Circular technology trends in 2026: turning preparation to action
2025 was an important year for circularity, not through dramatic breakthroughs, but through decisive groundwork.
It was a year of structural progress: policies were reinforced, systems were approved, and long-term infrastructure decisions were locked in. While outcomes have not yet caught up with ambition, the direction is now unmistakable. The foundations are stronger, clearer, and more widely supported than ever before.
This progress was reflected in continued political backing for the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and in the rollout, or confirmed plans, for deposit return systems (DRS) across multiple countries. At the same time, the lack of agreement at INC 5.2 showed that global alignment remains complex.
Against this backdrop, 2026 becomes the year where preparation turns into execution. These are TOMRA’s predictions for how the circular economy evolves next.
Tech trend #1: Circularity becomes core industrial strategy
In 2026, circularity moves from aspiration to execution, embedded directly into industrial and economic strategy.
Driven by climate targets, material scarcity, competitiveness, and growing geopolitical tension around resource imports, leading businesses and regions begin treating circularity as a core operational necessity rather than a sustainability add-on.
Circularity is increasingly understood as:
- A productivity lever, extracting more value from the same materials
- A risk-management tool, reducing exposure to supply shock
- A regulatory requirement, shaped by PPWR, Circular Economy Act , and EU CSRD sectoral standards
A major step forward is the Global Circularity Protocol (GCP) , which becomes the first widely tested framework for measuring and comparing circularity performance across industries.
As a result, companies can integrate circularity KPIs into financial reporting, expand transition plans from CO₂-only to CO₂ plus resources, invest in regional recycling and recovery infrastructure, and deploy digital systems for real-time material accounting.
Tech trend #2: AI and digital services boost sorting in recycling
Recycling technologies continue to advance in 2026, with sensor-based sorting increasingly enhanced by deep learning and AI-driven digital services.
These developments deliver higher purity, higher throughput, and reduced reliance on manual intervention. High-precision sorting remains essential for cost- and energy-efficient recycling, and for keeping materials circulating at the highest possible quality.
Deep learning complements sensor-based sorting technologies, enabling enhanced material recognition and the sorting of entirely new material streams, like food versus non-food plastics. It is also increasingly used for waste analysis, improving transparency, optimizing sorting plant performance, and supporting regulatory compliance.
Key capabilities include AI-supported detection of complex material composites, real-time adjustment of sorting parameters, increasing sorting performance, AI-based analysis of data for reporting, and automation to reduce dependence on manual sorting steps.
Labour scarcity, higher recycling targets, and recycled-content requirements, particularly under PPWR, drive the development of AI and digital solutions to enhance sensor-based sorting.
Tech trend #3: Automation redefines food safety and reduces food loss across the chain
Automation in food systems moves beyond grading and sorting in 2026, expanding into full-chain quality optimization.
Advanced systems now detect contaminants and defects with near-laboratory accuracy, redirect products to the highest-value destination, predict spoilage risk through AI pattern recognition, and reduce labour dependency in high-cost markets.
This is enabled through AI-driven grading technologies like Spectrim with LUCAi™ and InVision² with LUCAi™, combined with sensor-driven batch uniformity and safety checks, automated real-time line adjustments for size, colour, moisture, and foreign matter, and early-warning analytics for line operators.
As margins in food production continue to tighten and safety standards rise globally, automation becomes a strategic tool for reducing loss, improving output quality, and stabilising food production workforces.
Tech trend #4: Cities and event organizers deploy infrastructure and technology to manage resources better
Urbanisation continues to place increasing pressure on city ecosystems, with more than half of the world’s population now living in cities. Climate-conscious local governments and city dwellers continue to actively manage their resource systems, instead of being passive waste generators. Similar regulatory pressures spill over to event organizers, festivals and sports arenas.
Cities deploy RFID-enabled intelligent containers alongside software solutions for route optimisation, billing, and bin-stock management. To address urban littering and rising waste management costs, reuse and refill systems, once seen as clunky or ideological, are approaching the convenience of single-use packaging.
Investments in robust public infrastructure, uniquely identified packaging assets using RFID or serialized QRs, digital deposits integrated with widely used payment systems, as well as clear and enforceable policy frameworks, enable large-scale cup and packaging reuse.
Urban systems concentrate both the waste problem and the circular solution. Without convenience, reuse or refills will never beat disposable packaging at scale.
Tech trend #5: Deposit return systems become mainstream in Europe (and beyond)
Deposit return systems continue to expand rapidly as countries adopt proven approaches to reduce waste, pollution, and emissions. When implemented according to well-founded principles, DRS can achieve collection rates of up to 90% within two years.
As of today, there are 18 deposit return systems in Europe, with Portugal set to become number 19. Recent launches include Austria and Poland, while Greece and Spain are actively planning implementation.
Over the past four years alone, eight European countries have introduced DRS: Malta (2022), Latvia (2022), Slovakia (2022), Romania (2023), Hungary (2024), Ireland (2024), Austria (2025), and Poland (2025). The Netherlands expanded its system to include small PET bottles in 2021 and cans in 2023, while Latvia broadened the scope of included contents in 2023. Croatia and Sweden increased deposit values.
Beyond Europe, systems launched in Victoria (Australia) in 2023 and Tasmania in 2025, reflecting a growing global movement. More than 50 DRSs are now operational worldwide, including long-established schemes in Germany, Norway, and Canada.
This acceleration is driven by the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, which mandates a 90% separate collection target by 2029 for plastic beverage bottles and cans. This requirement extends and reinforces earlier SUPD targets and compels countries without existing systems, including Spain, Italy, and France, to act.
Reuse and smarter material choices are key to cutting plastic pollution
The environmental case is clear. In the most wide-ranging analysis of the global plastic system, the Pew Charitable Trusts, in collaboration with academics including at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, said plastic, a material once called revolutionary and modern, was now putting public health, world economies and the future of the planet at risk.
If nothing is done, plastic pollution will more than double in the next 15 years to 280m metric tonnes a year. The single largest source of plastic waste across the world comes from packaging, which is used once then thrown away, and much of which is not recyclable. In 2025 it made up 33% globally of plastic waste, causing 66m tonnes of pollution to enter the environment each year.
“There are two key tools to decrease pollution from plastic packaging by 97% by 2040. The biggest of these are reuse and return systems, which will remove two-thirds of the pollution. (The second is the reduction of plastic production for packaging and the use of other materials like cardboard, glass, metal and banning certain polymers.)” said Winnie Lau, project director, preventing plastic pollution, at the Pew Foundation.
Tech trend #6: Mixed Waste Sorting becomes essential to meeting recycling targets
By 2026, there is broad recognition that household source separation alone cannot deliver Europe’s recycling targets.
Up to 50% of plastics still end up in residual waste, making Mixed Waste Sorting (MWS) essential at industrial scale to recover remaining materials.
State-of-the-art sorting processes, including sensor-based technologies, enable the recovery of plastics, metals, and paper from residual waste streams. MWS supplies feedstock for both mechanical and chemical recycling and increasingly forms the backbone of redesigned municipal collection systems.
Policy frameworks such as PPWR and national extended producer responsibility schemes (EPR) now formally acknowledge MWS as critical infrastructure.
Even with perfect source separation, Europe cannot reach 55% plastic packaging recycling by 2030 without Mixed Waste Sorting. In 2026, the industry fully accepts MWS as the missing piece needed to close the gap between ambition and reality.
Related articles
TOMRA champions circular economy as Global Circularity Protocol launches at COP30
TOMRA Spearheads Coalition of Stakeholders to Demand Inclusion of Circularity Provisions in EU Clean Industrial Funding Framework
