Plastic Supermarkets-Tesco and Sainsbury’s ‘misleading shoppers’ over recycling schemes

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.”