Fewer than two-thirds of English councils are collecting food waste from households on the day the government's Simpler Recycling regulations come into force, according to a review of all 294 waste collection and unitary authorities conducted by Resource.

The research, which assessed every council's waste and recycling web pages on 31 March 2026, found 187 councils (63 per cent) have a current food waste collection service, with 107 councils still to roll this out. Of those not yet collecting food waste separately, 60 have published information on their websites about this starting soon, with dates ranging from April 2026 to early 2027. A further 22 have official derogations from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) allowing a later start. This leaves 25 councils whose waste and recycling pages currently show no planned food waste service - though some may have plans not yet reflected in the information available.

The councils without food waste services and without derogations include several of England's largest authorities. Birmingham City Council's recycling collections have been disrupted by industrial action. Bradford, Newcastle, Leicester, Wolverhampton and Walsall have no service in place. Shropshire Council has said weekly food waste collection from April is "not achievable", citing costs of £3.8 million for additional staff and vehicles.

"We are ending the bin collections postcode lottery and making it easier for people to recycle wherever they live," said Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh, commenting on the regulations. "Simplifying these rules will cut out carbon, clean up our streets, and help bring pride back into our communities."

Food waste coverage

Under the Simpler Recycling regulations, all councils must arrange separate collections of food waste, paper and card, other dry recyclables and residual waste. Weekly food waste collections are required for every household.

Defra has granted 31 councils formal derogations under SI 2024/639, linked to long-term waste disposal contracts that predate the regulations. The timescales vary widely. Blackburn with Darwen has an extension to June 2026, just two months away. Seven Nottinghamshire authorities are derogated until October 2027. The South Tyne and Wear PFI councils of Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland have until April 2039. York and North Yorkshire hold the longest extensions, to February 2043 - 17 years from today.

Nine of the 31 derogated councils are already collecting food waste ahead of their statutory deadline. All six Greater Manchester authorities covered by the waste disposal contract derogation, plus Wigan, Tower Hamlets and Nottingham, have services running. The Greater Manchester collections mix food waste with garden waste in a single bin, with the material going to in-vessel composting.

Defra has allocated more than £340 million in capital grants for vehicles and caddies. Separately, packaging producers are now funding local authority collection and disposal of household packaging through extended producer responsibility, with £1.4 billion flowing to councils in 2025-26 via the PackUK scheme. That covers the cost of collecting and recycling packaging materials other than drinks containers in scope of the deposit return scheme due in October 2027. Councils that have missed the food waste deadline cite surging demand for specialist vehicles, manufacturing lead times exceeding 12 months and uncertainty over long-term revenue funding for weekly services.

On the processing side, England has 36 composting sites and 108 anaerobic digestion plants approved to accept food waste. Jenny Grant, head of organics and natural capital at the Renewable Energy Association (REA), wrote that "capacity does not emerge simply because policy says it is needed - it comes forward where the commercial conditions justify investment." Grant noted that treatment of food waste through anaerobic digestion or composting is considerably cheaper than sending it to energy from waste or landfill, meaning separate collection offers councils real savings in disposal costs.

Paper and card

Under the regulations, paper and card should be collected separately from other dry materials unless a council can show through a written assessment that this is not practicable.

The analysis found that just 106 councils - 36 per cent - are separating paper and card. Nearly half of all English councils (48 per cent) operate fully co-mingled collections, placing all dry recyclables in a single bin for mechanical sorting at a materials recovery facility. A further eight per cent separate glass but not paper and card. Thirteen per cent use kerbside sort systems, where operatives separate materials at the doorstep into compartments on the collection vehicle.

The regional picture on collection methods is uneven. In the South West, 74 per cent of councils use kerbside sort, a legacy of early adoption by authorities in Somerset, Devon and Gloucestershire. Outside the South West, the method is rare. The West Midlands has no kerbside sort authorities at all. London leads on food waste collection at 90 per cent but only 27 per cent of London boroughs separate paper and card. The North East is the region furthest behind on food waste, with just one of 12 councils (eight per cent) operating a live service, reflecting the South Tyne and Wear PFI derogations.

The Confederation of Paper Industries, British Glass and the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment have argued that co-mingled collection damages recyclate quality and increases reprocessing costs. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has found that kerbside-sorted materials have less than one per cent rejection rates, while co-mingled collections produce higher contamination and higher levels of material rejected from the recycling stream. Defra's own policy update acknowledges that "fully co-collecting systems have the highest levels of contamination."

Claire Shrewsbury, director of insights and innovation at WRAP, described Simpler Recycling as "the biggest shakeup in recycling policy in England in twenty years" and said food waste is where the sector would "see the big win".

What comes next

The household regulations follow a requirement that took effect on 31 March 2025 for businesses and non-domestic premises with 10 or more full-time employees. Micro-businesses have until 31 March 2027 to comply, the same date that applies to mandatory kerbside collections of plastic film.

Of the 60 councils with published plans to introduce food waste collections, most are targeting dates in mid to late 2026.

England's household recycling rate has sat at around 44 per cent for the best part of a decade, against a government target of 65 per cent by 2035. Defra estimates the combined effect of Simpler Recycling, extended producer responsibility for packaging and the deposit return scheme due in October 2027 will deliver greenhouse gas emissions savings equivalent to £11.8 billion. How far those ambitions are realised will depend on the pace at which the remaining councils bring food waste services online, and on whether the flexibility afforded to co-mingled dry recycling collections produces material of sufficient quality to support domestic reprocessing.

Resource reviewed English waste collection and unitary council's waste and recycling pages on 30-31 March 2026. Findings were cross-referenced against the official Defra derogation list and spot-checked for accuracy. Search the full council-by-council data below.