The Standard reports on an investigation of the soft-plastics recycling schemes of two of the UK's biggest supermarkets.

The investigation, conducted by the Everyday Plastic campaign group and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA UK), showed that, "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. 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."

So, basically, very little recycling went on, but that should not be surprising. Many plastics are difficult or impossible to recycle, especially soft plastics. What is wrong here is that these supermarkets are presenting their schemes to the public as recycling schemes, when, in fact, they are a scam.

I religiously recycle: paper, glass, metal and plastics. I often wonder about the sense of recycling plastic and paper: in Munich general garbage is incinerated, yielding energy for generating electricity and district heating schemes; I know that paper is often burned instead of being recycled, and suspect that the same is true of much of the plastic. Unfortunately, it is hard to get reliable facts about how much recycling is actually burnt.

It is very difficult to make informed decisions about recycling in the absence of the relevant facts. One should also remember that the facts about recycling are different depending on where you live.