Does My Café Need a Separate Food Waste Collection? (2026 Rules)
Short answer: if your café has 10 or more full-time equivalent employees, yes — it’s already the law. If you’re smaller than that, you’ve got until 31 March 2027, and that deadline is closer than it sounds.
Here’s exactly where you stand under the Simpler Recycling rules, what counts as food waste, and how to get set up without disrupting service.
What the Law Says
Under England’s Simpler Recycling legislation, since 31 March 2025 all workplaces with 10 or more full-time equivalent employees must separate their waste into three streams before collection:
- Food waste — in its own container, collected separately
- Dry recyclables — plastic, metal, glass, paper and card
- General (residual) waste — everything else
Crucially for cafés, there is no minimum amount of food waste before the rules apply. Whether you’re scraping fifty plates a day or just emptying the coffee knock-box, it must go in a separate collection — it can no longer be bagged up with general rubbish.
Hospitality businesses — cafés, restaurants, pubs, takeaways and hotels — are explicitly covered by the regulations.
“But I Only Have a Few Staff…”
Businesses with fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees are classed as micro-firms and have an extended deadline of 31 March 2027. Two important catches:
- The headcount is business-wide, not per site. If you run three cafés with four staff at each, that’s 12 employees — you should already be complying, and should have been since March 2025.
- Part-time staff count pro-rata. Two half-time baristas equal one full-time equivalent. Volunteers, contractors and the self-employed don’t count.
You don’t need to register for the micro-firm exemption — it applies automatically. But don’t treat 2027 as a reason to do nothing: collection contracts take time to set up, and prices tend to rise as deadlines approach and demand spikes.
What Counts as Café Food Waste?
More than most owners expect. Food waste includes:
- Plate scrapings and unsold food
- Coffee grounds and tea bags
- Fruit and veg peelings and prep trimmings
- Out-of-date stock
- Eggshells, bones and dairy
It does not include packaging — a food-soiled cardboard box or a sandwich wrapper goes in general waste (or recycling if clean), not the food caddy. Liquids like leftover milk generally shouldn’t go in the food bin either; check with your collector.
What About Customer-Facing Bins?
If you provide bins for customers — in a seating area, by the door, on a forecourt — the waste from those bins must also be separated before collection. In practice, most cafés either provide clearly labelled separate bins for customers (food / recycling / general) or have staff sort tray returns behind the counter. Clear picture-based labels are your best defence against contamination, which can get a whole collection rejected.
What Happens If You Don’t Comply?
Non-compliance isn’t a grey area. The Environment Agency can issue compliance notices, and since February 2026 it can charge businesses £118 per hour for regulatory work carried out where non-compliance is found — on top of the cost of putting things right. Persistent failure can escalate to enforcement action.
Remember your existing Duty of Care obligations still apply too: every collection must be by a licensed waste carrier, with Waste Transfer Notes kept for your records. (A mandatory digital waste tracking system is also on the way, replacing paper transfer notes — another reason to get organised now.)
Getting Set Up: A Practical Checklist for Cafés
- Count your FTE staff across all sites to confirm which deadline applies to you.
- Get a kitchen caddy — a small, lidded container by the prep and wash-up areas is all staff need day to day.
- Arrange a food waste collection sized to your volume; frequency and container size are up to you, so a small café doesn’t need to pay for a big bin.
- Sort your dry recycling — glass bottles, cans, cardboard and clean packaging in their own stream.
- Label everything with pictures, and brief the team — 30 seconds at induction beats months of contaminated bins.
- Check your current waste contract — note the renewal date, and make sure your provider can actually deliver separate food waste collections.
The silver lining: separating food waste usually makes your general waste bin lighter and cheaper, and collected food waste is typically sent to anaerobic digestion, where it’s turned into renewable energy rather than landfill.
Need Help Sorting It?
If your current waste setup won’t pass the 2026/27 rules — or you’re just not sure — Select A Skip can review what you’re producing and put the right commercial waste management collections in place, from food waste caddies to full recycling streams, all through licensed carriers with the paperwork handled via our waste reporting service. One provider, one invoice, fully compliant.
Get in touch for a no-obligation quote — we reply the same working day.
This article reflects the Simpler Recycling rules for England as of 2026. Wales and Scotland have their own workplace recycling regulations — contact us if you operate across borders.