Packaging innovation

Our white paper, created in partnership with RECOUP, reveals that the UK is at a critical turning point for plastic packaging recycling – with current operational reprocessing capacity only covering around 23% of what is needed to recycle all plastic packaging placed on the market.

The white paper – ‘UK plastic packaging recycling infrastructure: Recommendations for circularity’ - provides a comprehensive evidence base to date on the state of UK plastics reprocessing, including input from industry, analysis of UK and global policy, and scenario modelling.

Founded by Ecosurety, Lendable is a reuse scheme designed to make choosing reusable packaging effortless for the consumer. No app, no additional deposit fees, no detours to a specific collection point. Our members will serve food in reusable packaging, and, once they’re finished, their customers can simply pop this packaging into a dedicated Lendable bin on the street.

Starting in Bristol, our goal is to turn this scheme into a reality through collaboration with local businesses and national chains.

Ecosurety has partnered with marine conservation charity Sea-Changers in support of their bespoke programme of Eco Refill shops into selected schools in England, Wales and Scotland. The shops give young people the skills and tools to take practical action to support the environment, through school-based child-led Eco Refill shop businesses.

The children involved follow enterprise training to plan, launch and operate their Eco Refill business, which sells refills of hand wash, body wash, washing up liquid, and laundry liquids to the wider school community (staff and parents). Every refill sold is a bottle saved from plastic waste.

The Flexible Plastic Fund (FPF) is a UK industry first, founded by Ecosurety. It brings together a unique coalition of retailers, recyclers and manufacturers and intends to improve post-consumer flexible plastic collection and recycling to reduce plastic pollution.

A landmark achievement of the Fund is the FPF FlexCollect project to trial kerbside collections of flexible plastic. Attracting over £3m of funding and the involvement of multiple local authorities, FPF FlexCollect is defining best practices and informing future government policy.

We instigated Podback in 2020 with a simple mission - to create a world where every coffee pod enjoyed is recycled. Podback is for anyone, anywhere in the country to be able to recycle their pods through one simple service.

The collaborative project has brought together the majority of the UK coffee pod market. The greatest success is that Podback is now run as an independent organisation in its own right.

In 2018 with Hubbub, we brought together a coalition of major brands, recyclers, local businesses, and local authorities. The aim - to tackle the problem of food and drink packaging disposed of on-the-go.

The success led to #InTheLoop. The project has improved on-the-go recycling across the UK, from Leeds and Swansea to Edinburgh and Bristol. In 2022, we released an open-source toolkit for any local authority to implement the successes.

A winner of the £1m Ecosurety Exploration Fund, the project was led by environmental charity City to Sea. The city-wide reusable ‘returnable’ cup scheme enabled consumers to ‘borrow’ a reusable takeaway cup from a participating café and then return it so it can be reused.

A blueprint report was published in 2023 to enable others to roll out a similar scheme, and included insights from the project and 20 industry experts.

Another winner of the £1m Ecosurety Exploration Fund, BOSS 2D is an innovation that can efficiently sort post-consumer plastic film into uncontaminated, material specific waste streams, ready for recycling.

We funded the original project led by Impact Recycling that is now changing plastic recycling around the world.