Waste reforms briefing

Local government works hard to deliver high quality local waste services and is proud of its record. Waste services connect with every doorstep working in communities every single day, and public satisfaction remains consistently high. 

It is a service predominantly paid for by taxpayers for their benefit, and by proxy for the benefit of the producers of the material that is purchased by consumers.

Internationally, Wales has been recognised as the second-best recycling nation in the world, and England eleventh, of the nearly 50 assessed. Locally, councils are six times more trusted to run waste services than any other partner. 

This is a success built on local government’s unique capacity to respond to local circumstances, which vary dramatically at a neighbourhood, local and regional level. 

There is room to improve services, and plenty of scope to reduce the levels of waste and its contribution to carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. Local government has been excited by the potential of the resource and waste reforms to achieve transformational change in moving towards a sustainable future. 

It is important to seize this opportunity, rather than miss it or have it risk our progress to date. 

This briefing summarises our current views on the resource and waste reforms, it covers:

• Emissions Trading Scheme scope extension to waste from 2028.
• Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility from 2025.
• Simpler recycling from 2025 for non-households, 2026 for households.
• Deposit Return Scheme from 2027.
• Other waste issues.
• Looking ahead, public appetite for bold action.

All partners will be thinking about our biggest national challenges and how we can solve them. Local government is the key to many of these and has published a White Paper setting out how councils can help to deliver national priorities and make a huge difference to people across the country.

Local government works at the front line of people’s daily lives. We shape places, provide vital services which hold our communities together, keep people safe, and create the conditions for prosperity and wellbeing. 

However there has never been a more difficult time for local government. Rising demand and costs have meant the toughest of choices, with less to spend on the services that communities value. Yet the sector continues to show great resilience and continues to innovate. 

We have five priorities for change:

• An equal, respectful partnership between local and national government.
• Sufficient and sustainable funding.
• Backing local government as place leaders.
• A new focus on prevention and services for the wider community.
• Innovation and freedom from bureaucracy.

These priorities are equally important for all local government including our local waste services, especially at this important and challenging time of ambitious transformational reform. 

Local government’s achievements on waste and recycling services are delivered in the face of real financial challenges. During the 2010s, local government’s overall core funding per person fell by 26 per cent in real terms, resulting from a 46 per cent fall in funding from central government being partially offset by local tax increases. 

In facing these challenges, councils have focused on statutory duties and acute needs. Spending per person on children’s social care has risen by 11 per cent, while spending on environment services has dropped by over 20 per cent and spending on key services like transport and housing have fallen by over 45 per cent. 

Maintaining high quality waste services during this time has not been easy, it is a colossal achievement for everyone in the waste sector, councils, operators and partners, and communities themselves.

However, the pressures are likely to continue. Our LGA survey from October 2024 found one in four councils are likely to need emergency government support to avoid bankruptcy in the next two years. Our forecasting projects local government faces a £6.2 billion funding gap over the next two years. This is driven by rising cost and demand pressures to provide adult social care, children's services, homelessness support, and home-to-school transport for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and it leaves councils with less funding for services such as waste and recycling. 

This is the funding gap that exists before any of the potential cost shortfalls brought about by issues identified in this briefing.

A recent LGA survey found two thirds of councils have already had to make cutbacks to local neighbourhood services in 2024/25, including waste services, road repairs, library, and leisure services, as they struggle to plug funding gaps.

The wider public service and public finance challenges are extremely difficult, and there are few signals that local government will receive an increase in the level of funding to deal with these challenges in the short term. 

This is the very real context facing local government as government works with partners to introduce the waste and recycling reforms. 

The ETS is a cap-and-trade system that applies an additional cost to fossil-based emissions. The expansion of ETS to waste will bring additional costs as it seeks to influence a reduction in emissions from incineration and energy from waste. ETS is a market-led scheme meaning the costs are volatile, moving around with the market due to factors often outside of the waste systems control. It is important to recognise local government is not a commercial operator but a public service provider that is not able to absorb price fluctuations, unless support is provided by government. Local authorities are legally obligated to collect all types of waste including those that do not participate in recycling schemes, and those difficult and expensive to process. Unlike private operatives, local authorities cannot refuse waste collections based on their composition of processing complexities.

