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Simpler Recycling is a reform to household and business bin collections and a crackdown on unscrupulous waste carriers which will boost recycling rates and protect the environment.

A new simpler approach to recycling means people across England will be able to recycle the same materials, whether at home, work or school, putting an end to confusion over what can and can’t be recycled in different parts of the country. Weekly collections for food waste will also be introduced for most households across England by 2026.

Simpler Recycling will enable consistent, more streamlined collections from all households, businesses and relevant non-domestic premises (such as schools and hospitals)

What does it mean for businesses?

Simpler Recycling means businesses, schools, hospitals and other ‘non-household municipal premises’ in England will be required to separate dry recycling (including paper, card, plastic packaging, glass and metal) from general waste for collection. In addition to dry recycling, if a business generates food waste, no matter how small the quantity, this will also need to be separated for collection.

When will it be implemented?

• By 31 March 2025, all workplaces in England with 10 or more employees must recycle the relevant waste streams
• By 31 March 2026, all local authorities must collect the core recyclable waste streams from all households in England, including weekly food waste collections, expect in areas with transitional arrangements.
• By 31 March 2027, all micro-firms (workplaces with fewer than 10 employees must comply, and plastic film collections from all households and workplaces will also be required by then.

The new default requirements for most households and workplaces will be 4 containers for:

• Residual (non-recyclable) waste
• Food waste (mixed with garden waste if appropriate)
• Paper and card
• All other dry recyclable materials (plastic, metal and glass)

There may be various container types, including bags, bins or stackable boxes.

This is the governments maximum default requirement and is not expected to increase in the future. However, councils and other waste collectors will still have the flexibility to make the best choices to suit local needs. This is a sensible, pragmatic approach to the collection of materials for every household and business in England.

Through Simpler Recycling, all householders will receive a comprehensive and consistent set of waste and recycling services. This will enable householders to recycle as much waste as possible and to frequently dispose of bad-smelling food waste, which will be collected from households at least weekly.

The government sees the Simpler Recycling reform as a key part of supporting their circular economy strategy.

“The government is committed to moving towards a zero waste, circular economy. This will create a future where:

• We keep our resources in use for longer and reduce waste
• We accelerate the path to net zero
• We see investment in critical infrastructure and green jobs
• Our economy prospers
• Nature thrives

To do this we are building a circular economy strategy and a series of sector-based roadmaps for reform”

Simpler Recycling will make a significant step towards meeting the ambition to recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035, and deliver greenhouse gas emissions savings equivalent to £11.8 billion.

These reforms will reduce confusion, ending the ‘postcode lottery’ of bin collections, which will help ensure the correct materials are captured for recycling.

This will improve recycling rates – household recycling rates in England have flatlined at around 44% to 45% since 2015. This policy will play a critical role in delivering emissions savings for the waste sector in Carbon Budgets 4 to 6.

The UK Government says they’re fully committed to a Deposit Return Scheme and will continue to work closely with the Scottish Government and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) in Northern Ireland to launch the scheme across England, Scotland and Norther Ireland in October 2027.

On the 18th November 2024, the Welsh Government announced a delay to their Deposit Return Scheme. With Wales already ranked second in the world for recycling, they are in a unique position of implementing a scheme into an already high recycling nation. For this reason the Welsh Government are working on a scheme that is right for their context

Deposit Return Schemes are a proven way to drastically reduce littering of single-use drinks containers, to drive up recycling rates and support the Government’s aim to move to a circular economy.

Deposit Return Schemes have been proven to significantly reduce drinks container litter, as well as other types of, as drink containers can act as magnets for other types of litter. Given the huge amount of PET and metal drink containers on the market (12 Billion PET and 14 Billion cans), this would make a huge difference.

The introduction of a Deposit Return Scheme will create around 4,000 new jobs across the UK and will bring in investment in infrastructure requires to deliver the scheme.

“We are firmly committed to our timeframe of launch a Deposit Return Scheme in October 2027. As the next step we intend to lay regulations for England and Northern Ireland in November 2024” – The UK Government

Find the full update here

For any of your waste disposal or producer compliance needs, contact the team.

E-waste is a term to describe electrical or electronic equipment that are old, end-of-life or discarded. It is commonly known as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)

Why is it important we talk about e-waste?

• E-waste is the fastest growing solid waste stream in the world
• In 2019 an estimated 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste was produced globally, but only 17.4% was documented as formally collected and recycled
• Lead is one of the most common substances released into the environment if e-waste is recycled, stored, or dumped using inferior activities, such as open burning
• Exposure to harmful chemicals can cause neurodevelopment, learning and behavioural outcomes in children

What measures are taken to prevent e-waste?

• Development and implementation of national e-waste management legislations that protect public health
• Producer and Distributor obligations
• Takeback schemes

How can I prevent e-waste?

