Greyparrot, a global leader in waste analytics, has launched Deepnest: a world-first AI waste intelligence platform that gives brands direct access to their recyclable waste data. What happens to products when they become waste is a knowledge gap for most industries. This is due to limitations of waste infrastructure and a lack of available data. Deepnest plugs this knowledge gap, unlocking post-use packaging performance insights to help brands shape their products and business models.
Recyclable materials offer a powerful opportunity for both business growth and environmental gains - but brands aren’t able to fully tap into this potential. By 2040, regulations like virgin plastic taxes and EPR fees could cost global businesses up to $100 billion* every year. With 95% of plastic packaging discarded after a single use,** keeping materials in the value chain longer is key to improving circularity and reducing financial risk. Consumer goods brands currently spend millions annually on product innovation, testing centres, and consultancy to improve their packaging, but lack the real-world data to validate these developments.
Greyparrot’s latest product, Deepnest, delivers detailed, product-level data to brands. This unlocks commercial insights by tracking packaging performance by brand, material, product type, and region. It reveals exactly how packaging moves through the waste system: what’s sorted, recycled, or lost. No assumptions or guesswork: just the objective, data-led truth.
Powered by Greyparrot Analyzer AI-camera systems in material recovery facilities, Deepnest relies on the world’s most comprehensive household packaging waste database - these systems process over 40 billion waste objects annually across more than 20 countries. Greyparrot currently detects $1 billion worth of recyclable materials in the waste streams it monitors, and estimates that, if rolled out globally, its systems could uncover up to $100 billion in recyclable value every year by 2040.
Using this data, Deepnest then provides brands with actionable insights, generating tailored recommendations to improve packaging, from shape and colour to material composition. This allows brands to measure the real-world impact of their product innovations for the first time. Brands can use Deepnest to:
- Benchmark packaging recycling performance against competitors and category standards
- Test and compare packaging formats within sub-brands before scaling across the full portfolio
- Identify specific design elements that reduce recyclability in priority markets
- Quantify the impact of R&D efforts, packaging innovations, and circularity interventions
Greyparrot’s ultimate ambition is that Deepnest will not only reduce financial risk, but help brands keep much higher volumes of their recyclable waste in their own value chain. This provides financial value as well as driving a more transparent and truly circular economy.
Ambarish Mitra, Co-founder of Greyparrot, said: “The term “waste” is itself a misnomer – our data shows that post-consumption materials are worth billions to our global economy. For too long, brands have had to operate with little visibility into their packaging’s end-of-life. Empowering brands with real-world data on their products' recyclability gives them a huge competitive advantage, which is exactly what Deepnest is designed to do. As regulations tighten and consumer demands grow, winners will be those who act on real-time insight — and can prove it.”
Unilever, Asahi, and Amcor are some of the major consumer goods brands and packaging producers already trialling 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, said: “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, said: “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 maximise 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.”
Mark Roberts, Circular Economy Director at Amcor, said: "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. With Greyparrot’s AI-powered waste intelligence, Deepnest is unlocking real-world recyclability data that the packaging data chain has been missing."