Costings analysis commissioned by the Local Government Association, County Councils Network and District Councils' Network show the proposals could cost councils as much as £747 million in 2028 and could rise to £1.1 billion in 2036, with a total cumulative cost over this period as high as £6.5 billion. This is an enormous cost that would create real challenges for local government and its statutory requirement to set a balanced budget each year. While the high-cost scenario may not come to pass, councils would need to take action to budget for this scenario given the level of uncertainty due to the price volatility. 

Our priority issues are set out below:

Right incentives in the right place

The LGA has supported the principle to reduce emissions via the ETS. We have stressed, however, that the scheme can only properly achieve its objectives by putting cost incentives in the right place with a priority focus on reducing the production of fossil-based waste in the first place. We have cautioned against the risk that costs are left in local government without the levers to pass them onto the producers of the fossil-based material, because this would simultaneously reduce the scheme’s capacity to achieve its objectives while exposing local government to further financial risk.

Decarbonisation pathways for fossil-based packaging waste 

It is welcome that the Government has proposed to pass the ETS costs associated with fossil-based packaging waste onto producers via the packaging Extended Producer Scheme (pEPR), as it provides some clarity about how the ETS will drive the change for packaging. The Government estimates 20 to 30 per cent of fossil-based waste by weight is in scope of pEPR. Although it varies between sites, we estimate around 18 per cent of fossil-based waste from councils is in scope for pEPR. 

Given the complexities of both reforms this would need careful planning to ensure that costs are appropriately passed through to producers. In our view this should be an early priority for government and partners. This task will likely include: understanding waste composition and recycling opportunities and challenges for different items, ensuring correct pass through from operators (using actuals rather than calculations), stabilising cost volatility, connecting ETS costs by emissions with pEPR costs by weight, dealing with the data lag, and ensuring alignment of incentives to reduce waste in a cost effective way. 

In our view government should progress the simplest approach, which might be requiring operators to report fossil-based emissions from packaging onto the ETS authority which passed through to the pEPR Scheme Administrator for inclusion in fee modulation. 

It is likely that packaging producers will not welcome this, arguing that they would rather the material is returned to them than incinerated. However, it is the principle aim of the ETS to apply incentives where there are the powers for market change, it is the ‘polluter pays’ principle. Until pEPR, producers have needed to have little regard to the onward journey of the material it puts on the market. We therefore support plans to bring pEPR and ETS together to incentivise the change in behaviour in line with the waste hierarchy.

Government guidance on contract matters would be welcome. It will be important to provide advice to operators and local government on issues such as managing contract change, monitoring, reporting, what is effective cost pass through, procedures for dealing with disputes and so on. To ensure effective pass through it is critical that operators pass actual data through the system, rather than estimate calculations, or simply take associated plant costs and distribute evenly across customers without consideration of who is bringing what. This will represent a qualifying change in law with potentially significant burden on the public sector, some councils have already been contacted by operators about this intention.

Decarbonisation pathways for non-packaging fossil-based material

There are currently no advanced plans to bring about EPR schemes for remaining fossil-based material for which there are recycling challenges or no recycling market – such as textiles, hard plastics, electricals, Absorbent Hygiene Products (AHPs), and hazardous waste (such as containing Persistent Organic Pollutants). Most of this material is problematic for a mix of reasons, for instance the growth of fast fashion and inclusion of plastics, the inability to recycle AHP, and the composite nature of electricals. Overall ETS liabilities for this material could risk pushing enormous costs to local authorities, potentially up to £0.5 billion in 2028.

In our view it would be inappropriate to allow operators to pass these costs through to local government. This would simultaneously eliminate the scheme’s capacity to achieve its objective by failing to put any incentives on the producers of the material, while at the same time exposing local government large financial risk that they have little scope to reduce at one of the most difficult times in the sector’s history. 

Instead, in the short term, operators should report ETS liabilities for the different groups of non-packaging material into the ETS Authority, for the government to then decide how to pass those costs directly onto producers of that material. There are different options for passing this cost on. For instance, through a national levy applied to producers, or through a simple EPR scheme adding a small cost on each item, and refining over time, or adding to existing instruments for instance by expanding the Plastic Packaging Tax. The approaches for different material types could vary depending on the different factors for each item, and engagement on these options should start soon. In our view, the preferred options should be as straightforward as possible in the short-term.

