The 2025 Deepnest report: What waste data revealed about recyclability

Over the last twelve months, circularity became a financial imperative for some of the world’s largest brands, retailers and packaging producers. In the UK, EU and USA, extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes came into effect, directly linking recyclable packaging to profitability.

Packaging regulation may have changed, but the post-consumption journey of those products remained as opaque as ever. Large-scale data on packaging’s performance in real-world waste systems didn’t exist – until we launched the world’s first packaging waste intelligence platform earlier this year.

In 2025, Deepnest analysed more than 43.5 billion packaging waste objects in global recovery facilities, giving us the clearest picture yet of what gets recovered – and what doesn’t.

We’ve combed through billions of datapoints to prepare packaging teams for 2026, revealing which design decisions make real downstream impact:

What was the most common packaging found in recycling plants this year?

Three types of material dominated waste streams in 2025, and some products proved very recoverable:

🧴 Rigid plastics (like PET bottles) made up 16% of all items. Around 97% of those objects were recovered.

📦 Paper and card made up 33% of all items. Around 76% of fibre was recovered.

🔁 Films and flexibles made up 18% of all items. Around 29% were recovered.

Takeaways for 2026

Rigid bottles (and rigid plastics more broadly) outperformed both flexible plastics and fibre when it came to circularity. While paper and card may seem more circular, in some applications plastic is easier for recyclers to capture. Broader data from our global Greyparrot Analyzer systems also revealed that metals saw low loss rates, making them a compelling material choice.

Even so, packaging teams should note that not all rigid plastics are created equal: we analysed PET recovery rates at a major plastics sorting facility, and found that it captured 95% of clear containers and bottles – compared to just 15% of coloured PET objects.

What should packaging teams prioritise in 2026?

The biggest takeaway from this year’s packaging waste data is that not all formats contribute equally to low recycling rates.

As producers adapt to regulation, they’ll need to prioritise design changes that make a measurable impact on their final EPR bill. Deepnest insights helped us pinpoint the formats that need the most attention:

1. Structural problems: High volumes and high losses
   

   High volumes of material combined with high loss rates = potentially business-altering EPR fees. Flexible films, especially metallised or black plastics, are notoriously difficult to recycle. Despite advancements in chemical recycling, these materials are often lost to residue lines in reality.

2. High-risk formats: Low volumes, but high losses

   While most of the world’s current EPR schemes charge producers by weight, low volumes don’t necessarily translate to long-term savings. Many schemes – including the UK’s – are set to evolve and include “eco-modulation”, which will adjust fees based on a product’s recyclability. Composite materials, black plastics and hard-to-recycle plastics may soon cost a lot more.

3. Long-tail changes: Low volumes and low losses

   Very low-volume or niche packaging formats are unlikely to incur major EPR fees, but they do offer valuable insight into the design decisions that lead to recovery and loss.

4. Design benchmarks: High volumes and low losses

   Despite representing a huge proportion of waste material, clear PET bottles, metal cans and corrugated card were widely recovered. They reveal what real-world recycling systems are currently able to efficiently recover, and are design benchmarks for packaging teams that want to make circularity gains in 2026.

Circularity heroes and high-risk design choices

Taken together, those Deepnest insights reveal that seemingly minor decisions about colour, coatings, make as much of an impact on recovery rates as the headline material.

Here are the materials and formats that performed well in waste streams this year – and those that led to landfill: 

High performers

Clear, light or white plastics saw high recovery rates this year, as did high-quality fibre and metal.

• Clear PET food bottles: Consistently low residue rates, even at scale.
• Light blue and green PET bottles: Near the clear PET “gold standard” performance.
• White dairy tubs: High recovery rates in plastics streams.
• Corrugated card and aluminium cans: Proven, high-performing materials.

High-risk designs

Darker plastics, composite materials and hard-to-recycle polymers continue to threaten recyclability.

• Black trays vs clear trays: Black variants show dramatically higher loss.
• Dark-coloured bottles and pots: Significantly more residue than clear or white versions.
• Coffee cup lids and black lids: Small format and dark colour drives loss.
• EPS packs: Among the weakest performers in the dataset.

The grey(board) area

Fibre was widely recycled this year, but paperisation isn't automatically better. 

• Greyboard and tissue-like fibres underperform higher-grade papers and board.
• Mixed or laminated fibres often behave more like problem materials.
• Corrugated and certain graphic papers are much more reliably captured.

Putting packaging recovery insights into action 

This year’s headline takeaways give us more insight than we’ve ever had into packaging recyclability, and multinational brands like Unilever, L’Oréal, Asahi Group and Amcor are acting on it.

They're using packaging waste intelligence to make more targeted improvements to circular design– and prove their impact with concrete data.

Learn more about how we gathered the insights for this report (and how they could help shape your brand's packaging strategy) here.