British retailer Iceland has announced that more than 1 million plastic bottles have been recycled since the launch of the automated recycling machine pilot program in May 2018.

Iceland was the first supermarket in the UK to install an automatic recycling machine in the store. Prior to this, the British government proposed to introduce a plastic bottle deposit return scheme to increase the recycling rate and reduce the plastic waste content.

During the pilot period, Iceland and its customers investigated their motivation to use automatic recycling machines. According to the survey, 67% of respondents are based on environmental factors, which is much higher than any other option.

At the same time, 96% of respondents believe that the program should be extended to all retail areas, and Iceland believes that this highlights the broad mass base of the concept of accumulative return plans.

Iceland has already piloted more than 1 million plastic bottles in just 5 stores.

Plastic bottle return data and customer comments came from five stores that installed automatic recycling machines last year: Fulham, Mold, Musselburgh, Wolverhampton and Belfast.

Iceland Managing Director Richard Walker said:

Our automated recycling machine pilot results show that consumers are increasingly demanding the introduction of a restocking program across the UK.

Iceland is the first retailer to try automatic recycling machines, and customer feedback indicates that a simple recycling model like ours that accepts plastic bottles of various sizes and expands to the recycling of beverage cans is a nationwide roll-out plan. The ideal solution.

We have more than 950 stores in the UK, and with the support of the government, we can install automatic recycling machines in each store.

“Only our 5 stores has recycled more than 1 million plastic water bottles, which shows that installing this automatic recycling machine nationwide will bring huge environmental benefits,” he added.