The government has announced reforms to household and business bin collections, as well as unscrupulous waste carriers to help boost recycling.
The changes will see weekly collections of food waste introduced across England by 2026. Further reforms will allow exemptions to make sure waste collectors will be able to collect dry recyclables together, in the same bin or bag.
The government’s changes will also mean that it can bring in a more convenient and practical system which prevents councils from being hit with extra complexity.
“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,” said environment secretary Therese Coffey.
“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,” she continued.
♻️💊Will this include recycling of medicines? 😇👇
Long-awaited plans to reform recycling in England announced
“Most households will have a weekly food waste collection by early 2026 &there’ll now be a standardised list of items that councils must recycle”https://t.co/ThctUH8Dq5— Professor Parastou Donyai🧶 (@ProfDonyai) October 21, 2023
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INCPEN chief executive Paul Vanston added: “INCPEN’s recent citizens 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 country”.
“Today’s announcements move us several steps closer to turbo boosting the country’s packaging recycling rates on metals, paper and glass, hard and soft plastics and cartons while enabling citizens to be super-confident when applying simpler recycling behaviours at home and at work in future”.
However, some have criticised the government for not focusing its attention in the right places. Reacting to the news Greenpeace UK head of plastics Nina Schrank said: “The government is fiddling with a system that’s fundamentally broken. ”
She added: “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.”