Thinking longer-term, government should engage producers, local government, and operators to understand these waste streams in more detail, and to explore the options for creating the decarbonisation pathways. Significant contributors of fossil-based emissions, such as modern textiles industry, and plastics, are complex. Options might include EPR schemes, which might be like packaging EPR, or might be tailored differently for different materials. The packaging EPR scheme is complex and may not be the right approach for other material. We note that government has indicated an appetite to explore EPR for furniture and textiles.

The case for protecting councils from ETS liabilities is particularly strong for the hazardous waste that local government is being directed to incinerate by law, such as waste upholstered domestic seating (WUDS) containing Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). The government has yet to provide local government with the funding to adjust systems to process WUDS with POPs, which is over £500 million. It is the possible that the requirement to incinerate will extend to other items containing POPs (such as carpets, electricals) in the years ahead, adding to the risk. The European Court of Justice has judged that incinerators for hazardous waste should be excluded from the EU ETS. If the UK ETS includes hazardous waste, there might be an economic incentive to export.

How the costs may fall across the country

The exposure to ETS costs for individual local authorities will vary between places due to a wide range of factors outside of their control. For instance, demographics, deprivation, housing can all dramatically impact waste composition or the wider recycling rate; whether transient populations like students, or larger proportions of new families producing more sanitary waste, areas with more communal housing or flats above shops, and so on. There is therefore a risk that pushing costs into local government could put local authorities with more deprived neighbourhoods under greatest financial pressure, and so working against both polluter pays principle and our ambitions to support a just transition. 

Furthermore, each local authority’s exposure will be impacted by the decisions of their operators. For instance, whether their operator decides to invest in carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS). It is important the ETS incentivises operators to complete based on their capacity to reduce emissions. This means emissions must be measured at the stack and applied to the operator as is currently the case. A calculations-based approach creates a few risks, for instance the incentive to over-charge local authorities in order to offer a better commercial rate.  Overall, the exposure to local authorities is outside of their control. 

Scope available to local authorities to reduce fossil-based emissions

Government has proposed establishing a competitive funding scheme bid into by local authorities to run projects delivering waste reduction. While funding into waste reduction is welcome, behaviour change schemes or collection reforms can make some difference but evidence from experience demonstrates that they can be expensive and unlikely to significantly reduce emissions. Furthermore, we do not support the creation of more national programmes forcing local authorities to compete against each other for small pots of funding in an already complex funding landscape. The approach creates uncertainty and inefficiencies across the public sector, in our view funding for such measures should be within multi-year funding allocations to each local authority.

Overall, however, we have some concerns about the value for money case should funding paid into the ETS by local government taxpayers be recycled back out to the sector to run some projects to reduce the impact of a scheme designed to drive market change. The priority must be putting the incentives on producers with regards material that is put on the market and in shaping wider consumer behaviour.

Local government can have some impact, but we have few levers to make a significant difference to the level and composition of waste put on the market. The government should take this opportunity to return powers to local authorities, by ending plans to require more frequent residual waste collections which can increase recyclable material deposited in residual waste, and by returning powers to take enforcement action on households failing to appropriately use household services. Further, pEPR, DRS and Simpler Recycling should provide a wider supportive framework for local authorities to run services that reduce emissions from fossil-based waste. 

The deployment of carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS), and for combined heat and power (CHP) technologies could reduce ETS costs. This is an important part of the future solution, and all partners should come together to consider how to deploy these technologies over the long-term. However, it is expensive and takes time to bring forward, while ETS may incentivise some operators down this route, there is a need for a wider discussion about how to deploy this technology.

An unintended consequence of extending ETS to waste may be to make the use landfill a more attractive option for waste disposal. Government must consider the full picture of the environmental impact including the availability of infrastructure.

Compensating local government

The Government has acknowledged that there is a financial risk to local government and local taxpayers and is considering some level of compensation through a new burdens assessment. This is a welcome recognition, however in our view any new burdens assessment should take account of the fact that local government must set a balanced budget each year. It must be able to respond to ETS as a market-led scheme with significant costs that are volatile in the short term, with a long-term upward pressure as the cap falls.Government must consider a way to de-risk ETS for local government, specifically the volatility of credit prices. Local government will need support from government to ensure financial stability.

