Simpler Recycling: what a small business in England must do with packaging waste by 31 March 2027

If you run a small online shop or workshop in England, 31 March 2027 is the date your bins have to change.

From that day, businesses with fewer than 10 full-time equivalent staff must sort their waste the way larger businesses have done since 31 March 2025. That means dry recyclables, food waste and general waste go out separately, with paper and card kept apart from plastic, metal and glass. You pay a registered collector to take them away, and you keep the paperwork.

Checked against official sources on 28 October 2026.

Packing creates a lot of waste of its own.

Every delivery of stock brings cardboard, tape, plastic film and often bubble wrap or air pillows. We make packing tape, film and paper cushioning in Jaipur, and we export to 20+ countries. So I read a rule like this from both ends, as the maker of the material and as someone whose customers sort it afterwards.

Are you a micro-firm? Count your staff the government's way

We start with the count, because everything else depends on it. The government's workplace recycling guidance (updated 3 October 2025) gives the rules.

1. Count full-time equivalent (FTE) employees across the whole business, not per site. The guidance gives an example: three sites with five staff each make 15 employees, so that business is not a micro-firm.
2. Part-time staff count pro rata. Two full-time packers plus four part-timers who each work half a full-time week make 2 + (4 x 0.5) = 4 FTE.
3. Volunteers, contractors and self-employed workers do not count.
4. You do not need to register or apply for the extra time. Micro-firms simply have until 31 March 2027.

If you count 10 or more, the rules have applied to you since 31 March 2025. In that case, read this as a catch-up list.

What must be separated

The guidance says you must always separate three kinds of waste before collection.

1. Dry recyclables: paper and card, plastic, metal and glass.
2. Food waste, even if you have no kitchen.
3. General (residual) waste, which is everything else.

Paper and card must be collected separately from plastic, metal and glass. The only way around that is a written co-collection assessment by your collector, showing separate collection is not practicable or brings no real environmental benefit. For the rest, the guidance tells you to separate dry recyclables as your collector instructs.

So we plan for at least four containers.

In practice that is one for paper and card, one or more for plastic, metal and glass, a food caddy, and one for general waste. You choose the bin sizes and how often they are emptied, based on how much you produce.

Your packing waste, item by item

This is where a packing business differs from an office. Here is where the usual packing materials go, based on what the guidance lists.

A few of these need more than a line.

Cardboard and the tape on it

Cardboard is the easy one.

It is usually the biggest pile too. We flatten every box the day it is emptied, or it fills the bin with air.

What about the tape? I make tape, so I care about this one. Recycle Now, the WRAP-run campaign, asks people to remove loose strands of sticky tape from cardboard where they can. You do not need to scrape every box clean. We pull off what comes away easily, especially long loose ends, and move on.

We keep the cardboard dry as well. The guidance says badly contaminated recyclables should go in general waste, and a collector can refuse a contaminated load or charge extra for it.

Plastic film, the one nobody is sure about

Here is the honest answer.

The government's workplace guidance lists rinsed food containers, bottles and cartons under plastic. It says nothing about film, stretch wrap or bubble wrap.

The plan was for film and flexible packaging to be collected from 31 March 2027 too. Trade press such as letsrecycle.com reported in July 2026 that Defra has moved that to 1 April 2030. The law still has to be changed to match, so treat the new date as announced, not final.

So in 2027, ask your collector directly whether they take clean film. If they do, keep it in its own clean sack. If they do not, it goes in general waste for now.

The better answer is to keep most film out of the bin altogether.

Bubble wrap and air pillows that arrive with your stock are often clean and whole. Put a box next to your packing table and use them again in your own parcels. Our guide to setting up a packing station shows where such a box can go.

Compostable mailers

Some small brands use compostable mailers. The guidance lists plastic packaging labelled "compostable" or "biodegradable" among the items not collected with plastic. Do not put them in the plastic bin, and ask your collector where they should go. If you print words like these on your own packaging, our lesson on eco-friendly packaging claims in 2027 explains what you can and cannot say.

The paperwork: small, but you must keep it

1. Use a collector on the government's register of waste carriers. The waste overview page links to the register, and checking takes two minutes.
2. Get a waste transfer note for each load. For regular collections of the same waste by the same carrier, one "season ticket" note can cover up to a year.
3. Keep the notes for 2 years. The waste duty of care code of practice sets that period for non-hazardous waste.

If you pack from home, remember that waste from the part of your home used for business is business waste. It is not household rubbish just because it sits in your house.

What if you do not comply?

The Environment Agency enforces Simpler Recycling. It can issue a compliance notice to a business, and failing to follow that notice is an offence. The guidance does not give penalty amounts, and it says the agency will be pragmatic about contamination. I would not plan around being let off, though.

A compliance notice is a bad way to start a business year.

What to do now, month by month

1. November and December 2026: count your FTE the way shown above. Then keep a simple tally for two weeks. Each time a bag or box of waste is full, we mark which type it was. This tells us the bin sizes you really need.
2. January 2027: ask at least two registered collectors for a quote, your council's trade waste service and a private company. Ask which streams they collect, the bin sizes, how often they collect, whether they take clean film, and whether they offer a season ticket note.
3. February 2027: we put the bins where the waste is made, which is next to the packing table. Label each bin with a word and a picture. Show everyone who packs for you, part-timers included.
4. March 2027: start the collections before the 31st, file your first transfer note, and fix any bin that keeps getting the wrong waste.

One honest limit. I cannot tell you what this will cost, because collection prices differ by council and company, and I do not run a UK waste business. Your collector and the government's guidance are the final word.

From the packaging side, I can give you one rule of the trade.

The cheapest waste is the waste you never create.

Reuse what arrives clean, choose packaging that falls into one bin where you can, and test any switch on your heaviest parcel before you change everything. If you are not sure which bin a material we make belongs in, ask us through our contact page and we will tell you what it is made of.