New national rules are coming into force next month

Staffordshire Moorlands bins(Image: Stoke Sentinel)

All 45,000 households in the Staffordshire Moorlands are to be issued with food caddies as part of a bin shake-up. New national rules over waste collections will be coming into force next month.

The Simpler Recycling Scheme is being introduced across England to boost recycling rates. It will see weekly food waste collections brought in. The change will impact each local authority differently depending on how their refuse collections currently work.

Now Staffordshire Moorlands District Council has moved to reassure residents that the new rules will not mean a fourth large wheelie bin. Instead, households will each receive a food caddy.

The changes – which also apply to Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle Borough and Stafford Borough – are due to come in nationally from March 31. However, the caddies are not expected to be distributed in the Moorlands until the summer.

Councillor Charlotte Atkins, cabinet member for services, said: “I want to be clear about what’s happening here in the Moorlands. The council and its waste collection partner Alliance Environmental Services are working hard to put in place the practical arrangements necessary to meet the new national requirements. We, like many other councils, will need to procure additional vehicles and equipment to carry out this service which we are aiming to introduce in the summer

“We will provide all households will full details of the changes well before they are introduced and will ensure that our teams are available to support people with these changes when they start. Until then, people should continue to present their waste and recycling in the usual way.”

The Simpler Recycling initiative means that the new standard requirement for most homes and businesses will be four separate containers. When the scheme was announced, officials said it would also eliminate the ‘postcode lottery’ of bin collections across England, where councils gather different materials for recycling, causing confusion amongst households.

Under the proposed plans, the four types of waste containers are for:

residual (non-recyclable) wastefood waste (mixed with garden waste if appropriate)paper and cardall other dry recyclable materials (plastic, metal and glass)

Last year, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature, Mary Creagh, said: “We have set out that every local authority will be required to collect food waste for recycling by March 31, 2026. Commencement regulations named a total of 31 local authorities that were provided with a bespoke transitional arrangement, delaying food waste collection requirements.

“It was deemed that these local authorities needed longer to implement separate food waste collections for households due to barriers presented by long-term residual waste disposal contracts that run beyond March 31, 2026. We engaged extensively with affected local authorities.

“Where the evidence demonstrated that existing long-term waste disposal contracts presented an unavoidable barrier to the introduction of food waste collections by March 31, 2026, transitional arrangements were provided by Defra. We will continue to work with local authorities to identify whether they can bring forward food waste collections and the associated benefits before the end of their bespoke transitional arrangement.”

For more information on the Simpler Recycling project click here.

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