Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to ensure local authority recycling schemes accept non-black plant pots.

Part 4 of Schedule 1 to The Separation of Waste (England) Regulations 2024 provides a list of plastics which are included in the recyclable plastic waste stream. This includes PE, PET and PP pots which are larger than 40x40mm and do not contain any pigment which prevents them from being near-infrared detectable (e.g. carbon black pigment) within the plastic recyclable waste stream.

Defra engages regularly with local authority networks and will raise this matter with them, so they can communicate directly with their members about the legal requirement to collect this material.

We know that some local authorities will need longer to roll out changes beyond 31 March 2026 due to circumstances beyond their control, such as delivery timescales for collection vehicles and containers. In such circumstances, we expect local authorities to be taking all necessary steps within their control to progress and to keep their residents informed on timeframes for service changes. We continue to work with local authority waste networks and the wider industry, providing targeted support to help address the outstanding issues.