Veolia is collaborating with UK supermarket chain Tesco to recycle soft plastics into garden furniture for National Health System (NHS) community gardens.
The French waste management company will recycle soft plastics dropped off by customers at Tesco stores into benches, decking, tables, and raised beds.
The mechanically recycled gardening products will be donated to the NHS Social Prescribing Programme to introduce nature around health centres for use by patients and the local community.
The first garden will be created at the John Scott Health Centre in London, owned by NHS Property Services, and will include trellising, decking, raised beds, seating and tables all made from recycled bread bags, crisp packets, yogurt tops, and other pieces of soft plastic.
Flexible packaging makes up 44% of post-consumer packaging waste in the EU, but most households in Europe do not currently have access to flexible plastic recycling at kerbside. Take-back programmes like the one coordinated by Tesco and Veolia are the only route out of landfill, incineration, or energy recovery for soft plastics. Only around 6% of flexible plastics are recycled in the EU every year.
One of the key barriers to wide-scale recycling of flexible packaging is the quality of the collected materials, which is typically lower than that of bulkier plastics. Recycling flexible packaging into less demanding applications like garden furniture is thus an effective route to keep the materials in the loop.
“Utilising recycled materials in green spaces and collaborating across private and public bodies to deliver these social prescribing gardens is a testament to how we can and must all work together to deliver ecological transformation,” said Adam Wylie, managing director commercial at Veolia.