Ahead of World Environment Day this Saturday (5th June) HLP Klearfold, the world's largest producer of innovative and environmentally friendly printed plastic/acetate packaging, has created a useful downloadable guide to the recycling symbols found on plastic packaging in the UK.

It comes after recent research by the company revealed that consumers across the UK want more advice and education around plastic packaging. 

HLP Klearfold commissioned a report which used Comparative Linguistics Analysis (CLA) to help unpick the language, phraseology, topics and sentiment of millions of words of public conversations and content online. 

The data found that people were 7.4 times more likely to reference the term ‘advice’ when commenting on plastic packaging in 2020 compared to in 2019 and 1.9 times more likely to reference the term ‘know’ (for example “just don’t know”) in commentary on plastic packaging over that same time frame.

The analysis also highlighted that people were uncertain about regulations on how things should be recycled (e.g. from local councils). With statements including “council advice is unclear” and “my present bugbear is the recycling advice on a lot of plastic packaging currently not recyclable”.

This new guide has been designed so consumers can easily identify the symbols, find out what they mean and discover whether products can be recycled or not.