Sainsbury’s trials in-store recycling system for flexible plastics

Salad bags, frozen food bags, biscuits and cake wrappers are among the household products that are harder to recycle at home, often made with Polypropylene (PP) film, which isn’t accepted by most councils in the UK. Customers will now be able to put their PP plastics into the same recycling bins currently provided in the 600 Sainsbury’s stores that collect PE plastics.

Claire Hughes, director of product and innovation at Sainsbury’s, said: “Sainsbury’s is dedicated to trialling and testing new initiatives as part of our ongoing commitment to make it easier for customers to recycle. We hope that by trialling flexible film recycling points in our stores and accepting more of the packaging that our customers may be unable to recycle at home, we are helping our customers reduce plastic waste. We’ll listen to feedback from our colleagues and customers before we roll out the flexible plastic packaging recycling scheme wider.

“As we work to reduce, reuse, replace and recycle plastic packaging, we’ll continue to find collaborations, working with our suppliers, academics and organisations such as WRAP to explore innovative ways to reduce and recycle more of our packaging.”