In our view, compensation for local government should be included within the local government finance settlement, alongside stabilising those ETS costs or providing assurance that they will not rise over a given level. Government has made welcome commitments to move towards multi-year local government settlements to provide financial certainty. This will help local authorities plan spending across local government services, and so ETS compensation within this context would need further consideration. 

However overall, it is our view that it would be simpler and more effective by not passing ETS costs onto the sector in the first place, and instead seek to ensure costs flow through to producers in the most straightforward way possible. There is a risk of establishing an administrative system that expends energy circulating costs around the public sector, creating complexity and burden without having any real impact on those producing the fossil-based waste in the first place.

In summary the Local Government Association view is that the ETS extension to include waste should: 

• prioritise putting the cost incentives on producers to drive down the production of fossil-based emissions.
• pass the ETS costs for associated packaging waste onto producers through pEPR, and that it be the initial priority to deliver this successfully.
• avoid transferring any costs for non-packaging fossil-based waste on to local government as there is no strong decarbonisation pathway or existing recycling market.
• in the short-term, require operators to report non-packaging emissions into the ETS authority in order to pass costs onto producers by other means such as through a new levy, or adding to an existing instrument.
• simultaneously consider options for best passing costs through to producers for different materials in the long-term, including EPR schemes.
• compensate local government as part of the local government finance settlement; though in our view it is simpler not to pass costs onto local government in the first place.
• engage all partners in planning and incentivising long-term use of carbon capture and storage technologies.

pEPR is a reform that aims to transfer the costs of collecting, processing, recycling, and disposing of packaging waste from taxpayers and on to packaging producers, with incentives on producers to reduce unnecessary and more difficult to recycle waste. Recent LGA analysis found that 5.6 million tonnes of packaging was thrown away last year, of which 3.2 million tonnes was into recycling bins. A Scheme Administrator will receive payments from packaging producers and pass funding to local authorities to run services for packaging waste only. This is a complex, though potentially transformative reform that has the opportunity to deliver on the ‘polluter pays’ principle, following decades through which local government has been meeting costs.

Focusing on waste prevention

It is critical that pEPR is designed in a way that follows the waste hierarchy, prioritising waste prevention, then supporting re-use, and then improving recycling. To succeed, the reforms will need to drive a change in the material put on the market, rather than be treated as a cost of doing business. The scheme is being established in a way that creates levers to achieve waste prevention, it is crucial these levers are pulled over time, and that pEPR is aligned with ETS to reinforce this programme for change. 

Plastic wrap is a problematic material in the recycling stream, and efforts must focus on reducing the amount of plastic wrap used in packaging.

Delivering to time

Government has written to individual councils setting out indicative payments via the pEPR scheme in the first year of the scheme. pEPR will go-live in 2025/26 and the first payments are scheduled to be received by councils in October 2025 for 2025/26. Requirements and funding around flexible and soft plastics is planned to come through in 2027. Local government needs sufficient clarity of funding levels and reform requirements to plan service changes linked to Simpler Recycling requirements, and into the long-term local government will need indications of annual payments as early as possible.

Meeting the local government’s costs

Government had previously stated that all local authorities will have their full (net) costs met. However draft regulations do not include it as a commitment or ambition. The Local Authority Packaging Cost and Performance (LAPCAP) model being developed to understand local authority costs is limited by the availability of data and so will use averages meaning many local authorities will for certain receive less funding than they need, even if the overall level received is sufficient. In our view it is critical that the government re-commit to pEPR providing local authorities with funding for full net costs. It should achieve this by simply requiring local authorities to audit and report their annual costs, and that these be met in full by the Scheme Administrator.

It is concerning that many producers have not provided the data required by the Scheme Administrator to begin setting fees for payment, especially because regulations do not provide protections that local authority costs will be covered if producers do not pay the fees owed. It is welcome that the HMT will guarantee funding for local authorities for 2025/26, it is important that it It recover payments from producers failing to meet payment requirements, and consider how to provide similar guarantees for local government into the future.

UK and International systems for paying packaging costs to local authorities

UK – packaging EPR approach to costs through modelling

Defra is using the Local Authority Packaging Cost and Performance Model (LAPCAP) to estimate the net efficient waste management costs of managing household packaging waste for each individual local authority. 

