Cornwall Council Waste Compositional Analysis 2025

Cornwall Council would like to carry out a compositional analysis study looking at multiple streams from the kerbside, HWRC, and litter bin services. Cornwall Council's kerbside collection service has undergone a significant service change since the last compositional analysis study was completed in 2023, moving from a weekly to fortnightly residual collection with a limit of 180 litres and introducing a new weekly food waste collection. This is expected to have a major influence on the composition of the waste remaining in the residual stream, and also the recycling stream. With a limit placed on householder’s residual waste volume collected, customers are driven to reduce their waste and recycle more.

Since 2023 there have been some major operational changes at the HWRC sites as well:

• From August 2023, black bag sorting stations were introduced at six of our HWRCs: Truro, United Mines, Newquay, Helston, Falmouth and St Austell.
• From 2 January 2024 DIY waste charges were removed under a free allowance limit and from this date could no longer be accepted at: Bodmin, Dudnance Lane, Helston, Tintagel and United Mines.
• From 1 December 2024, upholstered furniture had to be separated from other streams and therefore could no longer be accepted at five sites: Bude, Dudnance Lane (Pool), Helston, Newquay and Truro.

As well as changes that have happened since 2023, there are also upcoming changes in legislation.

• Simpler Recycling will require the collection of cartons from March 2026 and flexible plastics and films from March 2027.
• Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR) reporting is set to start this year.
• Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) is currently set to come into force in 2027 and
• Energy from Waste (EfW) facilities are set to join the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in 2028, with a two year monitoring and reporting period from 2026. These are major changes that are expected to dramatically impact the composition of both residual and recycling streams.

This project will determine the currently composition of our Cornwall kerbside residual and plastics and cans containers, residual HWRC stream, and litter bins.