Marks & Spencer (M&S) says it is committed to working with the UK's first polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling plant, which operator Closed Loop London (CLL) has confirmed will open in December this year.

M&S says it will urge suppliers to use recycled PET (rPET) from the Dagenham site. It will also help to supply CLL with the 35,000t post-consumer bottles needed annually, to run the operation. Allowing for residues, just under half will be PET, recycled into food-grade rPET flake on-site. A similar volume is expected to be high density polyethylene (HDPE), which will be shipped elsewhere for recycling.

London mayor Ken Livingstone called the CLL announcement "a big leap forward for recycling in the capital". He added: "We need real investment in recycling facilities rather than dumping our rubbish in landfill sites or sending it to incinerators."

The plant, financed by a combination of private and public funding, will use technology from US firm United Resource Recovery Corporation (URRC). The system is used in Switzerland and Germany, and is effective when working with highly contaminated waste.