Waste and recycling collections will change for all businesses with 10 or more full-time equivalent employees in England from 31st March 2025. Carla Brian, Head of Partnerships, Biffa, explains what this means.
The government has introduced Simpler Recycling legislation to mandate the separation of materials from general waste, including food, recyclable plastic, metal cans and tins, glass, paper and cardboard. Many businesses will be doing this for the first time.
With less than six weeks to go until the regulations become mandatory, there’s still a lot of uncertainty among businesses – particularly those that are small and medium-sized. Here’s everything business decision-makers need to know about preparing for Simpler Recycling.
Separating recyclables
For most businesses, the most significant change will be that you can no longer dispose of all your rubbish in a general waste bin; if your organisation currently disposes of any of the following materials in this way, you will need to separate them and organise a dedicated collection:
Glass such as drinks bottles and rinsed empty food jars.
Metal such as drinks cans and food tins, empty aerosols, aluminium foil, aluminium food trays and tubes.
Plastic such as rinsed empty food containers and bottles.
Paper such as old newspapers and envelopes.
Cardboard such as delivery boxes and packaging.
Food leftovers, tea bags, coffee grounds or waste generated by food preparation.
You won’t need seven bins – some materials can be collected together
Although these materials must be separated from general waste, your waste management provider can collect many of them together – meaning less money spent on bin containers and less space required to house them on site.
While the future goal may be that all recyclable materials are separated, collected, and processed completely independently, many steps will need to be taken before this can be achieved efficiently.
Businesses and waste operators need the correct bins, vehicles, technology and facilities to cope with this change. The government is supporting the transition by enabling waste operators to continue collecting metal, plastic (non-film), paper and cardboard using existing dry mixed recycling (DMR) systems.
The mandatory separation of paper and cardboard won’t be immediate; these materials can be compliantly stored in a DMR bin and collected by your provider using existing collection systems. As a result, it’s more likely that businesses will need a minimum of three bins or four if they produce glass waste.
Increased costs for most businesses
To rip the plaster off: Simpler Recycling will require upfront effort and could incur additional costs for businesses. Have a look at what your projected waste fees will be with separate collections using the WRAP Simpler Recycling calculator.
The cost comes from the additional separate bins that you may need for recyclable materials. This cost will vary depending on various factors. These include the volume of waste generated, how many bins you need, how frequently they need collecting, and if there are opportunities to reduce waste. You could reduce waste and save money by switching materials, working with suppliers, or reusing or redistributing certain items.
Operators like us are working with customers to solve challenges presented by cost, space and disruption to operations by introducing new bin sizes for Simpler Recycling. In doing so, bin hire costs will reduce and support lower collection volumes. Offers are available for businesses that act early to save money on sourcing collections.
You might also need to invest in training and educational materials to support employees in where to position bins and how to separate waste materials effectively – but there are free options available. Biffa’s Simpler Recycling guide and video tip series can help you and your colleagues.
Mitigating costs
General waste is expensive compared to other waste – for example, the cost of collecting a general waste bin is higher than a mixed recycling bin. This is because general waste is subject to costs such as gate fees for disposal and, if going to landfill, the Landfill Tax.
Significant changes will increase that cost further. In April 2025, the Landfill Tax on standard waste will increase from £103 to £126 per tonne. This covers most residual materials (apart from inert bulk waste from construction). While waste management operators are different in their approach to absorbing costs, it is highly likely that this cost will be passed on to customers at some level.
Even when a waste operator uses energy recovery facilities for general waste, it will still become more expensive. As landfill costs increase, demand for energy recovery facilities for general waste will increase, and this has the potential to increase gate fees. As energy recovery from waste is now part of the Emissions Trading Scheme, the consensus is that this will eventually increase costs further, although the details are still to be determined.
Costs for general waste will continue to increase as more sustainable waste management methods are incentivised. This is especially true for food and other organic waste, which is particularly damaging in landfill. The good news is that it is both dense and heavy, so removing it from general waste saves money. By reducing waste and eventually reducing the size of your general waste bin, you can mitigate some of the additional costs that come with extra bins and collections.
Separating materials makes a difference
Some lessons can be learned from similar legislation—Workplace Recycling—which was introduced in Wales in 2024. As of April last year, businesses were required to separate their materials into six containers, and the scheme has seen some impressive results.
Biffa alone collected 68% more food waste from Welsh businesses year-on-year between November 2023 and 2024. This organic waste is then diverted to anaerobic digestion facilities that produce biogas, which is burned to produce electricity and a fertiliser byproduct. In the same period, the total recycling volume Biffa collected from businesses in Wales increased by over a third (34%).
These results demonstrate that separation leads to higher material recovery. Less recyclable material is lost amongst the residual waste, while more organic waste is used to produce biogas. Despite Simpler Recycling requiring fewer bins than Wales’s mandated six, we expect to see a similarly positive impact as businesses adapt to the new legislation.
Simpler Recycling will take some getting used to, and we can expect to see businesses – alongside the waste industry – finding their feet over the coming months. The most important actions for businesses as the regulations approach are to arrange the right material collections based on the waste produced and ensure that as much of your waste can be diverted from general waste as possible.
