Up to a f ifth of plastic supermarket packs can’t be put in recycling

UP to one fifth of plastic supermarket packaging can’t be recycled, a study has found – with Lidl the worst offender.

The findings, by consumer group Which? show supermarkets are yet to make much progress at reducing the mountain of rubbish that often ends up in landfill or being burnt.

Which? analysed the packaging on a shopping basket of 27 everyday own brand items from ten supermarkets. It found just 71 per cent of Lidl’s packaging was readily recyclable and 29 per cent fell into the ‘problem plastic’ category. These are items that are non-recyclable or hard to recycle at home. Of this, 22.42 per cent is non-recyclable.

The next worst brands were Iceland at 73 per cent, Ocado at 74 per cent, and Sainsbury’s at 75 per cent. Morrisons had the best rating with 81 per cent of its packaging recyclable, and 19 per cent hard to recycle.

Which? said Lidl’s poor performance is in part down to the use of hard-to-recycle plastics for some foods, when rivals like Morrisons had greener alternatives.

The report gives an example of Morrisons selling its chocolate cake in a recyclable plastic box. By contrast, Lidl’s offering came in mixed packaging – a non-recyclable plastic film on a recyclable box which had a nonrecyclable window.

Morrisons also used easy to recycle clear plastic trays for its beef mince and lamb chops, but Lidl used hard-to-recycle black plastic. Another example of packaging that was non-recyclable from all supermarkets was for easy-peel oranges. All of these fruit came in nets with plastic labels that are not recycled in the UK.

Other difficult to recycle packaging include black plastic ready meal trays, which automatic sorting machines find impossible to detect. The study also found that around 4 per cent of Iceland’s packaging and 10 per cent of Waitrose’s could only be recycled at ‘bring banks’ at the supermarket rather than in kerbside schemes. But this was not always made clear.

Some products had labels explaining recycling options only once the food was unwrapped – ‘ not helpful’, according to Which?

Nikki Stopford, director of research and publishing at the group, said: ‘Which? believes a lot more can be done to increase the amount of recyclable packaging and the way it is labelled so that consumers know what can be recycled and how to recycle it.’

The Mail’s Turn the Tide on Plastic campaign has led calls to increase recycling of plastic by using bottle return schemes and eliminating single-use plastics.

Lidl said: ‘We fully support the need to tackle the important issue of plastic waste. We... do not believe that the small sample used in the report is representative or reflective of our full product range.’