• Acting to increase the life expectancy of existing hardware and devices. Regularly completing software updates and clearing out old files will help to improve the performance of electronics.
• Ensuring devices have extended warranty in place will not only help to resolve issues quickly when they do happen, but also help to keep WEEE functioning longer.
• If you’re a producer, join a WEEE compliance scheme. If you place more than 5 tonnes of EEE on the UK market in a compliance year, you must join a producer compliance scheme.

As the amount of e-waste produced continues to grow, we must change the way in which we manage and prevent e-waste from causing irreversible damage to the environment and communities. A collective action is required for said change to be effective. Consumers can be of aid by prolonging upgrading devices that still function, whilst producers can join compliance schemes to compile their evidence of recycled WEEE and EEE that you place on the market to ensure that their legal obligations are met in accordance with the UK legislation.

As one of the largest collectors and recyclers of WEEE in the UK, this enables us to provide sustainable low prices. With 17 service and recycling centres, we can meet a large proportion of our members obligations from the WEEE material we process.

If you’re unsure about your obligation or what your best option may be, you can contact our recycling team to discuss our collection service recycling@wastecare.co.uk

Compliance Website

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Wastecare Environmental Trust worked with Yorkshire Children’s Charity and Battrecycle to build an outdoor learning space for Sherburn Hungate Primary School.

The children of SHP had limited access to safe green spaces in their personal lives due to the deprived area around them. The addition of the Forest School will allow the children to have access to a suitable outdoor space which the teachers will use for lessons and activities.

What is the Wakefield Top 100?

The Wakefield Top 100 is an initiative that aims to help shine a light on the businesses of Wakefield, promoting the district as a place to do business with unrivalled investment and growth opportunities.

The initiative is a joint project between Wakefield First as a part of Wakefield council, The University of Huddersfield and 3M Buckley innovation Centre, and is designed to celebrate and measure business growth across the region.

The Wakefield Top 100 will be published every spring, the list is compiled by Huddersfield Business School, using a set of consistent measures that include a combination of turnover, profit, employee numbers and growth.

Who are Wastecare Group?

Wastecare are a waste management provider that specialise in hazardous and challenging waste. Since 1980 Wastecare have offered a unique recycling and waste management service that enables them to service waste producers from all sectors and industries, from collection to recovery.

We are very proud as a company to have been recognised by the Wakefield District, and listed among some fantastic businesses who are helping to innovate industries within the area.

Read about all the companies that made it into The Wakefield Top 100 here

For any media enquires contact marketing@wastecare.co.uk

Workplace recycling segregation changes

From April 6^th 2024, The Welsh Government is introducing new regulations to improve the quality and quantity of how businesses collect and separate waste. From tomorrow, it will become law that all businesses, charities, and public sector organisations must sort their waste for recycling. This law also applies to all waste and recycling collectors and processors who manage household-like waste from workplaces.

The new law affects these materials:

• Food
• Paper and card
• Glass
• Metal, plastic, and cartons
• Textiles
• Small WEEE

These materials will need to be separated for collection and collected separately.

There will also be a ban on:

• Sending food waste to sewers
• Separately collected waste going to incineration and landfill
• All wood waste going to landfill.

This law applies to ALL businesses, charities, and public sector organisations – they all need to separate their waste.

The only workplace that is temporarily exempt from this law is NHS hospitals and private hospitals, who will have an additional two years to comply.

Waste Hierarchy

These regulations include a requirement for any establishment or undertaking which imports, produces, collects, transports, recovers or disposes of waste, or which as a dealer or broker has control of waste, to take all reasonable measures that applies to the following waste hierarchy as priority when waste is transferred to another person.

• Prevention (Measures, taken before a substance, material or product has become waste)
• Preparing for re-use (Checking, cleaning, or repairing recovery operations, so products or components that become waste can be reused without any other preprocessing)
• Recycling (Any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials, or substances, whether for the original or other purposes)
• Other recovery (Any other operation the result of which is waste serving a useful purpose by replacing other materials which would have been used to fulfil a function)
• Disposal (Any operations which is not recovery. E.g landfill, incineration)

How can Wastecare help?

Due to new regulations small Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (sWEEE) must be separated from other waste streams before collection. Wastecare can collect your business’s WEEE, recycle or recondition these appliances, and offer a rebate on any value we recover.

sWEEE includes kettles, toasters, clocks, watches, laptops etc. Many of these items are commonly found in workplaces, and with the new regulations you MUST comply.

Regardless of type or condition of your business’s WEEE, Wastecare are here to help. We provide specialist WEEE containers, and a regular, licensed collection service via our nationwide network of vehicles.

