Greyparrot’s 2025 highlights: Turning circular momentum into intelligent action

2025 was a landmark year for progress on global circularity.

The arrival of extended producer responsibility (EPR) in the UK and parts of the USA was accompanied by the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) in Europe. Each policy development represented a shift towards an economy that values post-consumption resources as much as virgin material.

While the Global Plastics Treaty ran into roadblocks, an encouraging development came just months later: COP30 hosted the first “Circular Economy Day”, making waste management a headline focus for the first time at a COP gathering.

Competition and cost from virgin materials remained a challenge for recyclers, but the waste and recycling sector is no longer the only group concerned with profitable waste management. Instead, the entire resource ecosystem has been incentivised to act, motivated by regulation, resource resiliency and fast-approaching emissions targets.

We spent this year ensuring those recyclers, producers and regulators had the data they need to capitalise on this momentum.

Here’s a look back at Greyparrot’s 2025.

Growing datasets revealed more about the world’s waste

We had to gather a record-breaking amount of waste data to support the growing interest in post-consumption resources.

Find out what this year’s data revealed about recycling here.

Global expansion made headlines

Datasets of that scale are a byproduct of a growing global footprint: Analyzer units are now active in more than 20 countries, with our work at Veolia’s Dubai facilities marking Greyparrot’s entry into the Middle Eastern market. Distribution partners like France’s NextWaste continue to be critical to our expansion in key European markets, as well:

Last year, we announced the first major AI waste analytics deployments in North America. In 2025, our strategic partners at Bollegraaf and Van Dyk Recycling Solutions helped us expand our US coverage exponentially – enabling us to gather critical data on America’s resource flows.

Adoption has been fast, and impactful. Murphy Road Recycling’s “All-American MRF” was the first in the US to deploy facility-wide AI monitoring with 15 Analyzer units, and waste intelligence is already embedded in their day-to-day operations.

That rapid deployment of AI waste analytics drew attention beyond the waste sector, with nationwide coverage from CBS News making smart circularity a headline issue across the country.

Greyparrot Analyzer product evolution  

The Greyparrot Analyzer evolved to meet the challenges of global data capture. This year, we focused on making waste intelligence more sustainable, and shaping our platform to the facilities it serves:

Learn more about this year’s Analyzer updates here.

How customers translated data into impact

Those updates didn’t just maintain our position as the leader in advanced waste analytics. They translated to measurable impact at major recovery facilities around the world:

Find more waste intelligence case studies here.

Intelligent integrations

AI waste analytics provided the data layer needed to unlock several industry-first sorting solutions this year. At Greyparrot, we released AnalyzerWave, which combines polymer-level NIR recognition with our comprehensive AI recognition for an even more granular view of material composition.

NIR integration wasn’t the only sorting innovation that launched this year: our network of technological partners leveraged our Sync integrations to make existing tools and processes even smarter:

Launching the world’s first AI-powered packaging waste intelligence platform, Deepnest

Producer responsibility policies meant that global brands, retailers and packaging producers were incentivised to improve the recyclability of their products this year. For many, that meant spending millions on design changes without clear visibility into their packaging’s performance in real-world waste systems.

To provide that missing insight, we released the world’s first AI-powered packaging waste intelligence platform: Deepnest.

Deepnest is designed to help producers adapt to stricter waste policy by identifying the design choices that determine a product’s fate, make improvements, and measure their impact.

It’s an opportunity to make a cascading impact on circularity: recyclable packaging design is easier to sort and recover, enabling recyclers to deliver a steadier stream of post-consumer material that meets demand driven by regulation.

We saw an immediate response from a packaging industry that is newly-focused on recycling systems:

Early adopters

We maximised Deepnest’s immediate impact by working with multinational producers that sell products in over 190 countries.

Brands like Unilever, L’Oréal, Amcor and Asahi Group have already started tracking their packaging’s end-of-life with Deepnest. They’re using it to understand their exposure to EPR fees, and reshape their packaging strategies with circularity in mind.

Learn more about Deepnest here.

Waste intelligence attracted mainstream attention in 2025

It’s been a productive year in AI waste analytics, and the wider world took notice. We received some milestone recognition this year, both within the waste sector and outside of it:

The awards we received this year tell a bigger story than our own wins – they confirm that stakeholders beyond the waste sector now recognise the need for a transparent and efficient resource ecosystem.

We traveled around the world to deliver that message this year, with myself and Rish advocating for data-driven circularity at events like the UN’s Global Waste Forum in Turkey, a UK government trade mission to India, Climate Week in New York, and even the SXSW arts and technology festival.

None of those awards and appearances would have been possible without our incredibly talented team, which grew to more than 50 members in 2025. I’m proud to say that we’ve maintained our purpose-driven and supportive culture as we’ve grown, and we’re entering the new year with growing motivation and momentum.

What to expect in 2026

As 2025 draws to a close, the circular transition is entering a higher gear. Policy, technology and economics are finally aligning, with EPR and PPWR fees making circularity a financial imperative for global producers.

The facility operators who used the past year to boost efficiency will be the biggest winners, becoming the engine of the circular transition. Those that deployed waste intelligence technology this year were able to protect profits with efficiency gains. They’re now positioned to extract huge amounts of value from easy-to-recycle material flows.

Regulation and climate debate pushed cricularity into the spotlight in 2025. Next year, waste intelligence will help deliver on that momentum, enabling higher-performing facilities, smarter packaging design, and a more economically sustainable circular economy.