Short answer
In the UK price indicators for September 2026, yes for plastics and barely for glass. Baled clear PET bottles were quoted at £330–400 a tonne while coloured PET ranged from £10 down to a charge of £40 a tonne to take it away, and natural HDPE at £830–950 was worth about twice mixed-colour HDPE. Green glass sat only a few pounds below clear. These are a trade publisher's indicative ranges for one country and one month; colour travels with grade and end market, so they show a price gap, not a measured effect of pigment.
The trade publisher letsrecycle.com prints monthly indicative price ranges for baled post-consumer bottles in the United Kingdom. For September 2026 clear and light blue PET was £330–400 a tonne. Coloured PET was shown as £40 negative to £10 positive: at the low end the seller pays to have the material taken. The reason usually given is about what the material can become. Clear PET can be made back into clear bottles or into any colour; coloured PET can only become something as dark or darker, which narrows its outlets. The gap also moved sharply within the year. In January the clear grade was quoted at £110–210 and coloured at minus £50 to zero, so clear bottles more than doubled in value over nine months while coloured ones hardly moved. A price for 'recycled PET' with no colour and no month attached is not informative.
The same table separates HDPE bottles into natural, meaning unpigmented, and mixed colour. In September 2026 natural was £830–950 a tonne and mixed colour £430–530; in January they were £510–610 and £220–320. Mixed-colour HDPE is worth real money, unlike coloured PET, but about half as much as natural. Here the limit of the comparison is plain. Natural HDPE bottles are typically milk bottles, a uniform food-contact stream; mixed-colour HDPE is typically detergent, toiletry and household-chemical bottles in every pigment at once. The two bales differ in what they held, in how they were made and in what they can be used for, as well as in colour. The price gap is associated with colour and is not a measurement of what a pigment subtracts from a bottle's value.
Mixing many pigments gives a grey or dark pellet, which is why mixed-colour recyclate tends to go into dark products. The materials section explains the colour physics; this page only records the prices.
Glass makes a useful contrast. The publisher's ranges for used containers, ex works, in September 2026 were £7–38 a tonne for clear, £7–35 for brown and £5–26 for green, with mixed at £5–36. The ranges overlap almost entirely. Green is lowest at the top of its range, but the difference is a few pounds on a material worth very little per tonne in any colour. In glass the cost of colour shows up less in the cullet price than in the sorting: a furnace making clear glass can accept only limited off-colour cullet, so the value is in keeping colours apart.
The clearest sign that recyclers' prices reach back into design is a redesign. In July 2022 The Coca-Cola Company announced that Sprite, sold in green bottles for more than sixty years, would move to clear PET in North America from 1 August, with its other green-bottled drinks to follow. As reported by NPR, the company said green bottles were already recyclable but that coloured bottles are typically separated from clear ones so that the recycled plastic is not discoloured, and that green PET more often ended up as clothing and carpet, which are hard to recycle again. A recycling partner was quoted as saying that taking colours out of bottles improves the quality of the recycled material, and a company executive that demand for recycled PET exceeded supply. The company published no cost for the change and no effect on sales, so the case shows the direction of the incentive and nothing about its size.
Three cautions apply. The figures are indicative ranges compiled by a trade publisher from market participants, with no published method, and they change every month. They are British: other countries have different collection systems, deposit schemes and reprocessing capacity, and Colourwise has not compared them. And they describe bales as traded, in which colour is bound up with polymer grade, previous contents and contamination. A packaging designer can fairly conclude that an unpigmented bottle enters a deeper market than a coloured one in the UK in 2026. Nobody can conclude from these tables what a specific pack will fetch, or that removing a pigment would raise its value by the difference between two rows. The packaging section covers the recyclability guidance that follows from the same facts, and none of this is advice on what to buy, sell or specify.
