Discovering the “Holy Grail” of Recyclable Packaging

Have you ever tried separating the items in your recycling bin and thought, “I wonder if this is actually recyclable?” Believe it or not, high-tech sorting machines struggle with material identification, too, and many cameras and processors are only capable of recognizing a few basic properties.

P&G, along with more than 160 other global companies, have teamed up for an initiative called Holy Grail, which aims to upgrade product packaging and scale automated detection and intelligent sorting at recycling facilities.

Developed and validated in partnership with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the Holy Grail technology utilizes a hidden code in recyclable materials. Product packaging is manufactured with a “digital watermark,” essentially a subtle pattern in the package graphics or surface. Think of it as an invisible tattoo for your shampoo bottle—except this tattoo can communicate with the recycling facility sorting machines about its material and how it should be recycled.

The technology can also be read by barcode scanners and smartphones (similar to a QR code) to reveal even more information, in practice turning the tagged item into an Internet-of-Things object with a bigger story to tell. The codes can provide a wide range of product attributes such as manufacturer, stock-keeping unit (SKU), types of plastic used, composition for multilayer objects, food vs nonfood usage, and more. The number of available codes is virtually unlimited, and each one will help P&G’s mission to advance the circular economy and reduce the amount of waste that goes into incinerators or landfills each year.

Learn more about Holy Grail 2.0 here.