A working group comprising members of local authority waste networks (coordinated through the Waste Network Chairs, which includes the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC) and the Association of Directors of Environment Planning and Transportation (ADEPT)), the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB), and the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), are to publish a recycling collection 'routemap' for local authorities next month.

The ‘Routemap to Understanding the requirements of the Waste Regulations 2011 (amended 2012)’ is being developed in association with environmental consultancy Eunomia Research and Consulting Ltd to help local authorities understand what recycling services they are legally obligated to provide under waste laws.

Co-mingled versus separate sort

The document has reportedly been commissioned after the working group ‘identified a need for information to be available to local authorities on the regulations relevant to separate collections of recyclable waste’, as the Waste Regulations (which transpose the European Commission's revised Waste Framework Directive into English and Welsh law) state that by 2015, councils will need to provide separate collections of dry recyclable materials when they are necessary to ‘facilitate or improve recovery’ and are ‘technically, environmentally and economically practicable’ (TEEP).

However, details of what is considered TEEP have not been released by government, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has said it would not be publishing any guidance on the matter. Whether local authorities could be liable for prosecution for continuing co-mingled collections after 2015 has also been a cause for concern for many councils currently operating this system (however a Judicial Review into the matter in 2013 argued that co-mingled collections would be permissible).

As such, the working group is publishing its routemap to provide local authorities with a ‘decision support tool’ to assess compliance with the regulations.

It is hoped that by developing this, it will help individual authorities avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ and spending ‘time and effort developing their own approach’.

A representative for the working group said: “The routemap is about giving local authorities the tools to make their own decision and help signpost them through the Regulations. It is being developed as a resource for local authorities and is not guidance. Ultimately each local authority will need to determine its own compliance with the Regulations. The working group has announced this today as we are aware that local authorities are considering the implications of the Regulations on their services and we want to make them aware that the routemap will be available to them in the coming month.”

The work is being funded by LWARB and the waste networks and is scheduled for publication in ‘April 2014’.

Read more about the arguments for and against co-mingled and separate collections of recyclable materials.