Closed-loop plastics coming as BSI considers trust and gov’t tries digital tracking

Waste and recycling are in focus as Veolia invests, a BSI report addresses consumer concerns and digital tracking progresses.

Veolia is investing £70mln into recycling which will include the UK’s first ‘tray to tray’ closed loop PET facility in Battlefield near Shrewsbury. The facility, due to be active in 2026, will shred, wash and flake PET plastic from trays and bottles to be recycled into food grade low carbon new packaging, bolstering supply in a boost to the UK grocery industry.

Other investments coming on stream from the company include the extension of a district heating network to 5,000 homes in Southwark, London, delivering heat from the SELCHP energy recovery facility, alongside investment to process and recover solvents and other hazardous waste.

Meanwhile BSI has found that safety and quality fears prevent consumers from buying sustainably. Although most consumers surveyed were happy to recycle, they were less willing to compromise on quality (56%), safety (51%) or reliability (49%), highlighting the need for businesses to prove the value of circular products.

The results are presented in BSI’s 2025 Global Circularity study, The Tipping Point: Building Trust in the Circularity Economy, developed in partnership with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), which identifies how building trust in quality and reliability can drive consumer uptake of circular behaviours.

In addition, the  UK Government, alongside Scottish Government, Welsh Government and the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) in Northern Ireland is working to address the information gap that hinders the effective regulation and management of waste by introducing mandatory digital waste tracking, subject to approval. This new system will replace paper-based methods with a digital platform.

 This is an update to information released in February 2025, meaning that Digital Waste Tracking will become available for all permitted and licensed waste receiving sites in April 2026 and mandatory for permitted and licensed waste receiving sites from October 2026 in the first phase.  The next phase will involve expansion to other operators in April 2027.