Aldi is piloting soft plastic recycling in select stores in the North of England and East Midlands.

The discount supermarket will provide collection bins at 20 stores across Greater Manchester, Yorkshire and Derbyshire for customers to deposit clean, soft plastic packaging, as reported by Retail Gazette.

Items like carrier bags and bread bags aren't currently collected by the majority of local councils. The new Aldi facilities will mean customers can recycle them, regardless of where they were purchased.

Aldi will work with its recycling partner to find the best route for processing the plastics.

If successful, the scheme will roll out to all of Aldi's more than 900 stores in the UK.

While soft plastics make up a fifth of consumer plastic packaging, currently only six per cent is recycled, according to waste minimisation organisation WRAP.