As part of the separation by froth flotation of PVC and PET from waste bottles before recycling, the adsorption mechanism of a lignosulphonate used to selectively render one of the plastics hydrophilic has been studied. As the 'rest' method is not sufficiently sensitive for this purpose, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy analysis was conducted. A method of calculating the surface coverage of both plastics by the reagent is proposed based on the fact that the lignosulphonate contains sulphur whereas PVC and PET do not. The results show that a greater quantity of lignosulphonate adsorbs on PET than PVC, leading to a higher surface coverage of LS on PET. The surface coverage values are a function of the lignosulphonate macromolecular configuration. For the sphere and film configurations hypothetised, the surface coverage values remain less than 1, which is consistent with the patchy adsorption assumed in the calculations.