England: 6-Bin collection: Council anger over delay until after next election

General Chat In The News
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Council leaders have accused the government of delaying controversial plans to make households in England use six different recycling bins until after the next general election.

The government says the move was postponed until 2025 as part of broader changes to recycling policy.

But councils claim the real reason is that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wants to avoid it becoming an election issue.

They have warned the bin changes could prove costly and unworkable.

The move to six separate recycling bins had already been delayed multiple times.

The government has been working out how these waste reforms would work in practice since the Environment Act became law in 2021.

The act requires the collection of six recyclable waste streams from households, including plastics, metal, glass, paper and card, food waste and garden waste.

Under the plans, councils would also need to collect food waste weekly, as well as offer a basic free service to remove garden waste.

The government said the changes to bin collections in England have been shelved until a scheme to make producers pay for recycling their packaging is introduced.

The plan was to rollout an extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme, which would have forced large retailers and food producers to cover the cost of collecting and recycling packaging they import or supply from 2024.

The industry had been pressing for a delay to the scheme after warning its estimated £1.7bn-a-year cost to businesses would be passed on to shoppers.

SIX BINS … !!!

That’ll be six bliddy eyesores spilling out onto paths and roads … :angry:

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Some of the bliddy idiots round my way are incapable of dealing with how to use two bins…and I’m not joking!

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My friend lives in St Helen’s and he already has 6 different waste receptacles plus a kitchen caddy for food waste, with biodegradable bags to line it with.

Food waste kitchen caddy and food waste bags
Food waste bin
Bag for paper stuff
Bag for plastic bottles etc
Box for glass
(I can’t remember where the cans go - maybe in the bag with the plastic or maybe in the box with the cans)
Then there’s a green wheelie bin, for garden waste
And a brown wheelie bin for general waste.

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We have two bins at the moment, one for recycling and one for general waste as well as the food waste caddy. From next month we will have three, one for paper and cardboard, one for plastic and aluminium and metal cans and one for general waste. We have to take glass bottles and jars to collection points in supermarket car parks.

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I lost faith when the cardboard/paper was allowed to go in with the cans :grin:

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I’m happy to separate out all the different recycling waste into separate receptacles, if it makes it easier / cheaper for the council to recycle.

I particularly like these two ideas.
I throw very little into my general waste bin and it grieves me to have to throw food waste into it, knowing it will go into landfill, when it could go through an aerobic digester and make gas.

Going back to collecting the garden waste bin without charging extra is a good idea too.
Since my local council started charging an annual fee for collecting an garden waste bin and keep increasing it every few years (now £44) I have noticed a lot more of neighbours have decided not to have a garden waste bin to avoid paying the charge. Instead, there has been increase in the neighbours who light bonfires to burn their garden rubbish.
My next door neighbour drives me mad with her almost daily bonfires - the smoke all billows over into my garden and it’s horrible.

I was just thinking this Summer how much I wished the Council would go back to issuing the garden waste bins free and add the costs onto the council tax rate instead of direct charging - it would stop a lot of all these bonfires.
I was thinking of writing to the Councillors about it - but it sounds as though the Government will save me the job. :grinning:

I just want them to hurry up and do it - I don’t want to wait until 2025!

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don’t know what we’re doin wrong in oz but I’ve got 1 bin only and they won’t give me another?? mind you we do have a lot of spare pouches??

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Our recycling all goes in one bin, it is sorted at the depot.

However I too have lost faith in recycling, I used to collect all my soft plastics and return them to the supermarket. A few months ago it was revealed that all these soft plastics were just piling up or being sent to landfill. Now I have cut out the middleman and all my soft plastic goes straight to landfill in my red bin.

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I’ve just the one bin …
Surely those living in terrace houses and apartments have no room for six bins… and the dreadful cost to the environment of making all these bins has to weighed against any benefits .

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Exactly…and councils that are already strapped for cash have to deal with the logistics of emptying them.
All very worthy in principle but…

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Where are you going to put six bins, I have trouble in finding space for two.

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Agree, how is the average house holder supposed to find room for 6 bins, each. It’s just not viable. You all know I just have a tiny back garden, and my two are now on the path in the middle, under the pergola. If I had 6 I wouldn’t be able to move. It’s bad enough remembering to get the bin out into the alley early, once a week, so as not to miss a collection. Imagine if collections were spread throughout the week!

They don’t think these things through, do they?

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no bins here,black bag for general rubbish,blue bag for all recycle,oh a small bin for waste food

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Here we a have black bin for non recyclables
A green bin for garden waste
A black box for recycling glass,plastics,cans,
A canvas bag for cardboard
A brown caddy for food waste.
Top two fortnightly,others weekly.
Been doing this for years.
Can’t see why there should be any fuss.

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That same problem haunts my neighbourhood too. It’s simple enuf to understand for most people, but some others are thicker in the mind department than two heavy planks nailed together or at least act like it🤬

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Transparent bag for recyclables: paper, tin, glass and I’m not sure what.

Black bag for everything else.

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Wasn’t cutting back on this recycling pretence one of the reasons for voting brexit?

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Not for me. I voted to regain control over our own laws and how we spent the taxes. Recycling is just a con to add more taxation for the ordinary council tax payer in the form of rubbish taxation. I’ve seen the recycling bin emptied into the same lorry that just emptied my general waste wheelie bin. It doesn’t always happen, but depends on time and available crews :man_shrugging:

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We currently have 3 wheelie bins and one plastic box.

Our recycling waste is emptied on a different day to the general waste bin, so there is definitely no tipping it all in together.
We have a fortnightly rota. The general waste is collected one week, the garden waste and mixed recycling bins and the glass box is collected the following week.

If they decide that the householder should separate out the mixed dry recycling, I think they would have to have smaller waste receptacles for each type - they wouldn’t need huge wheelie bins for each type of waste.

My general waste bin is usually about a quarter full after two weeks - and if I was putting food waste into another small bin for weekly collection, my general waste would probably be reduced to just one small bag.

Even the wheelie bin that all dry mixed recycled waste goes into is usually only about half full after two weeks. If I was to separate out the cans, plastics and paper, I wouldn’t need a huge wheelie bin for each type.

I’m guessing that if this plan to separate recycling before collection ever gets off the ground, they would need to provide smaller, narrower bins or boxes for each type of waste - and think about how to make it easier for households in apartment blocks or terraces which front into the street etc.

Fair enough to separate out the food waste into a small, self-locking bin for weekly collection, as that can be usefully converted to energy - and to recycle glass bottles separately - that seems to work well in places where it is operational.
I don’t know why they don’t stick to just one bin for all the dry mixed recyclable stuff, though - cans, paper, card and plastics all in one bin.
It would be much easier for the householders and they are more likely to do it - the more onerous the authorities make it, the less folk will comply, so the whole thing will be a waste of money.

They already have recycling plants that can automatically separate most of this dry mixed recyclable stuff. That’s what my Council do with our mixed dry recyclables now - they reckon that 92% of it is now recycled here in U.K. - but I know that UK as a whole still sends tons of this stuff abroad and it ends up in landfill or being burned, causing even more environmental damage.
We need to stop sending this mixed recycling stuff abroad to process and focus on sorting it and dealing with it properly here in U.K. - maybe the money would be better spent on more recycling plants in U.K. - and in incentivising / pressing manufacturers and consumers to reduce the use of plastics as much as possible.

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One big con.

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