Despite growing public awareness and ambitious government targets, the UK’s plastics recycling system continues to face significant hurdles. Brand owners and retailers are under pressure to increase recycled content in packaging, yet many solutions remain constrained by cost, technology and inconsistent infrastructure. The result is a system that struggles to turn ambition into action.
Against this backdrop, the question facing the UK plastics industry is clear: why does the system still fall short, and what is needed to make circularity a reality?
The Recoup Summit in Leeds, which brought together industry leaders, innovators and policymakers in March to explore solutions for more sustainable and circular plastics systems, offered a forum to examine these challenges in depth.
Experts at the event shone a light on gaps in collection and sorting, the limitations of current recycling technologies, and the need for collaboration across the value chain.
Why UK recycling still falls short
Recycling systems face practical constraints that go beyond design. Even large facilities handling tens of thousands of tonnes of plastics each year encounter challenges with current packaging formats.
Multilayer materials, barrier coatings, and heavily printed surfaces all make sorting and reprocessing more difficult, showing the gap between theoretical recyclability and what is achievable in practice.
Addressing the challenges of UK plastics recycling requires substantial investment. In July 2025, the UK government announced that £1.1 billion ($1.45bn) would be invested in 2025/26 to improve local recycling services and infrastructure in England, for example, funded through the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme.
The funding is intended to help local authorities upgrade collection systems and recycling facilities so more materials can be sorted and processed rather than sent to landfill or incineration.
In 2023, Industry body the Environmental Services Association said the sector is ‘willing and ready’ to invest £10bn ($13.22bn) in recycling and waste infrastructure over the following decade, covering sorting and reprocessing facilities and highlighting the scale of capital required to improve recycling outcomes across the UK.
Investment in recyclable packaging is increasing, but even if packaging is designed to be recyclable, there’s no guarantee it will be collected, sorted and ultimately recycled. The reality is that much of it still doesn’t make it through the system. Furthermore, brand owners and retailers tend to lack the data to understand what actually happens to materials once they enter the recycling stream.
Alice Rackley, chief executive of recycling technology firm Polytag, highlighted the importance of capturing real-world data on packaging recyclability. Polytag’s platform uses barcode-level tracking and UV tags to provide proof that materials are collected and sorted, giving brand owners a clear view of actual recycling outcomes rather than just theoretical recyclability.
“I would absolutely love to be able to prove to any brand that is putting packaging onto the market that consumer action does matter,” she said. “Recycling actually does work, and we can collect a data trail to demonstrate closed-loop outcomes for things like yoghurt pots.”
Her work underscores the broader challenge: without accurate tracking and verification, even well-designed packaging can fail to be recycled.
The UK’s recycling infrastructure also struggles to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated materials. Ahmed Detta, chief executive of PET recycling company Enviroo, said: “Facilities struggle to handle complex plastics such as PET multilayers. Without investment in technology and better sorting systems, even the best-designed materials may end up in landfill.”
Cost-pressures and existing machinery add another layer of complication. Gareth Callan, sustainable packaging lead at PepsiCo, suggested that innovation is constrained by the realities of current production assets.
“We need some innovation because of the packaging machinery that we have at the moment, our existing assets, and it is a cost-driven issue as well,” he said.
“All of it has been a cost-driven issue. We do not talk about the millions of pounds, literally millions of pounds, that brands have invested to make their current portfolios recyclable, and it still does not get recycled.”
Even everyday packaging choices illustrate the tension between sustainability goals and practical recycling outcomes. Seasonal confectionery products such as Cadbury Heroes and Celebrations chocolates have shifted from large, fully recyclable tubs to lighter multilayered bags.
Jonathan Attwood, head of technical and quality at resin maker IPL Brightgreen, said some formats have moved away from “heavy duty food packaging that’s 100 per cent recyclable” to solutions that use less plastics but are “a lot less recyclable”. Such seasonal confectionery, for example, has seen tubs replaced by multilayer bags that are not widely collected, meaning “most of those are just going to landfill”.
This is often presented as a sustainability gain, with claims such as “we’ve reduced plastics packaging by 70 per cent, we’re really good”, but, as he noted, “it still went to landfill, whereas the tubs are 100 per cent recyclable”.
Small differences in packaging can also create operational issues. Attwood flagged that cans of Coca-Cola and tins of baked beans are almost identical in size, which can lead to mis-sorting on automated lines and reduce efficiency in recycling facilities. “There’s a special place in hell for whoever decided to make them the same diameter,” he joked.
Crisp packets have also repeatedly come in for criticism. Polyolefin films, produced abroad, laminated and printed in the UK, cannot currently be processed effectively in domestic facilities.
Packaging is often described as recyclable because it can technically be recycled somewhere, under certain conditions. However, this is very different from being recyclable within the systems that actually exist today.
