More than two years after it began a consultation on standardising kerbside municipal waste collections, the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has issued a response clarifying how the government plans to implement "Simpler Recycling" reforms in England. Under the initiative, formerly known as "consistency of collections", all local authorities are to be required to collect six recyclable waste streams: glass, metal, plastic, paper and card, food waste, and garden waste. Setting core material streams was a central element of the consistent collections initiative and intended to reduce the confusion associated with the UK's current patchwork of local authority separate collections for recycling. However, concerns were raised at the highest political levels about the impact of increased source-separation.
Almost immediately after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged in September to scrap non-existent plans requiring seven recycling bins for households, Defra rebranded its proposals for standardising recycling collections. The government department is now proposing a minimum of source separation.
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