Rewarding Recycling
With Ocado.
Real Change. Real Business Impact.
See how your business can prepare for new recycling legislation
Case Study: Ocado
Alice Rackley
CEO and Co-founder Polytag
Suwar Mert
CEO and Founder Bower
Laura Fernandez
Senior Packaging Sustainability Manager Ocado Retail
In 2023, Ocado partnered with Polytag and the free recycling app Bower, trialled the UK’s first national deposit return scheme for recyclable products.
Currently, legislation for deposit return schemes is set to land in the UK in 2025. Customers will pay a deposit – likely to be 20p – on top of the price of their drinks bottles and will be able to redeem the 20p once their bottle has been recycled properly. Deposit return schemes have been proven to increase recycling rates and work brilliantly in much of mainland Europe. The problem with this system is that the typical deposit return scheme model was developed in the 1980s and uses reverse vending machines (RVMs). These machines are carbon-intensive, a great expense both financially and spatially for retailers, and also inconvenient for customers.
Using a unique-every-time Polytag GS1 Digital Link QR code, customers can scan the product once and get their deposit back. The unique everytime QR codes enables the app to issue deposit securely, as they can only be scanned once per item. But something like this hasn’t been done on a nationwide scale – until now.
93% of Bower users were positive about a digital return scheme
71% would prefer a QR code to claim a deposit back
58% would prefer to use an RVM in a supermarket
Ocado retail
“Making a positive environment impact is a stronger motivator to participate in the scheme than financial reward.”
(50% vs 36%) User survey, 2023

20K+rewards redeemed in 56 days
20preward for each redeem action
7.5bottles recycled per user on average
Invisible Tags
As part of Polytag’s two-tag solution, the company also has Invisible Tags applied to the packaging to trace it back to recycling centres. Polytag currently has two UV Tag Readers based in Teesside and Abergele Material Recovery Facilities. The Tags are low-cost to apply and count the number of bottles spotted on the plastics conveyor, using smart cameras and an internet connection.

85%of customers registered on the Bower app during the trial
87%of people who scanned the product went on to recycle it
100%of participants were based in the UK
API connection to ensure one-time redemptions
This world first full-scale Digital DRS demonstration delivered by Polytag and Bower was enabled by a secure, seamless connection between the technology stacks. Polytag generated and stored over 2.5 million unique serialised codes that were applied to Ocado Retail’s full range of six fresh milk products. An API was leveraged so that when Bower App users scanned a QR code on their Ocado Retail milk bottle, a real-time check was performed to verify that the given unique serialised code was in the Polytag ledger, and to check whether it had already been scanned, or if it was redeemable. The performance results of the API were 100% uptime, and above-average response speeds for serialised code checks (code verify), and scans (deposit redemptions). The API was simple to set up, tested thoroughly before the trial launched, and was fully secure as per rest API protocols and OAuth security.