The UK government has announced its plans to reform the country’s recycling system. According to BBC Environment Correspondent Jonah Fisher, the new plans will ensure that most households will have a weekly food waste collection by early 2026, whilst there will now be a standardised list of items that councils must recycle. The government hopes that the new rules will improve household recycling rates by making it easier for people to recycle.
Speaking about the plans, environment secretary Therese Coffey said: “Simpler recycling will help us all recycle more easily…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”.
However, some critics have called the new measures “fiddling with a system that’s fundamentally broken”. Greenpeace’s Nina Schrank believes that “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”.
Current statistics reveal that England currently recycles about 44% of its household waste, compared to 57% in Wales, 48% in Northern Ireland, and 42% in Scotland. As the new proposals state, English councils must make a food waste collection every week by March 2026, representing a change and a cost as only around half of English councils currently collect food waste separately.
The government hopes the new rules will make recycling a simpler and more uniform experience for all households. It previously looked like the new reforms would stipulate that different types of dry recycling must be collected separately from households. However, under the new plans, councils will maintain flexibility in choosing how households should recycle their waste
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More