Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been accused of misleading customers over their front-of-store recycling schemes after an investigation found that most soft plastic returned to stores was burned.

The Everyday Plastic campaign group and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK) tracked 40 bundles of soft plastic waste – such as single-use bags, films and wrapping – through supermarket take-back schemes across England.

Tesco and Sainsbury’s are among the major UK supermarkets to have set up front-of-store collection points in recent years in a bid to tackle plastic waste footprints.

Shoppers can drop off soft plastic packaging – which cannot currently be recycled through kerbside collections – at the stores so they can be recycled by the retail giants instead.

But Everyday Plastic said volunteers placed Apple tracking devices in 40 bundles of plastic packaging that were then dropped at Sainsbury’s and Tesco collection points across England.

The bundles were tracked after they left the stores from July 2023 to February 2024 and collectively travelled more than 25,000km across the UK and overseas, the campaigners said.

Out of the trackers known to have reached a final destination, seven were found to have been turned into fuel pellets, which are commonly used by industry such as in cement kilns.

Five were burned for energy, four were downcycled into lower value plastic products overseas, mostly in Turkey, and just one was downcycled in the UK, the investigators said.

Eight of the tracked bundles were found to have been sent overseas and 70% of the bundles that reached a known destination were burned for energy, not recycled.

The campaigners said the store collection points have contributed to Sainsbury’s and Tesco claiming they are close to achieving their voluntary packaging recyclability targets.

The schemes have also led to an increase in soft plastic packaging carrying labels telling shoppers to “recycle with bags at large supermarkets” instead of “do not recycle”, the groups added.

But according to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), the UK’s infrastructure has limited mechanical recycling capacity and is mainly used for commercial waste rather than post-consumer waste.

Alison Colclough, research director at Everyday Plastic, said the investigation reveals the “hard truth” about the supermarket recycling schemes.

“The take-back schemes are being presented as a solution, which is diverting attention from the main issue that can’t be overlooked: far too much unnecessary plastic packaging is being produced,” she said.

Lauren Weir, senior ocean campaigner at the EIA, said: “The export of soft plastic packaging waste collected – whether for energy recovery or recycling – is not without ramifications.

“Other countries should not bear the burden of the UK’s high production rate of this waste material and inability to effectively treat it domestically.”

Their comments come ahead of the final rounds of negotiations for the UN Global Plastics Treaty, which have been dogged by divisions over the inclusion of production controls.

The campaign groups are calling for the UK Government to support a cut in global plastic production by 40% by 2040 at the talks next month – a policy they are also calling on the supermarkets to support.

In a legal briefing published with the investigation, non-governmental organisation ClientEarth said soft plastic recycling claims in the form of product labels, in-store signage and website content are misleading consumers about the environmental impact.

Katie-Scarlett Wetherall, a lawyer at ClientEarth, said: “We are faced with a systemic issue in the plastic packaging sector despite the fact that consumer protection law requires businesses to make it clear when a product has an overall negative impact on the environment.

“Supermarkets, fast-moving consumer goods companies and the packaging sector must be alive to this greenwashing risk.”

Helen Bird, head of materials systems transformation at Wrap, said the situation is “complex”, adding that supermarkets “stepped up to provide collection points” until soft plastic recycling directly from homes is established.

“While not perfect, these have acted as an important catalyst for crucial investment in UK recycling infrastructure and end markets and instilled new habits in people to separate bags and wrapping for recycling,” she said.

Feedback is important to us and we’d welcome any suggestions on how we can improve our efforts in this area

“More transparency is needed to provide confidence to people of what’s happening to the collected materials. But there is one thing for certain: if it doesn’t get placed in the recycling, it will not get recycled.”

The campaigners said they focused on Tesco and Sainsbury’s due to their dominant market share and the large number of collection points they had.

Sainsbury’s said it has recently improved its signage to help encourage more customers to recycle soft plastic waste in its stores, including which items are accepted and the condition they should ideally be in to allow the supermarket to recycle them.

A spokesperson said: “We’re always seeking ways to positively manage the end of life of our packaging.

“We collect a small volume of flexible plastic overall in-store. The majority is in good condition and so is recycled.

“However, when materials are soiled or damaged, then they may need to be converted for energy, which is managed by our supplier. Feedback is important to us and we’d welcome any suggestions on how we can improve our efforts in this area.”

We know there is a lot more progress to be made, and the infrastructure to recycle soft plastics at scale in the UK and the EU still has a way to go

Tesco said that while the investigation found materials were sent to an accredited processing site in Turkey, this was a supplier error as the supermarket’s materials should not have been sent to that location.

A spokesperson said: “We have a clear plan to remove packaging wherever possible and reducing, reusing and recycling it where we can’t.

“We work hard to recycle the materials we collect, for example our Bags for Life, and in some cases we are even able to use it for projects such as fruit and vegetable planters donated to schools or park benches donated to the NHS.

“Where it is not possible to recycle the collected plastic, we put it to alternative uses to avoid these materials going to landfill, for example using it for energy recovery.

“We know there is a lot more progress to be made, and the infrastructure to recycle soft plastics at scale in the UK and the EU still has a way to go.”