Wastecare may provide rebates for WEEE if it is deemed fit for reuse at our AATF site in Normanton. We returned over £16 million to clients in 2023 from recovered materials.

If you import or place household electrical equipment or onto the UK market, you may need to register as a EEE producer and enrol with a Producer Compliance Scheme. If your company places portable batteries onto the UK Market you may also need to register with a Battery Producer Compliance Scheme.

As one of the largest collectors and recyclers of WEEE and the largest collector and recycler of portable batteries in the UK, this enables us to provide sustainable low prices. We also pass on any third-party EA-recognised evidence that is made available to us at cost price.

We are pleased to announce our partnership with, Yorkshire Children’s Charity, Batterecycle, and Elite Forest Schools, to support Sherburn Hungate Primary with their Forest School project!

About Sherburn Hungate Primary

The students and staff of Sherburn Hungate Primary (SHP), located just east of Leeds, are an inspiring community who prioritise the education and wellbeing of everyone who passes through the school. This is evident through the rapid growth of the school’s size, which originally only had one form per year group with 15 students per form. Fast-forward to today, they have expanded their class sizes and now have two forms per year group!

The Wastecare and Battrecycle team recently spent some time with the SHP staff. After explaining that during the expansion in pupil intake, the school quickly outgrew the school’s original values. So together with their students, they worked to create 26 new values. from A-Z, all aligning with what the students wanted to embody throughout their time at SHP. These values include:

• Determined
• Inclusive
• Mindful
• Respectful

The school prides themselves on these values and aim to never turn a child away when intaking new students.

On the back of these values, SHP have worked hard to educate the children on the importance of recycling and how they can implement it into their day-to-day life. The school is also split into four Houses, all championing an environmental theme – North is Electricity, East is Water, South is Sustainability and West is Recycling.

Why a Forest School?

SHP hope that with the rising popularity of social media among younger school children, building a Forest School will be key to encouraging them to reconnect with nature and enjoy being outside.

The school has a mixed intake demographic, with a large proportion of their pupils and their families living in poverty. Yorkshire Children’s Charity have been working with SHP for some time now providing grant funding for specialist equipment for disabled pupils, along with winter coats, school shoes, and Christmas presents for children who would’ve otherwise gone without.

The level of deprivation in the surrounding area unfortunately means a lot of these pupils can lead very isolated lives – this includes not having access to local parks or green spaces outside of their estate, and likely spending the 2020 lockdown inside the same four walls.

This is where Yorkshire Children’s Charity, Elite Forest Schools, Wastecare Environmental Trust and Battrecycle come in!

As a result of receiving their grant, SHP have built their Forest School across two areas of the school grounds. Features of their Forest School include:

• Accessible walkways
• A sheltered seating area with a fire pit
• Sensory pathways
• A mud kitchen
• A den building area
• Planting areas with raised flower beds to allow accessibility for children in wheelchair

The Forest School will provide not only a way to learn and connect with the natural world but also a space for self-reflection in challenging situations.

The children have also got stuck into the build! They were tasked with designing a path for the Forest School, in which each child filled a square with stones of their choice to create a path that will allow children with accessibility needs to go to and from the forest school. The paths have been tested, and proven acceptable for the children’s needs.

We can’t wait to see how the SHP’s Forest School develops and grows as we move into the warmer months!

SHP’s Forest School is the first project funded via Battrecycle and has provided a brilliant framework on how we plan to move forward and roll this initiative out nationwide. Building relationships with organisations such as Yorkshire Children’s Charity and Elite Forest Schools is fundamental to us getting these community projects off the ground as quickly as possible.

If you would like to follow along with SHP’s Forest School journey or potential future projects, check out Battrecycle’s website or their socials:

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Battrecycle Funding Opportunities

They will be shortly launching their application process for community project funding via their website.

If you have any questions regarding the funding process, please to get in touch with their team at hello@battrecycle.org

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Who are Yorkshire Children’s Charity?

Yorkshire Children’s Charity are a new charity that comes with a huge amount of experience and a big heart.

Their mission is to transform the childhoods of the thousands of disadvantaged children throughout the region. They want to make sure that no child or young person in Yorkshire is left behind due to ill health, disability, or financial circumstance. They work hard to give young people a fair chance: a chance to live an inclusive life, full of opportunities to explore, where they can engage in the world around them.

Hazardous waste management provider Wastecare Group, have successful trialed a mechanised vape recycling process at their Halifax battery recycling plant.

In this week’s budget announcement (Weds 6^th March 2024), the Government confirmed they plan to ban disposable vapes in in England, in line with Scotland and Wales. This has now been confirmed in a published draft of new legislation, which is set to come into place in April 2025. In addition to this, the Government have also announced that they plan to levy duty on the nicotine extract from October 2026. These incentives we hope will incentivise HMRC, Border Force and the police, to better regulate and ultimately reduce the grey import of vapes.

