binloads of household plastic. this is the start of its recycling journey. it's then brought to this facility, ready to be sent for sorting. in europe, each person generates 35 kilos of waste plastic packaging a year. only 40% gets recycled. globally, it's much less. while plastics are useful, a lot of packaging is difficult to reuse — most of it ends up in landfill or incinerated. a big problem is plastic pollution. and yet more resources get used making new plastic products. here in copenhagen, new technology is being trialled that could help boost recycling rates. it's part of an industry—led project called holygrail 2.0. what we're trying to do is really use intelligence that is embedded in the packaging, using the digital watermarks to revolutionise the way we sort or recycle plastics. more than 100,000 packaging samples are being sent along this line to a smart sorting machine. each piece of packaging is printed or embossed with a digital watermark that's about the size of a postage stamp. it can barely be seen by the naked eye, but it's like having an invisible bar code stamped all over it. this identifies what it is. consumers can even use a smartphone app to find out more about the product, and how to recycle it. inside the machine, a high—resolution camera scans the digital watermarks. this tells a computer what the plastic is, and what it was used for. air jets accurately