Efficient disposal costs are set out in regulations as the costs that an authority would incur if its costs were as low as reasonably possible, taking into account:

• the waste management service provided by the authority
• any other factors specific to that authority, or to the area in relation to which it exercises its waste management functions, which in the opinion of the SA are likely to affect its disposal costs

• Net efficient disposal costs” means the efficient disposal costs less the expected income from sale of recyclable packaging.

Further detail is set out by Defra in Methodology and procedure for calculating November 2024 estimated payments. 

The first year of EPR payments will cover the cost of an efficient service. In the second year the EPR scheme administrator can carry out an assessment of effectiveness, and can deduct up to 20 percent of the payment for efficiency if a local authority is deemed not to be effective. The methodology for assessing effectiveness has not been agreed, and there will be processes in place to support improvement before a reduction in payment would be applied. 

Local authority waste management data is captured in the Waste Dataflow system, but this does not include cost information and there is no consistent methodology for recording costs.

Norway

EPR regulations do not provide specific instructions to producers on what to cover in payments to municipalities. Payments are managed by the Norwegian Environment Agency and the producer responsibility organisations. 

Compensation payments for councils are tiered based on collection rates. 

There is agreement between municipal authorities and industry that an independent third party should revise the calculation and costs whenever asked for. 

Further information

Reducing Plastic Pollution and Creating a True Circular Economy for Plastics through Extended Producer Responsibility - Analysis of the status and potential of EPR for plastics in Norway for WWF

Sweden

The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency sets out the methodology for EPR payments in regulations based on demographics. 

Ontario

Producers (brand owners) were required to pay municipal governments 50 per cent of the costs of the system.  This was amended to require 50 per cent of 'best practice' costs, developed using a model with much debate about how accurate it was. 

The parties ended up in arbitration over these costs in 2014 due to a dispute.  

The determination of the funding for municipalities from producers for collection and processing costs of paper and packaging remained contentious until both parties agreed to payment of the actual 50 per cent of the reported costs a few years prior to implementation of a new regulation that moved all costs of the system to producers. 

In Ontario, costs were tracked annually through the Municipal Datacall. Municipal governments had to enter their costs, tonnages collected and processed and other information into the system.  Audits were done each year to ensure it was done correctly and the Province’s oversight agency () oversaw the process.  

Participation in the data call was mandatory in order to secure EPR funding. The Data Call was developed to include a catalogue of agreed common reporting definitions. 

• Acceptable sources of material. For example: student housing, holiday homes
• Common reporting of recycled tonnage
• Common methodology for reporting of recycling costs
• Allowable recycling costs (for example administration, capital amortisation schedules)

The data call was co-developed by the local authority/producer representative bodies, with oversight and secretariat from the scheme administrator now known as Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA).

France packaging EPR scheme

Municipalities are paid 80 per cent of the net costs for an optimised collection and sorting service. Estimated net costs are calculated using a formula at the start of each six year municipality contract period.

Read the Packflow 2025 report

Funding 'additionality' for waste service improvement 

It is not clear whether and how the wider local government settlement may be adjusted in response to the sector receiving pEPR payments over the longer term. There are broadly two considerations including:

• the extent that pEPR will be 'additional' funding into local government. The government might respond to the new pEPR payments by removing an equivalent amount, or some proportion of the equivalent amount, from the sector through the wider settlement.
• the extent of any adjustments to funding that is 'additional'. The government might decide to distribute some or all any 'additional' funding across the sector in ways that address other service pressures. 

The Autumn Budget confirmed that the £1.1 billion for English local authorities will be treated as additional to the Local Government Financial Settlement in 2025/26, which is welcome. 

Before its postponement, when pEPR was due to come in for the 2024/25 settlement, the Department for Housing, Levelling Up and Communities said “local authorities can expect to receive additional income from the scheme whilst being asked to submit data relevant to their waste collection services. Alongside His Majesty’s Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, we will be assessing the impact of additional pEPR income on the relative needs and resources of individual local authorities in the coming year.”

In our view, the government should provide early long-term certainty to local government on how pEPR payments will be treated alongside wider local government funding. In our view the pEPR funding into local government should be 100 per cent additional, in that funding should not be removed from the sector via the settlement. 

