Simpler Recycling, which came into effect across England in March 2026, aims to make recycling simpler for households and businesses by presenting a more unified system of collection.

At home, your local authority will need to offer a collection for paper and card, other dry recyclables, nonrecyclable waste, and food waste. In addition, plastic film and plastic bags should be collected by March 2027.

For many it will take time to embed these changes and therefore a transitional phase is in operation while councils make arrangements with their waste contracts and ensure the correct infrastructure is in place. Many councils have exemptions or delayed implementation dates because they are tied in to existing long-term contracts – for some it may take another 10 years or more to fully comply with Simpler Recycling.

At work, businesses with more than 10 full-time staff members will already need to organise separate collections of core recyclable waste and food waste (as of March 2025). By March 2027 this will have rolled out to all businesses and workplaces. Businesses who don’t comply will face non-compliance fines and pay larger amounts to dispose of waste that has not been correctly segregated.

One of the major changes brought in with Simpler Recycling is the introduction of a weekly food waste collection at home and at work, which has a number of potential impacts, both positive and negative.

The food waste problem

Looking at the Reduce / Reuse / Recycle hierarchy of waste, reducing food waste should be our highest priority. We have a big food waste problem globally, and its impacts are far-reaching.

In the UK, on average a person wastes the food equivalent of three meals a week, equating to a total of 4.4 million tonnes of edible food being discarded a year. This waste generates 16 million tonnes of CO2(1) which is the equivalent of the annual energy use from 2.5 million homes, just under 10% of all homes in the UK(2). There is a financial implication too with the total cost of UK food waste estimated at £17 billion a year, equivalent to £1,000 per household.

By far the biggest source of food waste comes from households, accounting for around 60% of the total, so this is where the largest impact could be made(3). A recent study made by the Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP) highlighted some of the main challenges among households(4). There was still a culture of food waste denial, with 80% surveyed believing they waste less than the average household and 64% thinking that some food waste is inevitable.

Younger age groups and households with young children were also more likely to waste more food. Bread and potatoes were among the top foods wasted. The same study(4) found that overbuying, poor fridge control and not using up opened items were key culprits for wasting food.

What happens to food waste that is collected?

Ideally, food waste collected will go to an anaerobic digestion plant. It will be chopped up then fed into an oxygen free cylinder where it is broken down by micro-organisms at 35–40oC. During this process, it will give off biogas which is collected as a fuel source. The solid and liquid material left over is also collected and used as a high quality, nutrient rich fertiliser. This process scores better than centralised composting in its environmental impact as it produces fuel and fertiliser and has lower emissions(5).

In some areas, local authorities may continue to collect food waste that is mixed up with garden waste. As the food waste may contain animal biproducts, it cannot be composted in the open air and must be processed in an in-vessel composter. The materials will be shredded, then composted at temperatures of 60–70oC to kill pathogens and weed seeds. The vessel is rotated and air is forced through the mix to maintain aerobic conditions. After passing through a secondary vessel to ensure the mixture is sanitised, the mix will be left in windrows to mature.

What makes a food waste collection successful?

Currently not all English councils have met the target to provide food waste bins by March 2026, citing a challenge of high demand leading to a shortage of specialist collection vehicles and specialist bins. However, there are examples of councils that have very good rates of food waste recovery, such as Monmouthshire which had a food waste recovery rate of 76%(6).

Some of the factors that they attributed to its success include:
• Preventing pests and vermin by using lockable caddies rather than single use sacks.
• Making food caddies readily available from centralized hubs to remove barriers to participation. This is important for more challenging areas such as blocks of flats.
• Restricting capacity for non-recyclable waste to incentivise households to sort and separate their waste.

Food for thought

Although we would love to see 100% of a household’s food and garden waste composted at home, we know that for many this simply isn’t possible, so we welcome these new regulations as a positive step forward.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that one third of the food grown globally is wasted(10). Reducing wastage could facilitate a reduction in the area needed for food growing and an opportunity for less intensive farming with a lower environmental impact.

Dealing with waste at home

There is an argument that having a food waste collection will discourage people from composting at home. However, this needn’t be the case as home composting offers many other advantages. What it will do is offer people a simpler option if they’re unable to compost all or any of their waste.

Although the process itself emits more CO2 than anaerobic digestion(5), composting within your garden has the advantage of having no environmental impact associated with transporting material, or building or maintaining a large industrial process. Also, by creating your own soil conditioner on site, you remove the impact and costs associated with having to purchase and transport bulky materials often wrapped in plastic.

Raw vegetable and fruit scraps – these are rich in nitrogen and moisture, so within a home composting system need to be mixed with a high carbon source such as cardboard, dried grass, dried plant stems or twigs to compost effectively. It is also important to ensure that there are structural air spaces within the mix.

Cooked food – at home, this needs to be processed in a self-contained sturdy container to prevent it attracting rodents, so it is a bit more work. There are many options available. A Green Johanna is a larger sturdy bin with a mesh base that is rodent proof.

The HOTBIN is another option, it has thick heat-retaining walls that allow rapid composting at a high temperature as a continuous batch process. It needs to be regularly fed food scraps mixed with wood chips to provide a carbon source and aeration. There is also the bokashi method which ferments food waste as a preprocessing stage, so that it can then be added to the compost without attracting rodents.

We have lots of resources and advice on home composting on our website, visit gardenorganic.org.uk/composting for more.

References
1.    By Sunday 15 March, an average UK household of four will have already wasted £200 of edible food this year. WRAP - The Waste and Resources Action Programme https://www.wrap.ngo/media-centre/press-releases/sunday-15-march-average-uk-household-four-will-have-already-wasted.
2.    US EPA, O. Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator (2015).
3.    WRAP. UK Food Waste and Food Surplus - Key Facts. 22 (2023).
4.    Doriza, A. Household Food Management Survey 2025 – Behaviours, Attitudes, Awareness and Competencies, Prepared by WRAP. 66 (2026).
5.    Slorach, P. C., Jeswani, H. K., Cuéllar-Franca, R. & Azapagic, A. Environmental and economic implications of recovering resources from food waste in a circular economy. Sci. Total Environ. 693, 133516 (2019).
6.    Food waste collections in Monmouthshire. WRAP - The Waste and Resources Action Programme https://www.wrap.ngo/resources/case-study/welsh-government-collections-blueprint-2025/food-waste-collections-monmouthshire.
7.    UK Parliament. House of Lords - Methane: keep up the momentum - Environment and Climate Change Committee. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5901/ldselect/ldenvcl/45/4508.htm (2023).
8.    Jelinek, N. et al. Waste Incineration and the Environment. (2024). doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.16613.61921/3.
9.    Morgan, S. Opportunities For Prevention with Household Food Waste Collections-. (2024).
10.    Gustavsson, J., Cederberg, C. & Sonesson, U. Global Food Losses and Food Waste. 37 (2011)