For years, consumer goods giants have spent millions designing sustainable packaging—without access to comprehensive data on whether it gets recycled. Greyparrot, a company in waste analytics, is changing that with Deepnest: the first platform that tracks what happens to packaging after it’s thrown away.
Waste systems have struggled to measure and capture the true value of waste: creating a global waste data black hole. Greyparrot’s tech fills this knowledge gap, making recyclable waste visible and measurable. It currently detects $1 billion worth of recyclable materials in the waste streams it monitors with Greyparrot Analyzers—and estimates that, if rolled out globally, it could uncover up to $100 billion in recyclable value every year by 2040.
Greyparrot’s latest AI waste intelligence platform, Deepnest, gives this valuable data back to brands so they can unlock its commercial insights. Built on the world’s most comprehensive household packaging waste database, Deepnest is powered by real-world data from Greyparrot’s systems, which scan over 40 billion waste items each year across more than 20 countries.
Companies will be able to access a detailed, product-level view of how their packaging moves through the waste system: what gets sorted, what gets recycled, and what gets lost. No assumptions or guesswork: just the objective, data-led truth.
“Brands are currently having to redesign packaging, navigate new laws, and make billion-dollar bets without any real access to what happens to their products after use,” says Ambarish Mitra, Co-founder of Greyparrot. “Deepnest fills that data gap for them for the first time.”
The platform gives companies a detailed view of packaging performance by product, material, and region as it flows through material recovery facilities. It also delivers practical design recommendations—such as tweaking the shape, material, or color—to ensure packaging gets captured and correctly recycled. This visibility has commercial benefits. With Deepnest, brands can reduce costly trial-and-error in packaging R&D, accelerate decision-making, and avoid formats that fail in practice.
It also helps them stay ahead of regulations. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws—which make companies financially responsible for recycling their plastics and products—are already active around the world. Globally, it’s estimated that continuing to use plastic will represent a $100 billion annual risk for companies by 2040. Deepnest enables brands to identify product challenges, measure recyclability performance, and take action before those costs hit.
Longer term, the platform opens the door to smarter material recovery. By showing which packaging types perform best and are most effectively captured by recycling facilities, brands can begin reclaiming valuable materials, reducing reliance on virgin inputs, and exploring closed-loop systems or resale of clean packaging streams. The improved circularity of products also helps brands avoid passing costs on to consumers.
Major consumer goods brands and packaging producers are already trialing Greyparrot’s technology to navigate the changing landscape for waste material and unlock its business-critical insights.
Dr Liz Smith, Global R&D Head of Deodorants at Unilever, says: “AI-enabled waste intelligence tools have great potential to provide new visibility into how packaging is actually being sorted and processed in real-world recycling systems. Our goal is to reduce our virgin plastic use and make our plastic packaging reusable, recyclable, or compostable— and insights like these could critically help to inform future packaging design, enable recyclability in practice and at scale, and increase the supply of high-quality recycled materials.”
Sandra Gibbs, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Asahi Beverages, says: “Asahi Beverages has made big strides in sustainable packaging, including switching to 100% recycled plastic bottles for brands like Pepsi Max, Solo, Schweppes, and Sunkist. We also operate Australia’s largest PET recycling facility—a joint venture with Coca-Cola Europacific Partners—and we’ve been looking for real-time data to help maximize its impact. That’s why we installed Greyparrot Analyzers to unlock operational data to improve recycling quality and output. Deepnest can transform that data into insights to guide smarter packaging design from the outset. We’re exploring how this technology can help us embed a data-driven approach across the entire packaging lifecycle, moving us closer to 100% circular packaging.”
"The packaging industry relies on lab-scale testing and software models to predict recyclability of packaging solutions, but actual real-life data is missing, given the huge resources it would take to get real waste data at scale from operating facilities," says Mark Roberts, Circular Economy Director at Amcor."With Greyparrot’s AI-powered waste intelligence, Deepnest is unlocking real-world recyclability data that the packaging data chain has been missing."
“There’s a blind spot in the supply chain—and it starts the moment packaging arrives at material recovery facilities,” says Mitra. “With Deepnest, we’re giving brands the power to see what they’ve never seen before—and act on it.”