Callan explained the wider implications. “I think the first thing we have to recognise is that there will be some places that naturally have a lower cost card than manufacturing in the UK; lower labour costs, lower energy costs, etc,” he suggested. “That obviously needs to be balanced with the environmental impact of transportation, etc. That goes without saying, but let’s talk about a Walkers crisp bag. Where did it start its life? Was that in the UK? It absolutely didn’t start its life in the UK.
“All the potatoes are British, by the way, but the crisp bag came from a polyolefin plant, probably somewhere in the Middle East. It got turned into a base film in Turkey or in France. It got laminated and printed in Cumbria. So, we then have this mindset, which is, ‘oh, well, that’s a British crisp bag. We need to keep all plastics in the UK’. Well, it didn’t come from the UK. It’s part of a global network. And I think we need to start to open our eyes to what we’re actually talking about here.”
He added that packaging is a globally traded commodity, and the UK’s recycling and production systems are part of a wider network.
“But we have to be competitive within that wider system. Now, I accept that there are probably ethical boundaries that we want to build in terms of how far we want our recycling infrastructure to stretch, traceability, clarity of outcomes, all of those things, which I would absolutely agree with. But we have to understand that it’s slightly naive to think that packaging got cracked up in Scotland, and then it got manufactured somewhere in Derby and then it got put in a factory in Leicester. It isn’t that way.”
The dispersed nature of UK infrastructure means economies of scale are harder to achieve. “That’s leveraging assets that may already exist,” Callan said. “I’m just being honest. As far as I’m aware, we don’t even have crackers that make PP in the UK, so how am I going to buy any PP for crisp packets?”
Ultimately, advanced sorting, tracing and recycling systems are critical if the UK is to meet ambitious targets. Infrastructure must be capable of processing all types of plastics, not just the simplest formats, to ensure that investment and innovation translate into tangible recycling outcomes.
Policy and incentives for circularity
Achieving a circular plastics system in the UK is not only a technical challenge but also a question of policy and incentives. Clear, long-term frameworks are essential to give businesses confidence to invest in recycling infrastructure and innovation.
Adam Herriott, senior specialist at environmental NGO WRAP, explained that policy “creates the right incentives for businesses to use recycled content and invest in recyclability. It takes away ambiguity and makes the conversation at the highest level much easier to have”.
Yet, policy alone cannot deliver change. Collaboration across the value chain is equally important, emphasised Fiona Dobson, senior manager of packaging development and print at Asda: “It is not just about individual companies making changes. We need coordinated efforts with suppliers, recyclers and policymakers. That is the only way we can make real progress at scale.”
Venetia Spencer, head of public affairs Europe at polyolefins producer Borealis, underscored the tension between long-term policy ambitions and immediate operational realities. She noted the need to balance local circular economies with a global supply chain, asking: “We need local circular economies, and we still need a global supply chain, but what is the correct proportion?”
Spencer explained that even by 2050, when the Plastics Transition Roadmap aims for a fully circular, carbon-neutral system, a significant portion of the feedstock will still be fossil-based.
The roadmap, developed by Plastics Europe (the industry association representing plastics producers across Europe) and published in 2023, sets out a pathway for the industry to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, targeting around 25 per cent circularity by 2030 and 65 per cent by 2050, alongside a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 28 per cent by 2030.
“The fossil is never going to come from Europe,” said Spencer. “Largely speaking, we don’t have any. We’re talking sustainable feedstocks, but you’re going to have to do both.” She also raised the practical questions companies must face. “And the questions are, how much, when, and who pays for it?”
Spencer drew a clear distinction between long-term policy and short-term business realities. “I think policy is the solution for the long term,” she said. “But we’ve got some immediate industry survival issues, and policy is not the answer for how you keep your business open tomorrow. Good policy changes the market in seven years’ time. It doesn’t change the market in six months’ time. And people seem to not understand that terribly well.”
Financial and regulatory incentives must, therefore, be paired with practical measures that reduce system costs and support technological innovation. By aligning investment, incentives, and collaboration, stakeholders can create conditions where circularity becomes economically viable as well as environmentally necessary.
Behaviour and expectations
Consumer behaviour continues to shape packaging decisions, and Dobson explained the challenge of balancing customer expectations with recycling realities.
“We do a lot of listening with our customers, and the customer will always tell us that they don’t want plastics,” she pointed out. “End of. I think this is maybe a bit of a legacy from the Blue Planet II effect, what they see in the media, but they don’t want plastics. It’s fine if they think they’re getting what they see as a better alternative to plastics, but they don’t want us to give them plastics. That’s the struggle that we’ve got.”
A 2025 WRAP Recycling Tracker survey found that almost nine in 10 UK adults say they regularly recycle most things that can be recycled, yet more than three in four also report putting recyclable materials into general rubbish, highlighting a persistent gap between good intentions and actual practice.
A separate 2025 survey by Aquapak found that around 70 per cent of British consumers are confused about what packaging can and cannot be recycled. Only 21 per cent say they always read recycling instructions on packaging, and just 10 per cent find the instructions consistently easy to understand.
