Lee Marshall, policy & external affairs director, CIWM (Chartered Institution of Wastes Management) looks at the Government’s claims to be scrapping the much-fabled ‘seven bins’ policy and the future of the consistent collections reform.

They say a week is a long time in politics. In the case of the Prime Minister’s rowing back on a number of key green policies, 24 hours felt like a long time. It began with swirling rumours, swiftly followed by confirmation, of changes to a number of Government policies, amongst which was the much-fabled ‘seven bins’ policy which was reported as being scrapped.

This policy is of course the consistent collections reform for England which would require councils to collect a core set of mandated materials, ensuring that, no matter where someone lives, they would have a consistent recycling collection. This policy change was first aired in the 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy and has been the subject of two detailed consultations in 2019 and 2021. It was originally intended to take effect from October 2023 which shows just how long this particular reform has been delayed.

The consistent collections policy is one of the most fundamental changes to household – and business – recycling collections since the reforms set out in the Environment Act 1990 and one that all local authorities have been trying to plan for, including establishing how much change it would result in for them.

The consistent collections reform supports two other key policy areas. The first is Extended Producer Responsibility on packaging, which makes producers of packaging responsible for the ‘full net cost’ of the products they make. This means they will pay for the collection, recycling, and disposal of packaging, resulting in vast amounts of funding coming into local authorities to support their services. Another fundamental change in waste management policy in England. The second policy area is the reduction of biodegradable waste going to landfill. Part of the core set of materials set out in the consistent collections reforms is food waste, and all councils in England will be mandated to undertake separate collections of food waste. This is currently only done by around 50% of authorities.

Given the scale of these changes, the impacts on local authorities are huge. On the one hand, they will receive injections of much-needed funds to support their recycling and waste services. On the other, they are likely to have to make major changes to what they collect and how they collect it. This could involve large scale procurement and mobilisation exercises that could take anywhere from 18 months to two years to complete. There are concerns that so many local authorities doing this simultaneously could cause bottlenecks in supplier markets, increase prices, and result in delays in implementation in some areas. The Government’s delay in announcing the finer details of how it will work certainly won’t have helped in this respect.

The next step in the process, after the Government had released its response to the most recent consultation, was the publication of draft statutory guidance which local authorities would have been consulted on. It is unclear from the Prime Minister’s announcement if this guidance will still be produced. Defra have confirmed that, contrary to numerous headlines, the consistent collections policy has not been scrapped and will still go ahead, although it has now been rebadged as ‘Simpler Recycling’. There is no official confirmation, beyond ‘soon’, of when the outstanding details will be available, which in current Government speak could be a while.

When the announcements eventually are made, it is likely that, given the delays, Government will want the industry and local government to move quickly to make up for lost time. How realistic a timescale they set for local authorities to begin collecting the core set of materials remains to be seen. If they haven’t already, local authorities would be wise to do what they can to get ahead of the game. This could include things like options appraisals to understand what sort of collection system may work best in their area, calculating the potential cost implications, and possible soft market testing to ensure that, if they tender the work, it is attractive to the market so that the bids coming back are competitive.

In the meantime, we wait to see if the intervention by Number 10 has radically changed the policy from what many had expected, and what a great deal of us have spent a lot of time and energy engaging with Defra to help shape.

If this article was of interest, then check out, 'The cost of the EPR delay' and 'The recycling system is in need of an overhaul – so what’s the solution?'