DEFRA has outlined ‘Simpler Recycling’ plans for England with proposals to ensure all local authorities collect the same waste materials for recycling.
Currently local authorities are free to choose what and how they recycle, creating a recycling postcode lottery for customers looking to do their bit for the environment.
As of March 31, 2026, authorities will be able to streamline their collections to just three bins or bags/boxes – ‘dry recycling’, food waste and the regular bin. All households will also be offered an option fourth collection, which will be for garden waste.
‘Dry recycling’ includes glass, cans, currently recyclable (hard) plastics, paper and card – and there have been calls from some within the industry to keep paper and card separate, to avoid contamination and increase the quality of recycled materials ultimately produced. Glass also causes debate, as broken glass can cause problems in other recycling streams.
And by March 31, 2027, the ‘dry recycling’ will include packaging films and pouches made from mono-PE (polyethylene), mono-PP (polypropylene) and mixed PE/PP – a key step forward which has been overlooked in much of the reporting on the story.
DEFRA says the Simpler Recycling scheme means manufacturers can design packaging safe in the knowledge that it can be recycled nationally, ensuring more recycled material in the products we buy and allowing the UK recycling industry to grow.
The UK’s recycling system has been crying out for reform for years, so the Simpler Recycling plans seem a welcome move in the right direction. The devil, of course, will be in the detail. But as a flexible packaging manufacturer, being able to sell packaging which can be recycled nationwide will of course be more straightforward for our customers, who will find it far easier to label packaging with accurate instructions regarding recycling.
And our work in recent years in developing mono-PE materials will prove beneficial.
Our RePEat range of pouches and films, for example, is currently recyclable as soft plastics, which can be taken to recycling collection points, but by 2027 they would be collected in home recycling schemes – a system which really should have been in place already.
And, of course, our Earthfilm barrier paper-based products will still be collected, as part of the paper/board collection, which will fit somewhere into the ‘dry recycling’ collection.
The Simpler Recycling plans don’t just cover households’ ‘dry recycling’.
Weekly food collections to all households, including flats, and garden waste collections will be implemented by the end of March 2026 – unless local authorities need longer to transition due to a long-term waste disposal contract. DEFRA is also consulting on an exemption to allow food and garden waste to be collected together in one bin.
In September, prime minister Rishi Sunak delivered a last-minute speech outlining a shift in the government’s strategy for reaching net zero by 2050, including plans to revoke or delay a series of existing – and some non-existing – net zero related policies. Included in the speech was an announcement to “scrap plans to force households to have seven different bins” which at the time caused considerable confusion.
The theoretical seven bins referred to by the MP were revealed as: glass; paper; cardboard; metal; plastic; garden waste; food waste and general waste.
At first it was not clear exactly what Sunak was referring to, given there have never been plans announced for any households to have seven different bins. However, he was referring to the government’s plans for consistent waste collections, which it consulted on in May 2021. The ‘Simpler Recycling’ scheme effectively replaces these plans.
The government said “having assessed the highest performing councils on recycling rates” they are proposing to introduce exemptions to allow all councils in England to offer just three waste containers – bins, boxes or bags – for dry recycling, food waste and residual (non-recyclable) waste. An optional garden waste collection will also be offered to all households.
Non-household municipal premises, except micro-firms, will be required to make arrangements for separate food waste collections a year earlier, by March 31, 2025.
The Government’s Environment secretary Thérèse Coffey said: “Simpler recycling will help us all recycle more easily, doing our bit to help save the planet and make the best use of precious resources that we use every day. Alongside weekly food waste collections, we are ending the postcode lottery of what you can put in your bin so that wherever you live in the country, you will be able to recycle the same products with confidence.”
The industry feedback to the proposals has been – for the most part – favourable.
Paul Vanston, chief executive of the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (INCPEN), said recent surveys show there is huge public support for the idea of clear, unambiguous recycling instructions on packaging that match-up with what can be put into household recycling bins wherever citizens live across the whole country.”
Mr Vanston added: “The announcements move us several steps closer to turbo boosting the country’s packaging recycling rates on metals, paper and card, glass, hard and soft plastics and cartons whilst enabling citizens to be super-confident when applying simpler recycling behaviours at home and at work in future.”
But there have been warnings from environmentalists that the plans don’t go far enough.
Nina Schrank, head of plastics at Greenpeace UK, said: “The government is fiddling with a system that’s fundamentally broken. We can streamline waste collection all we like, it’ll do little to solve the scandalous fact that so much of our plastic recycling will ultimately end up burnt in incinerators around the UK, dumped in landfill or shipped overseas for others to deal with.
“The public want to see action on this. To do that we have to produce less waste. The government needs to get serious and back measures to cut the amount of plastic packaging we produce as a country in the first place. To get there they need to support an ambitious UN Global Plastics Treaty that’ll end single-use plastic and cut plastic production at source.”
Greenpeace do, of course, have a point. The government can come up with as complex or simple a recycling scheme as possible. As we all know, just because something can be recycled, it doesn’t mean it will be. If we simply end up sending recycling to landfill or incinerators via a more circuitous route, then we’ll have wasted our time.
More and more people are seemingly willing to make the effect to sort their recycling. They’re not willing, for various reasons, to have seven bins, but they are willing to make some effort, so so-called commingled recycling (perhaps with paper/card separate) does make sense, if the systems are in place to properly sort, and recycling is actually recycled.
The Simple Recycling plans also aim to clamp down on ‘untrustworthy’ waste operators – including increasing background checks for firms who move or trade waste, to make it harder for rogue operators to find work and easier for regulators to act against criminals.
For more on the Simpler Recycling proposals, click here
MARK LINGARD, MARKETING MANAGER