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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Clear, light or white plastics saw high recovery rates this year, as did high-quality fibre and metal.
Darker plastics, composite materials and hard-to-recycle polymers continue to threaten recyclability.
Fibre was widely recycled this year, but paperisation isn't automatically better.
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.