It is also important to discuss with local government, and other partners, the extent to which the proportion of any “additional” funding is weighted towards different service pressures. Some proportion of the additional funding could be weighted towards waste and recycling services to deliver improvements, while a significant proportion is likely to be weighted towards other service pressures across the sector. It would be important to have a discussion with the sector about these issues.

Positive scheme-wide improvement action

Local government is committed to continuous improvement and it is welcome that pEPR aims to support improvement. The pEPR regulations require local authorities to provide 'efficient' and 'effective' services. Government has set out a proposed approach to effectiveness in a document sent to individual councils with a letter setting out their first year estimates of EPR payments. While definitions can be useful, we are concerned that definitions risk over-simplifying what good looks like for different areas, and over-emphasising what local authorities can do about the drivers which are mostly outside of their control (i.e transient communities such as students, housing-type such as flats above shops, deprivation, rurality etc).

Further, the associated proposals to require 'improvement action plans' and threaten the lower quartile of local authorities with 20 per cent deductions to payments is problematic and punitive. It creates funding uncertainty across the sector, which they will need to budget for and so risking investment. It also risks creating conflict, as without net cost recovery, many local authorities facing deductions may be able to demonstrate they’re not receiving sufficient funding in the first place. It is in danger of creating conflict between producers and local government when we need everyone to come together. We also understand that deductions will be passed to producers as savings, which risks creating a concerning incentive. If there are to be per centage deductions they must in practice only apply to what is additional to net costs, meaning no council receiving less than net cost recovery should have deductions from payments.

In our view, a positive scheme-wide approach to supporting improvement should replace the current propositions. This means providing a range of offers, including promoting best practice, offering peer-to-peer support, providing standardised models, templates, and guidance, creating space trialling new approaches dealing with common challenges, and taking a scheme-wide assessment of where certain adjustments can make maximum gains. It means rewarding success, as well as supporting improvement where there are challenges. 

Scheme administrator in the public interest

The Scheme Administrator is at the centre of this complex public service reform. It is important that it remains as a public sector agency into the long-term, playing the central leadership role in establishing, adapting, and developing pEPR, with a focus on delivering the ambitions of the waste hierarchy, focusing on prevention first and foremost. 

Local authorities are democratically accountable to their residents, working in partnership with producers, operators, and others on the long-term objectives of the waste reforms. We welcome greater role of public private partnership in leading positive change. However we do not support private sector industry, potentially via a Producer Responsible Organisation, having a leading role over the core Scheme Administrator functions, such as calculating fees, payments, modulation, and local government improvement. 

In summary the Local Government Association view is that pEPR should:

• prioritise packaging waste reduction as the priority, as well as supporting re-use and recycling.
• recommit to full net cost recovery by moving quickly away from a modelled approach to one where each local authority report their costs to the Scheme Administrator which then meets those costs.
• provide 100 percent additionality to the local government settlement, discussing with the sector how it can deliver waste improvements and help meet service pressures.
• progress a positive approach to improving overall scheme “effectiveness”, rather than a punitive approach that investments in services.
• end plans to deduct 20 per cent funding from local authorities deemed as failing to improve, or if going ahead, only apply to net additional funding of any affected local authority.
• retain the Scheme Administrator in the public sector. 

Simpler recycling reforms aim to provide some consistency in the collection of waste and recycling across councils. Government has confirmed the mandatory requirement for weekly food waste collections, and a requirement for certain materials to be collected for dry recycling for households from 2026, and with similar for non-household due to start in 2025, and requirements to collect flexible plastics from 2027. Food waste can be co-collected with garden waste, but paper and card should be collected separately. There is local flexibility for councils if they cannot collect paper and card separately where it is technically or economically impracticable, or provides no significant environmental benefit (the TEEP test). A written  TEEP assessment must be provided. The government is not taking forward the previous administration’s plans to set a minimum frequency for residual waste collection. 

Waste and recycling collection flexibilities

Local authorities are democratically accountable to their residents and best placed to design waste services around them. It is welcome that the government has not decided to progress reforms further limiting how councils collect dry-recycling, and to continue allowing councils to charge for garden waste collections. It is positive that councils continue to have flexibility over the frequency of residual waste collections. The evidence is clear that less frequent residual waste collections can improve the “effectiveness” of services by driving up recycling, while achieving service “efficiencies”.  Having confirmed the next steps, government must now set out plans to deliver the capital investment that will be needed to support better recycling.

