Environment Bill gets Royal Assent

After much debate, the Environment Bill has been passed into UK law on 10th November and becomes the Environment Act. The Act contains plans, policies and targets for improving the natural environment, measures to transition to a more circular economy and the Office for Environmental Protection to uphold environmental law.

Waste and recycling requirements include extended producer responsibility for packaging, a deposit return scheme for single use drinks containers and greater consistency in recycling collections in England. There is a requirement for the separate collection of food and garden wastes from households and food wastes from business and for separately collected materials to be recycled or composted. Many of these requirements will be subject to secondary legislation and we await the details including implementation dates.

You can read the REA response here.