You can recycle many types of flexible 'soft' plastic wrapping whilst you are doing your weekly shop!
For example... pasta plastic packaging, rice cake packaging, film lids from fruit boxes, plastic chocolate wrappers, plastic sweet wrappers (not Quality Street wrappers as they are biodegradable cellophane and can be composted), crisp packets (both individual and multi pack), frozen veg bags, croissant plastic bags, bagel bags, bread bags, cheese packaging (wrap and bags), cling film type wrap, biscuit wrappers, plastic around bunches of flowers, silver wrapping around tea bags, rubber glove plastic packaging, naan bread packaging, garlic bread plastic packaging (wiped clean), film that wraps pizzas (wiped clean), cereal bags and cereal wrapping, dried fruit bags, sausage roll plastic wrapping, fruit and veg plastic bags and plastic wrapping, net bags from fruit and veg, snack bags, (wiped clean) plastic sauce sachets, plastic wrapping around greetings cards, plastic wrapping around cleaning cloths, microwave rice pouches, plastic wrapping around kitchen rolls, nappy wipe packaging, cotton wool plastic bags, pet food pouches (cut open and cleaned and dried), baby food pouches (cut open and cleaned and dried), plastic wrapping around loo rolls, wrapping around meat *please wash well and dry any plastic wrapping from raw meat* (as well as normal plastic carrier bags and bubble wrap - which most of us already knew about) can be recycled at large Sainsbury's, large Tesco stores and at many Co-op stores. Large Morrisons stores accept only stretchy plastic wrapping, so check this list before you go to Morrisons with your bag of plastic recycling.
Although supermarkets often term the soft plastic recycling areas 'carrier bag recycling points' please don't send perfectly usable carrier bags to be recycled - if you don't want to use them until they are worn out then please save them up for your local foodbank. Foodbanks are usually desperate for usable carrier bags to put easily-carried items into. You can find your nearest on the Trussell Trust website.
We all need to try to REDUCE the quantity of plastic-wrapped products we buy, e.g. you can buy brown sugar cubes loose in a cardboard box, you can buy Arborio rice (for risotto and rice pudding) loose in a cardboard box, pasta is now starting to be available in just a cardboard box.
We've all heard about plastics dutifully sent for kerbside council 'recycling' by UK homeowners, ending up on distant shores - if you haven't then watch this 2 minute 'Wasteminster' film by Greenpeace. This issue really worries me and continues to drive me to reduce our household's reliance on single use plastic. But there are some things we haven't been able to swap out - the plastic wrap around cucumbers, the plastic packaging around rice cakes, the plastic flaps which seal tubs of yoghurt, cheese packaging etc. So now supermarkets are offering to recycle previously unrecyclable - but can we trust them to recycle responsibly?
Well the Co-op is a company which bases itself on being the ethical choice, so personally I do believe them when they say they are properly recycling the flexible soft plastic wrapping. The Co-op responded to my social media query saying that they send the collected plastic waste to their recycling partner firm 'Jayplas' in Birmingham. The pellets generated are then supplied to various recyclers depending on the type of plastic, to be made into bin liners, buckets and material for the construction industry. I am very glad to hear that the Co-op recycling occurs in the UK itself.
Sainsbury's explained in a social media message that... "The plastic film goes to Europe for manual sorting and then recycling... With checks in place including tracking lorry loads of waste to their final destination and physically visiting the recyclers to see the sortation process being completed...We have a range of options... shrink film can be used as refuse bags and silage wrap. The Polypropylene used for salad bags and frozen vegetable bags cab be used for construction products such as guttering buckets and composters with mixed plastic being used for construction boards... Sainsbury's is a 'zero waste to landfill' company which means that any material that cannot be recycled (for example due to 'customer contamination' when customers mistakenly use the plastic recycling bins as a general litter bin) will go to RDF (refuse derived fuel) and not be landfilled." I do feel Sainsbury's is trying hard to keep tabs on the plastic it sends for recycling, but it worries me that it is sent abroad.
Tesco has virtually no information available on the internet about its flexible soft plastic wrapping, but Tesco did respond to a social media message I sent them and told me that their plastic is processed by Eurokey (so I assume that it happens in Europe) - they didn't give much detail in their reply!
Morrisons collects fewer types of plastic items (NO crisp packets, NO clingfilm, NO film lids etc). They do sort and process all of this in a UK waste facility currently and are due to open their own plastics recycling centre in 2025 in Fife, Scotland.
Remember that it is best to re-use any carrier bags that you already have, as many times as you can (so that you don't need to get new ones) before finally recycling them. The same goes for bubble wrap. We should always be considering how to REDUCE ("REFUSE") and REUSE before resorting to the RECYCLE option.