Food waste funding covering food waste costs 

Government opted to model the funding necessary to cover the costs of mandating weekly food waste collection everywhere from 2026. In our view this is a welcome policy change, should councils be given sufficient time, funding and support to design and deliver services. Government has allocated almost £300 million capital funding to the sector however a number of local authorities can demonstrate the capital funding has not been sufficient to deliver the services in line with local need, disposal authorities received no capital funding for infrastructure to deal with additional food waste. There is still no clarity on the level of revenue funding for the transition and in meeting ongoing costs. It was also disappointing that funding would not cover electric vehicles given our national net zero objectives. It is important that government provide certainty of future funding soon so that councils can plan new services. In our view it should also commit to reviewing service costs after the first year to plug any cost gaps that have become clear.   

Align household and non-household collection reform timeframes

The decision to continue with non-household simpler recycling commitments in 2025, with households coming a year later, risks creating unnecessary challenges. Councils running services for businesses and households face difficult decisions in how to meet the two different deadlines, with risks for the continuation of non-household services. There is a challenge in that not enough non-household premises know that these requirements are coming.  And a concern that commercial providers may not chose to offer services in more rural communities, and the implications for councils. In our view the start dates for household and non-household simpler recycling reforms should be aligned.

Non-household collection reforms

Leaving non-household collections to the open market can have drawbacks, for example increasing the number of vehicles on the road leading to pollution and congestion. Councils could have powers to introduce designated zones for business waste collections or consolidate delivery of services through franchising arrangements. This would allow for competition within the private market while still managing traffic flow and local environmental quality, for example by having clear and consistent times for businesses to present their waste for collection.

Plan now for plastic film from 2027 

The requirement on councils to collect flexible plastics from 2027 requires planning in both collection and disposal. It is a significant new reform and although there are trials underway there is not an agreed best practice approach to collection, and without the infrastructure or market for processing and recycling. In our view government and councils need to work together now on how to plan for this reform, aligned to the ambitions of pEPR and the impacts of ETS extension to waste in 2028, to ensure councils receive funding, and the incentives are in place to deliver the ambitions of the waste hierarchy.

At the same time producers must work to eliminate plastic wrap in packaging.

Return household waste enforcement powers

Local authorities can require householders to present their waste for collection in a specified way under the Environmental Protection Act. However, powers to enforce this were scaled back in England in March 2015 by the Deregulation Act, which downgrades failure to comply with any notice from a criminal to a civil offence. Meaning while councils can provide the service, they cannot force households to use it. In our view these powers should be returned to local authorities, giving them an important tool for working with communities to help meet the ambitions of simpler recycling, pEPR, and the ETS. 

In summary the Local Government Association view is that Simpler Recycling reforms should:

• reverse decisions to limit local authority flexibility on the frequency of household residual waste collections.
• rapidly provide certainty for food waste new burdens funding, and review funding levels in 2027 to meet any shortfalls.
• align household and non-household simpler recycling reform commencement dates, by starting non-household in 2026.
• work with local authorities and operators to begin planning for the introduction of plastic film collections in 2027 as soon as possible.
• return household waste enforcement powers to local authorities.

The DRS will provide deposits to in scope drinks containers, which can be redeemed upon return of the container for recycling. This includes plastic (PET), steel and aluminium cans, at 150ml to 3 litres. The position on glass will be set out in separate statements by each devolved administration. Deposits will be made through Reverse Vending Machines located in stores, and possibly in public spaces via permitted development. The deposit level will be determined by an industry led Deposit Management Organisation (DMO). 

Include DRS in scope material in pEPR until DRS begins 

Although DRS has been delayed from October 2025 to October 2027, councils will not receive pEPR payments for drinks container material. However if the DRS scheme is not established by 1 January 2028, producers of the DRS material will become subject to pEPR with fees paid to councils. In our view there is no reason why DRS in scope material should not be covered by pEPR from October 2025 up until the point that DRS begins as planned in October 2027 to cover the local authority costs in those 2 years. 