| Material | Grade | January 2026 | September 2026 | September midpoint |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PET bottles | Clear and light blue | £110 to £210 | £330 to £400 | £365 |
| PET bottles | Coloured | −£50 to £0 | −£40 to £10 | −£15 |
| HDPE bottles | Natural | £510 to £610 | £830 to £950 | £890 |
| HDPE bottles | Mixed colour | £220 to £320 | £430 to £530 | £480 |
| Glass containers | Clear | £9 to £39 | £7 to £38 | £22.5 |
| Glass containers | Brown | £9 to £38 | £7 to £35 | £21 |
| Glass containers | Green | £7 to £35 | £5 to £26 | £15.5 |
| Glass containers | Mixed | £6 to £50 | £5 to £36 | £20.5 |
| What it concerns | Colour or finish factor | Published figure | Where and when | Kind of evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baled post-consumer PET bottles sold to reprocessors | Clear and light blue bottles | 330 to 400 pounds per tonne | United Kingdom; September 2026 | Market correlation |
| Baled post-consumer PET bottles sold to reprocessors | Coloured bottles | −40 to 10 pounds per tonne | United Kingdom; September 2026 | Market correlation |
| Baled post-consumer HDPE bottles sold to reprocessors | Natural (unpigmented) bottles | 830 to 950 pounds per tonne | United Kingdom; September 2026 | Market correlation |
| Baled post-consumer HDPE bottles sold to reprocessors | Mixed-colour bottles | 430 to 530 pounds per tonne | United Kingdom; September 2026 | Market correlation |
| Colour-sorted used glass containers sold ex works | Green glass against clear | 5 to 26 pounds per tonne (clear: 7–38) | United Kingdom; September 2026 | Market correlation |
| A soft-drink brand's PET bottle | A sixty-year-old green bottle changed to clear | No figure published | North America; From 1 August 2022 | Documented industry practice |
Each statement is labelled by kind — established fact, a standard’s requirement, observed market data, a convention, or Colourwise’s own interpretation or analysis — with the strength of the evidence behind it.
Observed market dataModerate evidence· United Kingdom· September 2026
UK indicative prices for baled post-consumer bottles in September 2026 were £330–400 a tonne for clear and light blue PET and −£40 to £10 a tonne for coloured PET.
Measured: Baled post-consumer PET bottles sold to reprocessors, as reported to a trade publisher. Method: Monthly indicative ranges; collection method not published
Caveat: Indicative ranges that are revised monthly; a negative price means the seller pays. Colour is bound up with grade and end market.
Observed market dataModerate evidence· United Kingdom· September 2026
In the same month natural HDPE bottles were quoted at £830–950 a tonne and mixed-colour HDPE at £430–530.
Measured: Baled post-consumer HDPE bottles sold to reprocessors, as reported to a trade publisher.
Caveat: Natural and mixed-colour bales come from different products with different previous contents, so the gap is not attributable to pigment alone.
Observed market dataModerate evidence· United Kingdom· September 2026
UK indicative prices for used glass containers in September 2026 were £7–38 a tonne for clear, £7–35 for brown and £5–26 for green.
Measured: Used glass jars and bottles ex works, as reported to a trade publisher.
Caveat: Wide, overlapping ranges with no published method; the colour gap is within the noise.
FactModerate evidence
The Coca-Cola Company announced in July 2022 that Sprite would move from green to clear PET bottles in North America from 1 August 2022, saying coloured bottles are typically separated from clear ones in recycling and more often become clothing and carpet.
Caveat: A news report of the company's statement; the company's own release was not read, and no cost or sales effect was published.
Source: Sprite is ditching its iconic green bottle — and that's good for the environment
Colourwise analysisLimited evidence
At the midpoints of the September 2026 ranges, clear PET was about £380 a tonne above coloured PET and natural HDPE about £410 a tonne above mixed-colour HDPE.
Based on: Colourwise's subtraction of the midpoints of the published indicative ranges for each pair of grades; see the price table on this page.
Caveat: A midpoint of an indicative range is not a traded price, and the same calculation on the January ranges gives a PET gap about half as large.
Reviewed 6 October 2026. Colourwise summarises its sources in its own words and does not reproduce standards text or proprietary colour data. Spotted an error? Tell us.