chief executive of Polytag, which is based in Deeside, near Chester, said the system would help sort plastic pots and bottles so that items that once contained food, which are worth more than those contaminated with household chemicals such as bleach, it can be separated more easily.
“There is a huge single-use plastic crisis and we need to start collecting data on it and use it to try to solve it,” Rackley said.
She added that the ability to display items that are properly recycled could also be used by retailers as a way to claim lower EPR fees.
The system will not be able to track 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 are handling plastic in the right way.
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