Meanwhile, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, has announced it is carrying out an audit of the waste exporter employed by both supermarkets to recycle this plastic waste - following an E&T investigation.
E&T revealed in February that the firm in question, Eurokey, had its export accreditation suspended last year after mislabelling the type of plastic it exported to Turkey. In its suspension notice, the Environment Agency (EA) said for at least four months last year Eurokey had exported plastic waste to Turkish sites that were not authorised to process the material.
The soft plastics initiative, which has been adopted by most of the major UK supermarkets, aims to provide a route for the recycling of hard-to-recycle flexible plastic packaging, which includes items such as soft plastic films and crisp packets. The UK does not currently have the capacity to recycle this type of plastic, so customers are encouraged to take their flexible plastic...