Plastic packaging carries a machine-readable digital ID that tells recycling plants exactly what it is and how to process it. Only 9% of plastic packaging is currently recycled, while 40% goes to landfill—a $80 billion global opportunity is being thrown away. Existing recycling systems rely on infrared sorting at the plant, which struggles with complex or layered plastics. This project instead makes the packaging itself smarter, embedding an ultra-low-cost RFID tag that a smartphone can read. That tag creates a unique digital identity for each pack, enabling automated sorting, reprocessing, and a consumer reward scheme that pays people for returning items. If successful, the system could replace 1990s-era deposit-return schemes—which are open to fraud and only work in countries with established infrastructure—with a modern, fraud-resistant alternative. The technology platform could also support other innovations in reuse and supply-chain tracking. The project does not aim to eliminate plastic, but to make the plastic that remains recyclable at scale, keeping its material value in circulation rather than buried in landfill.
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Plastic packaging waste is a \>$80Bn global opportunity according to the World Economic Forum. Only 14% of plastic packaging reaches recycling plants and only 9% is actually being recycled, whilst 40% ends up in landfill. The UK's Clean Growth Strategy has a goal to reduce emissions from landfill and achieve zero avoidable waste by 2050\. One way to reduce emissions from landfill is to stop the avoidable waste from reaching it. This will be achieved by a combination of actions generally grouped into reduce (removing unnecessary packaging) and re-use (refillable schemes and recycling) categories. Progress on all these has seen a significant setback during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst there is rightly focus on reducing the amount of plastic that is consumed it is not practical to eliminate all plastic due to its many benefits including it being lightweight (with associated low transport costs and carbon footprint) and its robustness. It is, therefore, essential to increase recycling rates and quality so that the highest material value is retained for reuse. Most approaches to improving recycling have looked to make the sorting/identification systems smarter, for example using infra-red to identify types of plastics. Relatively little activity has been directed towards making the packaging smarter so that it is easier to identify, sort, separate, reprocess and reuse. Our project focuses on simplifying and increasing recycling of plastics by providing a machine readable unique digital identity onto each pack. This new capability provides a technology platform that can enable a wide-range of different innovations and applications. Deposit-return schemes are already well proven but based on old technology (1990s), relying on returning bottles back to grocery stores in exchange for a deposit slip, which is open to fraud. The legacy systems are only suitable for countries that already have well-developed processes, e.g. Scandinavia, Germany, The Netherlands (all of whom have \>95% recycling-rates). We see an opportunity to develop a modern consumer-focused system that uses smartphones to reward consumer behaviour and improve recycling outcomes. Within the project we will investigate the use of PragmatIC's ultra-low-cost RFID technology to drive improvements within recycling, specifically demonstrating potential use-cases for a digital recycling and reward scheme.
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