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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing performance standards for material recovery facilities to ensure purity of all material bales.

Simpler Recycling requires the following recyclable waste streams from all households and workplaces in England: glass, metal, plastic, paper and card, food waste (and garden waste from households only). These measures will increase the quantity of dry recyclable material collected for sorting at MRFs and will apply from 31^st March 2025 from workplaces, 31 March 2026 from households and 31^st March 2027 from micro-firms (with less than 10 FTEs).

There are existing requirements on material recovery facilities (MRFs) to report the reject rates at each facility in Waste Data Flow question 100 and to undertake composition sampling on material received and report this to the Environment Agency via the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2023.

Defra is working with WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) and waste industry representatives to support Material Recovery Facility (MRF) readiness for the Simpler Recycling requirements.

We have engaged with MRF operators and local authorities through WRAP’s MRF Forum to identify challenges with MRF capacity, investment, upgrade timelines, and to work with the sector to identify interventions to support MRFs as they prepare for Simpler Recycling. WRAP is developing interventions to support Local Authorities with setting up new MRF contracts, determine the potential future composition of dry mixed recyclable waste streams and the associated financial implications.

I have instructed my officials to develop further policy options to drive long-term improvement to Local Authority performance, including on potential approaches to improving quality which will support the UK reprocessing sector.