Council's cabinet considers future recycling options

Wiltshire Council's Cabinet will be asked to consider the council's future approach to collecting recycling when its current contracts to carry out this service end in 2026.

Wiltshire Council has carried out extensive research and assessment on options in order to recommend a future collection method that presents the best opportunity for a successful implementation and allow the county's residents to recycle as much as possible at the kerbside.

The future changes to the current arrangements are necessary as the council, and all local authorities, need to comply with new statutory requirements under the Environment Act 2021, which confirms that councils must offer households a regular collection of the following recyclable items:

• Glass
• Metal
• Plastic (including flexible plastics from 2027)
• Paper and card
• Food waste (from 2027)
• Garden waste (charges for collection may be applied).

Aside from food waste and flexible plastics, Wiltshire Council already collects all of those materials. It has been agreed with Defra to begin collecting food waste from August 2027 and flexible plastics must be collected from households by April 2027.

To determine the impact of introducing collections of flexible plastics and separate weekly collections of food waste for recycling on current services, Wiltshire Council has been supported by the government funded advisory charity, WRAP in facilitating technical options modelling to inform decision making. The criteria used to assess the impacts of different future recycling collection services included revenue costs including costs of capital borrowing, kerbside recycling performance and carbon emissions.

Based on the evidence assessed, the council's waste service has recommended to Cabinet that Wiltshire Council adopt 'Three Stream' recycling collections during the next contract period. This means from 2027 it is anticipated that residents would be asked to present recycling in one wheeled bin or weighted reuseable sack for paper and cardboard, a second wheeled bin or weighted reusable sack for mixed plastics, cans, cartons, and bagged flexible plastics, and a box for glass. Currently, most Wiltshire residents already use a blue-lidded wheeled bin for mixed recycling and have a box for the collection of glass.

Cabinet will make a decision at its meeting on 19 November. 

If the recommended option is agreed then, once the changes are introduced in 2027, it should result in a reduction in annual revenue expenditure compared with simply adding separate weekly collections of food waste and including flexible plastics to the current service, increased income from commodity sales, improved recycling rate, simplification of the recycling sorting process and significant reduction in carbon emissions. The alternative option is to retain the current 'Twin Stream' approach, with some amendments in order to collect flexible plastics and to enhance recycling sorting facility performance. However, this set-up is not currently maximising the council's recycling capabilities, due to less materials being successfully captured for recycling during the sorting process than expected, and modelling shows this would lead to a significant increase in revenue spend compared with the Three-Stream recycling collection option.

Cllr Dominic Muns, Cabinet Member for Waste, said: Any potential change that affects all households in the county cannot be done lightly and that's why we've carried out an extensive level of due diligence to ensure the options we're considering are the right ones.

Our focus is to ensure that we give residents the very best opportunities to recycle as much as possible from the kerbside, that we meet all our obligations as set out in the Environment Act and that these services are financially sustainable.

Once a Cabinet decision has been made on our preferred approach, this will allow us to start engaging with prospective service providers to explore contract arrangements. Together with all other local authorities, we are awaiting further clarification on certain aspects of the Environment Act and when that comes through that too may impact our plans.

It's important to note that making this decision will just be the first step, and that residents will not see any changes to their collections for a few years. We'll keep people updated as this process continues.

In the last financial year (2023/24), the council recycled, reused or composted 43.7% of Wiltshire's household waste, that is nearly a 4% increase from the previous financial year (40%). Through its award-winning Recycling: Let's Sort It campaign the council is encouraging people to ensure they are recycling as much as possible and putting the correct items in the right bins.  When the campaign began, over 5,000 bins were rejected during March 2023, compared to just over 1,000 bins being rejected in March 2024. 

The full cabinet report can be found at Meeting - Democratic Services - Wiltshire Council (opens new window).

More information about the council's current recycling services can be found at https://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/recycling.