READY MEAL

NO: Sainsbury’s Chicken Korma YES: Iceland Mumbai Street Co Angry Bird Chicken The Sainsbury’s curry comes in a black plastic tray. The labelling states: ‘Check local recycling.’

The issue is the tray’s colour. ‘At a materials recovery facility, plastics are identified using infra-red technology,’ says Mr ellin. ‘With black trays, you fire the infra-red at it and it can’t identify what it is, so the trays go through the system and out with residual waste.’

experts are looking at ways to add pigments to black plastic so the machines can detect it, but nothing has been done yet. The Iceland curry comes in a cardboard tray, though, so if that’s cleaned of residual food waste, it can go in with the general recycling.