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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of the lack of sorting requirements of collected materials under Simpler Recycling on recycling rates.

As part of the Simpler Recycling reforms, the Government has made an exemption in regulations to allow local authorities and other waste collectors to co-collect plastic, metal and glass in the same container. This applies in all circumstances without the need to produce a written assessment, based on the evidence that co-collection does not significantly affect the potential for those materials to be recycled.

The decision to allow dry materials to be co-collected has been taken based on evidence to indicate that simplifying the number of bins can help increase participation in recycling. Evidence also suggests that fully co-collecting systems (with one mixed dry recycling bin) have the highest levels of contamination (for example, broken glass stuck on paper or soggy paper from the liquid from bottles and cans), and that paper and card are particularly vulnerable to cross-contamination, which will affect the recycling rate. By default, therefore, paper and card should be separately collected from all other dry materials so their potential to be recycled is not reduced.