What is in no doubt is that the popularity of vapes is likely to continue to increase in 2025, with an ever-increasing number being discarded into general waste. To tackle this issue, all vape retailers are now required to offer free disposal. While, public buildings, hospitality venues and other commercial premises are providing dedicated vape bins. This means a huge increase in safe disposal routes becoming available to most users. Despite this, we are still relying on a cultural change in public vape disposal habits.

Wastecare was the first recycler to roll out a national collection network for anyone wanting to provide their customers, employees, and visitors a safe disposal option.  Having rolled out over 8,000 free collection points over the past year, we are collecting vapes from many retailers and DCFs, while we do not export vapes or send them to another company for treatment.

Early into this initiative, the challenge that presented itself was to develop a safe, efficient, and cost-effective recycling and recovery solution. 

Wastecare Trials Mechanised Vape Recycling

The EA have banned the burning of post-consumer vapes; however, they have not as yet approved a mechanical treatment process. Instead, they continue to push hand-dismantling – arguably not a practical, cost effective nor an intrinsically safe solution.  At the same time the EA promote high temperature incineration of pre-consumer vapes. We provide this service both for unwanted and confiscated stock at our HTI facility in Kent.

With this in mind, we are very pleased to confirm that we have now achieved a safe, efficient, and cost-effective mechanised vape recycling and recovery solution for post-consumer vapes.

We have been running trials on an adaptation of our battery recycling plant to perform a mechanical treatment process. With several treatment lines for different waste streams including portable batteries, we have a track record in creating and operating mechanical and mixed manual/mechanical systems.

Furthermore, we have in-house treatment facilities for the downstream outputs of the process, with a high temperature incinerator dealing with the nicotine contaminated elements, and our channels with lithium battery recyclers to safely treat resulting batteries. For the process to be cost effective, we need build sufficient feedstock which we are currently building.

We believe this process fulfills the necessary environmental criteria: 70% + recovery, no discharge of nicotine to atmosphere, and no risk of fire.

Our Chairman Peter Hunt has said of the development:

“We are confident we will get approval on our new plant, although we expect, as will all environmental permits this will take time to processed and be awarded. In the meantime, we have a plan.”

Pending treatment, the vapes are stored at our licensed, permitted facilities. To encourage safe disposal of these devices, Wastecare are willing to subsidise the collection of vapes until such time Defra amend the regulations to encompass vapes and the EA award a permit for a viable plant in the UK.

“The race is on but no matter who is first to get approval to safely treat vapes, society, as a whole, should hopefully be the winner.” – Peter Hunt

For more information on our vape takeback schemes or WEEE producer compliance, please contact the team at compliance@wastecare.co.uk

For any enquiries regarding our vape recycling trials, please contact recycling@wastecare.co.uk.

Under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations in the UK, vape retailers will no longer be a part of the Distributor Takeback Scheme. Instead, all retailers selling vapes are obligated to provide customers with a service for the proper disposal of their vapes and e-cigs. Retailers must offer a vape takeback scheme from 1^st April 2024.

Retailers will be required to takeback vapes that offer the same function as those they sell in store – which is determined by functionality not brand. The return of vapes is on a ‘one for one’ basis, however this must be a free of charge service.

To set up a recycling service retailers must have an appropriate collection point in-store, and partner with an authorised waste management provider to ensure the safe disposal and recycling of the collected vapes. We would encourage retailers to enquire with their vape supplier(s) to establish if they have a vape collection scheme already in place.

Failure to adhere to these regulations not only exposes retailers to potential legal repercussions, but also continues to contribute to the environmental degradation caused by vapes thrown into general waste.

Vape FAQs

What vapes can be collected?

Both disposable and reusable vapes can be collected. We would encourage retailers to also have a battery collection bin alongside their vape bin. This enables customers who can disassemble their vapes to dispose of the battery separately ready for recycling.

How often do vape bins need to be collected?

It is the retailer’s responsibility to organise a collection with Wastecare once their bin is nearly full. We would recommend organising scheduled collection when a store’s average collection volume has been established.

Do the vape collection bins need to contain vermiculite?

No. Vermiculite when used to mitigate the risks associated with lithium-based batteries is used as a separation material to prevent ignition upon contact with one another. Upon assessment, the same risks do not apply to vapes as the lithium battery and their terminals are enclosed.

What happens to the vapes once they are collected?

Currently, many vape recyclers are having to dismantle vapes by hand in order to retrieve the lithium battery, nicotine fluid and filters for recycling and/or recovery.

This process is resource-heavy and expensive; therefore we are currently trialing a mechanised dismantling process for vapes into order to keep our costs low and increase efficiency.