June 19, 2025 (Convenience Store) –
Biffa has extended its partnership with Polytag, a company specialising in tagging and tracing packaging to the point of recycling.
The waste management service has introduced Polytag’s Plastic Detection Unit at its Edmonton Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in North London.
The collaboration would “lay the groundwork” for real-time tracking of packaging for household brands in London, said BIffa.
The plastic detection technology provides insights into the journey of packaging through to recycling, designed to drive greater efficiency and sustainability-focused decision-making in the supply chain.
Polytag uses invisible fluorescent UV-tagged packaging to enable precise tracking during the recycling process, it said.
Biffa’s Edmonton MRF, one of the UK’s largest, handles 250,000 tonnes of waste annually, originating from household recycling collections primarily in London and surrounding counties. Using the technology at this facility would help brands understand recycling rates in this densely populated region, said Polytag.
The latest installation is part of Polytag’s Ecotrace Programme and enables brands to view and evaluate data on how their packaging is recycled at Biffa’s London facility.
The company plans to install 12 Plastic Detection Units at MRFs across the UK, covering over 50% of the UK’s household recycling stream through its Ecotrace Programme.
The installation at Biffa’s Edmonton MRF is the seventh since the programme launched in July 2024.
Biffa’s involvement in the Ecotrace Programme follows the ‘Bottle to Bottle’ pilot by Polytag in partnership with Recoup in 2023, where Co-op’s water bottles alongside Aldi and Ocado Retail’s milk bottles were marked with UV tags and traced at Biffa’s Teesside MRF in the northeast of England.
“With growing demand for improved visibility and traceability of packaging and products across the value chain, from cradle to grave, digital tracking tools have the potential to revolutionise recycling,” said Craig Konczak, business director at Biffa MRFs & PRFs.
“That’s why we’re delighted to be working with Polytag to gather new insights into the real-world application of these tools and explore the data being retrieved from our recovery facilities.
“In the future, tools such as these have the potential to improve the visibility of material flows in the UK, provide greater insights into recycling behaviour, and help to inform strategic decision-making and recycling policy in the UK.”
Alice Rackley, chief executive of Polytag, said: “As Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Simpler Recycling regulations come into effect, businesses face a pressing need for accurate, real-time data about the lifecycle of recycled packaging materials. Developing our collaboration with Biffa comes at the perfect moment for us, granting access to barcode-level packaging data within the UK’s most populated city for the first time.”
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