The Separation of Waste (England) Regulations 2025

Charities and faith groups need to be aware of The Separation of Waste (England) Regulations 2025. These are new regulations coming into force in England with effect from 31 March this year.

For recycling purposes, waste presenters include as businesses “relevant non-domestic premises”, which are: residential homes and premises forming part of a hospital or nursing home; places of worship; charity shops selling donated goods originating from domestic premises; residential hostels which provide accommodation only to persons with no other permanent address or who are unable to live at their permanent address; and premises used wholly or mainly for public meetings.  

New regulations, new regime?

Currently, waste presenters must present their waste duly separated in such a way as is required by the local arrangements of their waste collector(s). This will still be the case; the new regulations do not change this.

Without the new regulations, the default position is that, unless local waste collectors can make the case that metal, glass, and plastic can be combined, each of these “recyclable waste streams” must be collected separately.    

Many local waste collectors do currently make a case that metal, glass, and plastic can be collected together, either on the basis that it is not technically or economically practicable to collect those recyclable waste streams separately, or, that collecting those recyclable waste streams separately has no significant environmental benefit (having regard to the overall environmental impact of collecting it separately and of collecting it together).  

What is changing?

The new regulations now simply enable local waste collectors to collect any combination of metal, glass and plastic together, without the need for justification, and create a temporary, two-year carve-out until 31 March 2027 for “micro businesses”, being entities with a full-time equivalent employee number of less than ten.  

Where local arrangements already collect metal, glass, and/or plastic together, there will be no change. Even where local arrangements currently require separation of metal, glass, and plastic, this could also continue as the new regulations only remove the need to justify collecting them together and do not mandate collecting them together. If you currently separate your metal, glass, and/or plastic, simply check what your local arrangements will be going forward.    

The separation of paper and card – from each other and from metal, glass and plastic – will continue in local arrangements on the same basis of justification as is current; and the mandatory separation of food waste will also continue as is current.