SORT-IT: Increase plastic food and drink packaging recycling rates for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Deposit Return Schemes (DRS)

Food and Drink (F&D) packaging manufacturers struggle to secure enough high-quality affordable recyclate to meet statutory targets for recycled content, and mass re-use schemes are not feasible with existing technologies. Manufacturers who fail to reduce environmental impact face major financial penalties and delisting by buyers.

The current F&D packaging supply-chain is well connected and tracked from feedstock to retailer outlets due to the need for food safety and stock control. However, beyond the retailer, the packaging supply-chain through the consumer, waste collection, recovery and recycling is very limited. Many challenges exist in separating recyclable, non-recyclables, compostables, and contaminates in F&D waste streams.

This SORT-IT feasibility-study would analyse and evaluate the feasibility of digitalisation and intelligent automation in the F&D packaging supply-chain for waste-management through tagging technology to facilitate the tracking and sorting of packaging waste.

Our vision is that, following later industrial-research, SORT-IT would increase the environmental and economic sustainability of the F&D packaging manufacturing supply-chain, by enabling transition to a circular economy, dramatically increasing recycling rates for food-grade plastics, and enabling packaging re-use.

Implementing tagging technology should enable: • Increased rate of recycling and output of high-quality feedstock (including food-grade plastic) from waste. • Re-use. • Brand-owners to track packaging and recycling rates for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

• Low-cost Deposit Return Schemes (DRS) linked to consumer accounts through reverse vending machines and identification at materials recovery facilities (MRFs). • Greater consumer engagement with brands through transparency of green credentials. • Reduction of plastics going to landfill or entering land or aquatic environments.

The research would build on the unique technology for the manufacture of low-cost electronics in very high-volumes (billions p.a.) by PragmatIC and link with the growing technologies of collaborative automation, Industry 4.0 and machine learning to tag and track packaging with unique identifiers.

The tags would provide individual items with unique identifiers readable by RFID and NFC equipment, including smartphones; information would be exchanged via internet-enabled systems to cloud storage to facilitate supply-chain tracking and consumer engagement.

This feasibility-study would be led by PragmatIC working with Sheffield University's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC-Cymru) guided by an Industrial Advisory Board. PragmatIC is a high-growth innovation-driven SME, headquartered in Cambridge, with a billion-unit production facility in Sedgefield, County Durham.