Waste and recycling collections will change for all businesses with 10 or more full-time equivalent employees in England from 31st March 2025.
The UK Government’s Simpler Recycling legislation will mandate the separation of materials from general waste, including food, recyclable plastic, metal cans and tins, glass, paper and cardboard.
Many businesses, including schools and care homes, will be doing this for the first time and there’s still a lot of uncertainty among them about what it means.
For example, businesses and organisations producing more than 5kg of food waste per week will be required to store food waste in separate bins and arrange for collection by licensed waste collectors.
Importantly, biodegradable materials such as vegetable peelings, bones, eggshells, coffee grounds and tea bags are to be included as food waste.
Recyclable materials must be separated from general waste
The most significant change will be that you can no longer dispose of all your rubbish in a general waste bin; if you currently dispose of any of the following materials in this way, you will need to separate them and organise a dedicated collection:
- Glass such as drinks bottles and rinsed empty food jars
- Metal such as drinks cans and food tins, aluminium foil and food trays
- Plastic such as rinsed empty food containers and bottles
- Paper such as old newspapers and envelopes
- Cardboard such as delivery boxes and packaging
- Food leftovers, tea bags, coffee grounds or waste generated by food preparation
You won’t need seven bins, because although these materials must be separated from general waste, your waste management provider can collect many of them together – meaning less money spent on bin containers and less space required to house them on site.
While the future goal may be that all recyclable materials are separated, collected, and processed completely independently, many steps will need to be taken before this can be achieved efficiently while benefiting the environment and economy.
The UK Government will allow waste operators to continue collecting metal, plastic (non-film), paper and cardboard using existing dry mixed recycling (DMR) systems, and the mandatory separation of paper and cardboard won’t be immediate.
As a result, it’s more likely you will need a minimum of three bins or four if you generate glass waste.
Simpler Recycling will increase costs for most businesses
It will require upfront effort and could incur additional costs. Look at what your projected waste fees will be with separate collections using the WRAP Simpler Recycling calculator.
The cost comes from the additional separate bins and this will vary depending on factors such as the volume of waste generated, how many bins you need, how frequently they need collecting, and whether there are opportunities to reduce waste.
You can reduce waste and save money by switching materials, working with suppliers, or reusing or redistributing certain items.
You might also need to invest in training and educational materials to support employees in where to position bins and how to separate waste materials effectively – but there are free options available.
Reducing general waste can mitigate some costs
General waste is expensive compared to other waste - for example the cost of collecting a general waste bin is higher than a mixed recycling bin. This is because general waste is subject to costs such as gate fees for disposal and, if going to landfill, the Landfill Tax.
Significant changes are happening that will increase that cost further. In April 2025, the Landfill Tax on standard waste will increase from £103 to £126 per tonne. This covers most residual materials (apart from inert bulk waste from construction). While waste management operators are different in their approach to absorbing costs, it is highly likely that this cost will be passed on to customers at some level.
Even when a waste operator uses energy recovery facilities for general waste, it will still become more expensive. As landfill costs increase, demand for energy recovery facilities for general waste will increase, and this has the potential to increase gate fees.
Costs for general waste will continue to increase as more sustainable waste management methods are incentivised. This is especially true for food and other organic waste, which is particularly damaging in landfill.
The good news is that it is both dense and heavy, so removing it from general waste saves money. By reducing waste and eventually reducing the size of your general waste bin, you can mitigate some of the additional costs that come with extra bins and collections.
Separating materials makes a difference
Some lessons can be learned from the Workplace Recycling that was introduced in Wales in 2024. As of April last year, businesses were required to separate their materials into six containers, and the scheme has seen some impressive results.
Biffa alone collected 68% more food waste from Welsh businesses year-on-year between November 2023 and 2024. This organic waste is then diverted to anaerobic digestion facilities that produce biogas, which is burned to produce electricity and a fertiliser byproduct. In the same period, the total recycling volume Biffa collected from businesses in Wales increased by over a third (34%).
Despite Simpler Recycling requiring fewer bins than Wales’s mandated six, we expect to see a similarly positive impact as businesses adapt to the new legislation.
Simpler Recycling will take some getting used to. But as the regulations approach, the most important actions you can take are to arrange the right material collections based on the waste produced and ensure that as much of your waste can be diverted from general waste as possible.
Biffa’s Simpler Recycling guide and video tip series can help you and your colleagues reduce waste and separate recycling to remain compliant. To download visit: https://www.biffa.co.uk/support-resources/simpler-recycling.