Procter & Gamble has ruled out signing up to the British Retail Consortium's on-pack recycling logo after the BRC revealed it was currently being introduced to about 50,000 product lines.

Fifty brand owners and retailers have signed up to carry the UK's first standardised label for packaging recycling since it was officially launched seven months ago, following trials with various companies, including Asda, since late 2007.

The BRC said it is well on track to achieve its target of 60 signatories in the first year, but a number of global brand owners are unlikely to sign up because their products are not packaged specifically for the UK.

Procter & Gamble told Packaging News that it was not planning to join the scheme. "Almost all of our packaging goes into several countries so a UK-specific label would not be appropriate," said Kirstie Hawkes, P&G UK's sustainability affairs manager.

Recent signatories to the scheme, which aims to provide consumers with a clear and consistent means of gauging whether or not and how packaging can be recycled, include Pepsi, London 2012 and Yeo Valley.

According to the BRC, more than 85% of the UK's grocery retail market by turnover has signed up, as well as a "large proportion of non-food retailers". Companies involved in the scheme include Burtons Foods, Dairy Crest, HJ Heinz, John Lewis Partnership, Kellogg's, Marks and Spencer, Molson Coors, Tate & Lyle and Tesco. Click here for the full list.

The recycling logo is intended to increase the quality and quantity of packaging that ends up in recycling schemes run by local authorities.

The label denotes three categories according to the likelihood of a local authority being able to accept the packaging material for recycling: 'widely recycled', 'check local recycling' and 'not currently recycled'.

Stephen Robertson, the BRC's director general, said: "Customer confusion is the biggest barrier to improving recycling rates. Replacing a potentially confusing array of symbols and messages with a single logo will help customers recycle more what can already be recycled."

The scheme is operated by the BRC under a company called OPRL (On-Pack Recycling Label). The Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) provides technical support for the scheme and monitors the correct use of the label.