New bin rules begin in England but not all councils are ready. 15 hours ago. Ema Sabljak,England Data Unit,and. Alix Hattenstone,BBC England. Getty Images. New rules requiring weekly food waste collections for all homes in England have come into force, but dozens of councils are still not ready to provide the service.. An earlier BBC investigation found 79 English councils – the equivalent of one in four – did not expect to meet the 31 March deadline.. Councils blamed the delay on demand for new specialist vehicles and funding issues, despite the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) giving out more than £340m in grants.. Defra said it would continue to work with local authority waste networks and the wider industry, providing targeted support to help address outstanding issues.. Wrap, a non-governmental climate action organisation, called the Simpler Recycling rules “the biggest shake-up in recycling policy in England in 20 years”.. When recycled separately, food waste can be used to produce electricity. This reduces the amount of waste rotting in landfill and releasing greenhouse gases.. It is also hoped that making food waste collections available to all homes will encourage people to reduce how much food they waste in the first place.. What do the new recycling rules mean?. According to Defra’s Simpler Recycling guidance, from 31 March, waste collectors must collect the following separately:. Food and garden waste. Paper and card – although depending on where you live, this can be grouped with other dry recyclables. All other dry recyclable materials (glass, metal and plastic, including cartons). Residual waste – this is the rubbish that cannot be recycled and so is sent to landfill or for energy recovery. Roughly half of councils were not collecting food waste weekly before the creation of the new legislation, while some have had the collections in place for more than a decade.. This meant not all councils needed to make changes to meet the new rules, but the BBC approached each local authority responsible for waste collection to find out what was happening in their area.. At least 57 of the councils who told the BBC that they would miss the deadline aim to launch their service for all households by the end of 2026. More than a dozen could not give an approximate start date.. Since last month’s investigation, both Darlington and Lichfield councils have pushed back their collection dates to the summer.. A further 31 councils had secured agreements allowing for a later start date for their weekly food collections, so will not be viewed as missing the deadline.. These transitional agreements allow them to delay the introduction, in some cases for more than a decade, because they are locked into existing contracts which would be too costly to change.. When those councils are factored in, more than a third of English councils will not be collecting food waste from all homes yet.. Claire Shrewsbury/WRAP. Claire Shrewsbury, dire