According to data published by the UK government in July 2025, around 64.1 per cent of total packaging waste was recycled in 2024, while plastics packaging achieved an estimated recycling rate of just over 50 per cent.
Spencer detailed the wider challenge of perception and understanding across both consumers and policymakers:
“One of the things that’s really caused me to chuckle on the outside and cry on the inside is that every time we’re working on the UN plastics treaty a significant number of environment ministers keep adding in text on the importance of sustainable alternative plastics. And I’m like, what’s an alternative plastic to plastic? If it’s plastic, it’s plastic.”
The onus of educating consumers and policy makers is on everybody working in the industry, she suggests. “We spend a lot of time educating, and it’s on all of us,” she said.
“We have to explain it. We have to adjust our behaviour differently as consumers, and we have to work out how to explain it all to politicians. And one of the real challenges I certainly noticed is when we were making fossil-based plastics, no-one has ever asked me where I source my fossil fuels. But when I want to sell bio-based plastics, or chemically recycled plastics, they need to know where the waste was collected, which country it was sorted in, where did it come from etc.”
Together, these perspectives touch on a core challenge for the sector: aligning consumer expectations, political narratives, and technical realities to support more effective recycling outcomes.
Collaboration is key to change
Collaboration across the plastics value chain is essential to making circular systems work in practice.
Rackley emphasised that collective action is fundamental to progress: “Collaboration is our middle name at Polytag. We know that the circular economy can only become a reality if everybody holds hands and works together. So, I am a very firm believer in it, and the entire strategy at Polytag is built on this idea that collaboration is the only way we are going to see change in our lifetime and make circular economies a reality.”
Rackley added that this approach is embedded in how Polytag operates, with the company working across multiple partners and technologies. Its platform uses GS1 open standards and is designed to integrate with a range of ink providers, print technologies and optical sorting systems, reflecting a deliberately collaborative and interoperable model.
Ahmed Detta at Enviroo drew attention to the challenges created by fragmentation across the UK system, noting how inconsistencies between local authorities affect both infrastructure and consumer behaviour:
“There needs to be standardisation across the board,” he explained. “At the moment, it’s misaligned. Different local authorities collect differently, and that impacts how materials are segregated and processed for recycling.”
He added that this lack of alignment creates confusion and limits progress. “Unless there’s a standardised system, it’s always going to create chaos, because Leeds will do something different to Bradford, Manchester will do something different to Liverpool. There’s not one congruent solution.”
WRAP’s Adam Herriott highlighted the importance of closer coordination between different parts of the value chain to improve outcomes at end of life.
“I think having waste management and recyclers talking to brands, retailers about their packaging, exactly what the troubles are, what the bottlenecks are, the challenges of getting those sorts of things recycled, and making sure that those who are designing packaging fully understand end of life and not just looking at the marketing side is really, really key,” he suggested.
System-wide change relies on more than technical innovation. Brands, retailers, local authorities and recyclers must align their objectives, share knowledge and coordinate action to ensure that decisions made at the design stage translate into effective recycling outcomes.
Discussions at the Recoup Summit underlined that collaboration is essential at every level, from packaging design to collection, sorting and end-of-life processing, if the UK is to move towards a fully circular plastics system.
A roadmap for the next 10 years
Looking ahead, progress will require a combination of infrastructure development, policy support, and continued innovation.
The UK government’s Circular Economy Growth Plan, expected to be published in 2026, is intended to outline how the country will transition to a more circular economy, including measures to support recycling, investment in infrastructure, and incentives for businesses to use recycled content.
Long-term planning is critical, noted David Gudgeon, head of external affairs at circular economy specialist Reconomy.
“As soon as the growth plan is published, we can hope to create a long-term investment strategy, which is exactly what is needed to build the infrastructure and systems for a truly circular plastics economy,” he explained.
Retailers are already taking practical steps to scale solutions. Dobson highlighted the challenge, adding: “We are looking at technical solutions to remove non-recyclable materials, but the scale is huge. For own-brand products alone, we have around 13,000 items to consider.
“Over the next decade, success will be defined by how much of this portfolio can be made fully recyclable and kept in circulation.”
Callan underlined the importance of stepwise progress, noting: “In 10 years, we should see legislation requiring recycled content across multiple product categories, supported by recycling infrastructure capable of handling all the plastics currently on the market.
“The challenge is to get there step by step, funding incremental extensions and improvements along the way. We need to get to tomorrow before we can start dreaming about the future.”
Innovation will also be critical to achieving these goals, according to Detta, who pointed specifically to artificial intelligence and robotics as transformative tools for the recycling system. “These technologies can make recycling far more efficient and reliable, supporting higher recovery rates and helping materials meet the quality required by brands,” he said.
The next decade will, therefore, require close coordination between converters, packaging manufacturers, brand owners, policymakers, recyclers and consumers. By combining regulatory incentives, technological innovation and system-wide collaboration, the UK may just move that bit closer to a plastics economy that is both circular and economically sustainable.