Require the DMO to involve local government in its governance and monitor and respond to the impacts on the sector

Local authorities will have a role to play in supporting a DRS to succeed and will be financially impacted as it’s rolled out. For instance, the diversion of items away from residual waste streams would reduce costs, those that collect co-mingled are likely to avoid gates fees, whilst councils that collect recycling in separate streams may lose income from the sale of containers for recycling. It may also impact council recycling rates, as in-scope material is generally more easily recycled. The revenue from sales of material for recycling may also be affected by the loss of plastic bottles from the household recycling stream. This income is used to offset the cost of providing other services. We want to work with government to understand the full impact of the DRS on council services. It will be important that local government is embedded in the governance of the DMO, and that the DMO is required to monitor these impacts on local authorities.

Compensate local authorities for processing in-scope material

It is likely that a proportion of the in-scope material will end up in council household waste collections. Although government has said councils will be able to return redeemable containers and receive deposits for these, it is not clear how and it may be technically difficult. In our view government should explore straightforward options for compensating local authorities for instance taking a modelled approach by subtracting the amount of material collected via RVM from the amount put on the market, or having the DMO provide deposit points for local authorities that make allowances for loss or damage to labelling. In our view, we would prefer a digital DRS system.

End plans to allow installation of RVMs by permitted development

Local authorities have responsibility for maintaining the public realm. While DRS is likely to have a positive impact on the littering of in scope material (the impact of littering of other material is unclear) the poor installation of RVMs can have negative impact on the wider local environment. As far as possible RVMs should be in store, and any proposals to install in the public realm should not be via permitted development. There should be guidance on where to place a RVM, balancing different factors including accessibility to all groups.

In summary the Local Government Association view is that the DRS should:

• include in-scope material in pEPR from October 2025 in advance of the DRS roll-out.
• require the DMO to involve local government in its governance and monitor and respond to the impacts on the sector.
• explore simpler and more cost-effective means to compensate local authorities for processing in-scope material.

Introduce the ban on disposable vapes

Local authorities called for a ban on disposable vapes and want to see legislation brought forward to achieve this given the impact on the environment, the costs to local authorities, and on the risks to health of adults and, in particular, children. There are complex issues to resolve, including the definition of disposable, the price point of re-useable vapes to encourage re-use, extending the ban on sale and use to imports, and new burdens funding for councils in enforcing the ban and safely disposing of seized goods.

Fund councils for disposing of Waste Upholstered Domestic Seating with Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

Government is required to provide the safe disposal of material with POPs but has not funded local authorities to do what is necessary to comply with Environment Agency requirements, which are due to come in when the current Regulatory Position Statements end in December. In our view, government must provide funding for local authorities, which could be from £500m up to £1billion, as soon as possible, and the EA must extend the current RPSs until a point that funding is deployed.

Remove restrictions preventing local authorities charging for ‘DIY’ waste

The recently introduced ban on charging for ‘DIY’ waste removes an revenue stream for local authority waste services, potentially over £50million a year from the sector. As a result local authorities have needed to consider reducing popular waste services, such as reducing opening hours of household waste and recycling centres. In our view this ban should lifted to support councils sustainably fund local services.

The ETS and pEPR are a market shaping schemes, seeking to influencing producer and therefore consumer behaviour. It’s application to waste is complex as it interacts with statutory responsibilities on public services paid for by taxpayers. 

It is therefore also worth reflecting on public opinion. The public concern the environment remains high, and our polling with YouGov shows that the public back the ambitions of these reforms, but also that they have the appetite to go further in requiring action alongside seeking to incentivise it. 

For instance polling found:

• 71 per cent of people believe supermarkets and retailers use too much packaging.
• Nine in 10 (88 per cent) believe only recyclable material should be used, and that it should have clearer labelling.
• 85 per cent said that they should be required by Government to reduce the amount of packaging used.
• The public are 12 times more likely to think costs in reducing packaging should be met by companies producing it (48 per cent) rather than councils (four per cent).

This reinforces public opinion around the proposals to ban the sale and use of disposal vape, which Almost 80 per cent of the public support. 

Looking ahead, government should continue to consider more direct and less complex action to drive change. It could consider introducing regulatory restrictions on: 

• the production and use of fossil-based packaging
• non-recyclable material. 

Local government would be keen to discuss these options further. Consideration should also be given to the global impact of consumption and the end destinations of waste. The UK’s ambition should be able to manage its own waste within its own borders as much as possible.