Polytag and Biffa boost pack waste management in London with UV tags

Polytag has announced a further development of its partnership with UK waste management company Biffa, extending the reach of its packaging traceability network across the region. The collaboration includes the installation of Polytag’s detection technology at Biffa’s Edmonton Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in North London.

This development is part of Polytag’s Ecotrace Programme. The Edmonton MRF, which processes more than 275,500 tons of household waste annually, is the seventh Plastic Detection Unit (PDU) site in Polytag’s nationwide rollout, aimed at covering over 50% of the UK’s household recycling stream.

Polytag’s technology utilizes invisible UV tags on product packaging, allowing items to be traced throughout the recycling process. Data such as location, time, and volume of recovered packaging is captured and made available to brand clients via Polytag’s dashboard.

Alice Rackley, CEO of Polytag, tells Packaging Insights: “Our partnership with Biffa brings a significant change in packaging data availability, particularly at a barcode level.”

“With our UV-tagging technology live at Biffa’s high-volume Edmonton MRF in North London, we are capturing real-time insights into the journey of individual packaging items through the recycling system in the UK’s capital — insights that simply haven’t been accessible before.”

Alice Rackley, CEO of Polytag.“As 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.”

“Through our Ecotrace Programme, this [providing UV tags] will help our brand clients understand the complex recycling journey of packaging in London while allowing them to stay ahead of complicated legislative changes.”

Strengthening traceability efforts

Biffa’s participation builds on its earlier collaboration with Polytag during the “Bottle to Bottle” pilot in 2023, where Co-op’s water bottles and Aldi and Ocado Retail’s milk bottles were marked with UV tags and traced at Biffa’s Teesside MRF in the northeast of England.

Craig Konczak, business director for MRFs and PRFs at Biffa, says: “With the 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 revolutionize recycling.”

“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 behavior, and help to inform strategic decision-making and recycling policy in the UK,” he says.

Vision for full traceability

Rackley explains that the present approach is grounded in scalable, field-tested implementation.

 “We ensure accuracy at scale by embedding our detection infrastructure in busy, real-world MRFs, where a wide variety of packaging and complex waste streams put our PDUs through rigorous, daily testing.”Polytag is tracking the amount of annual waste entering the recycling and recovery stream.

“Our PDUs have demonstrated strong performance, including a 100% detection success rate during live testing with packaging compliance leader Citeo at one of Europe’s busiest facilities. This international validation reinforces that our technology works, not only in pilot conditions but also in operational environments with high throughput.”

In five years, Polytag aims to track every piece of packaging, capturing its full lifecycle, from origin and disposal to how many times it has been recycled and its quantitative contribution to the circular economy, according to Rackley.

“Achieving this future depends on scale and collaboration. The technology is ready and already generating insight, but progress relies on sustained momentum. That means regulators mandating and rewarding transparent reporting, brands investing in digital traceability, and supply chains connecting everyone’s data.” 

“We are building the tools and deploying them at pace, but their full potential can only be realized when the entire ecosystem embraces them. If that happens, we can turn circular economy ambition into reality, with packaging that is not only smarter but also truly accountable,” she concludes.