Simpler Recycling in England

Since first being pitched as Consistent Collections back in 2018, it has been slow going, but implementation of the newly branded Simpler Recycling has finally begun as of April 2025. LARAC explains

So, how did we get here?
Seven years ago, DEFRA and the UK Government announced a suite of Collection and Packaging Reforms (CPR) as part of efforts to improve the UK’s plateaued recycling rates and move the burden of costs onto packaging producers through a ‘polluter pays principle’.

Of course, since 2018 there has been significant disruption to progress, some predictable such as changes in government and their subsequent agendas, and others such as the COVID-19 pandemic which created a brand-new set of previously unforeseen impacts in all walks of life. Nonetheless, it has been a long road to get to where we are today, and whilst we’re still not quite there, 2025 feels like the first year of real progress in implementing some of these policies – most notably Simpler Recycling in England.

In short, Simpler Recycling in England aims to standardise (or make consistent, to borrow its previous name) what can be presented for recycling across England – both at the kerbside and communal collections for households, non-household premises such as schools and hospitals and also for businesses. Originally, this meant a standard set of materials (plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, metal cans and tins, glass bottles and jars, cartons, paper and card), collected separately from each other,  but this approach has since been watered down to a standard set of materials to be mandated as collected for recycling in a dry mixed recycling collection, with paper and card collected separately unless an assessment can prove it is not technically, economically or environmentally practical to do so. This leaves the door open for more variation on how recycling is collected across the country. By 2027, items that are currently collected inconsistently across the country, such as glass, drinks cartons, plastic pots, tubs and trays, and films and flexibles will be collected from households as recyclables at the kerbside, but how they are collected will vary. Furthermore, food waste will be collected separately (or co-mingled with garden waste), weekly from April 2026.
 Simpler Recycling is a huge ask of councils, and one that is partly (we’ll come back to this) funded by another part of the reforms, packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR). It’s also worth noting that details of the requirements were only confirmed at the very end of November 2024, a mere four months ahead of the first requirement set out in the legislation – provision of recycling collections from non-household premises and businesses.

April 2025: non-household premises and businesses must separate recycling and food from waste
As mentioned, 31 March 2025 was the first real milestone of the implementation of Simpler Recycling in England. From this date, local authorities were obligated to provide or organise non-household and business waste collections when requested from premises of 10 or more full-time equivalent (FTE) members of staff. Whilst the obligation to separate materials and ensure a collection was in place fell on the businesses themselves, this was a new requirement for many authorities. This will ramp up in 2027, when microfirms (those with less than 10 FTE members of staff) also come within scope.

Whilst it could be seen as something of a soft launch in the context of the broader legislation and requirements, it has brought challenges with it. There has been limited communication campaigns via DEFRA to alert businesses to their new obligations, no pEPR funding for councils to cover costs of expanding or implementing business collections for recycling, and procurement delays and challenges due to councils taking on new requirements simultaneously.

2026: food waste
April 2026 will see the introduction of a significant change for a number of local authorities, but not all. Food waste collections from households will be mandated – something that a significant number of local authorities don’t currently operate and never have done. This creates not only huge logistical planning challenges, but a procurement challenge. Hundreds of thousands of households will require new bins and caddies, new vehicles, adapted infrastructure, new contracts, communication tools, staff upskilling, retraining and a raft of other resources to implement these new services. Challenging, and not entirely within the control of local authorities, as manufacturers of these vehicles and containers prioritise the demands.

Furthermore, we’ve seen widespread frustration in DEFRA’s seeming unwillingness to entertain the idea that providing caddy liners will help drive up engagement in the service, and therefore funding is not being provided to cover these. Also, a lack of national communications coming from central Government (a theme across this and other policies…) risks undermining the rollout and public engagement in the new services.

Whilst funding is secured in the short term to enable the rollout phase, all-be-it with some exceptions, we are not aware what any ongoing funding will cover, and for how long. New Burdens funding information has been spotty and is subject to changes following the summer Spending Review.

2027: plastic film, microbusinesses… and the rest!
April 2027 will see the final set of requirements for Simpler Recycling introduced. Local authorities will be required to collect perhaps the ultimate in challenging materials, plastic films and flexibles from households and non-household premises. Whilst the operational side of this comes with real challenges, the main issue seems to be around the viability of collecting and sorting this material when there is no secure end market. One of the biggest worries is introducing this change, asking residents to undertake a behaviour change in disposing of these items with their expectation that it is being recycled, only to see no offtake and it still ending up being exported, landfilled or incinerated. It wasn’t a good look a few years ago for film collected front of store, and it doesn’t feel as though we have the good will with this material to risk such a knock to public confidence again.

Microfirms (less than 10 FTEs) will also be coming into scope, a massive number of small volumes of waste from a variety of locations, not helped by the ‘no minimum requirement’ approach taken to streams such as food waste separation.

So, what’s next…
It’s no secret that local authorities are seeing continued financial strain across all public services. Local Government Reform (LGR) is set to be a huge disrupter for English council operations, Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is due to be introduced in 2027 and will remove valuable material from the local authority waste streams, and the enormous elephant in the room of the addition of waste incinerators to the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) potentially puts a multi-million pound cost pass down to each UK local authority from 2028, with limited opportunities for mitigation at a council level.

It seems that the local authority’s role in waste management has been somewhat misrepresented throughout these policies. Local Authorities can collect these materials but does the industry have the sorting and reprocessing infrastructure available for them to be recycled. This is especially true for materials such as cartons and films and flexibles.

The phrase “chicken and egg” is used a lot (and I mean a lot) in discussions around this, and whilst there may be truth in that adage, these policies risk not only hurting public confidence in recycling but also being the financial straw that breaks the local authority camel’s back.