The plastic bag was picked up by a shopper at Tesco. It cradled their groceries across the car park. Its job was done. 

A year ago, the plastic bag would have been thrown into a bin, destined for the landfill. 

Soft plastics that make up plastic bags and food packaging are hard to recycle. They must be separated into different grades, washed, shredded, melted and filtered. Only 6% of the UK's soft plastics complete this process.

In 2021, TescoTesco launched the four Rs strategy in August 2019. The supermarket pledged to remove plastic where possible, reduce it where it could not remove it, reuse more and recycle what remained.  set out to change this. The supermarket installed deposit boxes at stores across the country and encouraged customers to bring back their used plastic products. 

Kit Chellel, an investigative journalist, wanted to know where the plastic was going. "It goes off to dirty, smelly places to be sorted and dealt with by someone else, and you don't think about it again." 

Chellel placed a tiny digital tracker in a shopping bag and dropped it off at a Tesco Superstore in west London.

Soon, the bag was on the move. It was loaded onto a lorry and driven to Harwich International Port on England's east coast. The plastic boarded a ship and set sail. 

A day later, the bag was in the back of another lorry, driving east across Germany and then past the Polish border. Then the truck left the motorway and entered the town of Zielona Gora.

Finally, the truck drove through the gates of the Eurokey Recycling GroupIn 2020, the firm had annual revenue of £52m. The company's manager travels by private jet. , a "waste broker" which takes rubbish and sends it to other companies.

For two months, the plastic bag lay untouched. Other plastics left the plant, to be turned into new Tesco bags or burnt as fuelThe plastic is burned to fuel cement factories. Proponents say it is clean because high temperatures destroy harmful toxins. But the burnt plastic still produces carbon dioxide emissions. . 

But this bag had a different fate. In January, the tracker pinged again - this time near Adana in southern Turkey. 

Then the tracker went silent again, and the silence was never broken. 

There are many reputable recycling firms in Turkey. They comply with environmental regulations. But some scammers accept the fee to dispose of low-grade plastic and then burn it, releasing toxic chemicals. 

Activists in Adana have found Tesco bags at illegal dump sites.

This plastic bag's journey ended in Turkey, perhaps recycled, perhaps burned or dumped. One thing is clear: the plastic problem affects the world. MicroplasticsMicroplastics are fragments of degraded plastic that are less than five millimetres in length. They are blown into the atmosphere and transported by ocean currents.  have fallen in snowfall on mountain peaks and grouped in the stomachs of earthworms. 

Every year, more plasticsEvery year, nearly half a billion tons of plastic are produced worldwide. are produced.

Yes: The four R strategy introduced by Tesco and other big brands is not as simple as it seems. Recycling is a complicated and messy process. This investigation reveals just how often it fails.

No: Many plastics, particularly hard plastics, are used time and time again. Recycled products are used around the globe. As the world celebrates Earth Day today, we must not give up hope.

Or... We put our faith in recycling to let go of our guilt as we consume ever more plastic products. But the real solution to the pollution crisis is to stop producing single-use plastics altogether.