If you run a campsite in England with fewer than ten staff, a rule that most of the industry has already had to follow is about to reach you. From 31 March 2027, every workplace in England, including the smallest campsite, caravan site or glamping field, must separate its waste into set streams for collection, and the waste your guests leave behind counts as yours.
Larger sites have been doing this since March 2025. The 2027 date is the deadline for "micro-firms", which is most of the campsites reading this. It is not a difficult set of rules, but it does mean new bins, a different collection contract, and a change to how you tell guests what goes where. This article explains what is required, how it differs in Wales and Scotland, and how to get ready over the winter rather than in a panic next spring.
Not legal advice. This is a plain-English summary of the government guidance as published in September 2026. The rules are set out on GOV.UK, and your waste contractor and local authority can confirm how they apply to your site.
What "Simpler Recycling" requires
The English rules are called Simpler Recycling. They apply to all workplaces, and the guidance names holiday parks, campsites and short-term rentals such as cottages or lodges specifically, so there is no doubt that a campsite is covered. Once the rules apply to you, you must arrange separate collections for:
- Food waste. Separately from everything else, and you must collect it "even if the workplace does not serve food or have a kitchen". A campsite with no café still has guests scraping plates at the washing-up sinks.
- Paper and card. Kept apart from other recycling, unless your collector does a written assessment showing it is justified to collect them together.
- Plastic, metal and glass. These can go together in one recycling bin.
- Non-recyclable waste, also called residual or general waste.
Garden waste is not a required stream, but if you produce it, for example hedge cuttings and grass from mowing the pitches, it must be recycled or composted where that gives the best environmental outcome. Composting it on site is fine.
Who counts as a micro-firm, and when the rules bite
The threshold is fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees. Part-time staff count as a fraction of their hours. Volunteers, contractors and self-employed workers do not count at all. If you run more than one site, the count covers all of them together.
So a family-run site with two seasonal staff is a micro-firm and has until 31 March 2027. A holiday park with a reception team, wardens and a bar has probably been in scope since 31 March 2025 and should already be compliant.
Two things catch people out. First, the 2027 date is not the day to start; it is the day you must already have separate collections in place. Second, the rules apply to waste produced on your premises, and the guidance is explicit that waste from customers and visitors is covered. The bin store by the toilet block is your responsibility, not your guests'.
Wales and Scotland are already there
Wales brought in its Workplace Recycling Regulations on 6 April 2024, with no small-business delay, and the Welsh Government's hospitality guidance lists campsites and caravan parks among the businesses covered. The streams are more finely split than in England: food waste (where you produce 5 kg or more a week), paper and card, glass, metal and plastic and cartons together, plus unsold small electricals and unsold textiles. Putting food waste down the drain, for example through a macerator, is banned.
Scotland has required businesses to separate paper and card, glass, metals and plastics since 2014 under the Waste (Scotland) Regulations. Food businesses producing 5 kg or more of food waste a week must separate that too, unless the premises are in an area the Scottish Government classes as rural, which covers a good many campsites. Check your postcode against the official rural classification before assuming the exemption applies.
Northern Ireland has no equivalent workplace requirement yet. The usual duty of care on business waste still applies.
What this looks like on a campsite
The law talks about streams and collections. On the ground it comes down to four things.
1. A recycling point guests will actually use
One well-placed bin station beats six scattered bins. Put it where the waste is produced: next to the washing-up sinks and the toilet block, and on the route back to the car park. At minimum you need four containers side by side: food, paper and card, mixed recycling, and general waste. Label them with pictures as well as words, because a good share of your guests will be children, tired, or not reading English as a first language, and keep the labels consistent with what your contractor accepts.
Food waste is the one that fails if it is made awkward. A small caddy with a tight lid, emptied daily in season, works. A large open wheelie bin twenty metres from the sinks does not.
2. Glamping units and static caravans
Where guests have their own kitchen, they need their own way to separate. A pair of small caddies in each unit, food and recycling, with a note in the welcome folder, is enough. It also cuts the volume of general waste you pay to have collected, which brings us to money.
3. The collection contract
Your current contractor may collect general waste and mixed recycling and nothing else. Ask now what separate food waste and paper and card collections cost, and whether they will need a written assessment to co-collect anything. Get a second quote. Contractors are expecting a rush of small businesses in early 2027, and the ones near you may have limited food-waste rounds in rural areas.
The cost is often lower than owners expect. General waste is the expensive stream, because it carries landfill tax and disposal charges; food and recycling collections are usually cheaper per lift. Sites that separate properly tend to find their general waste bin can drop a size or a collection frequency, which offsets the new streams.
4. Records
The duty of care rules already require a waste transfer note for each collection, or an annual note covering a regular contract. Keep them for two years. If the Environment Agency ever asks how you comply, the notes and your contract are the evidence.
What happens if you don't
Enforcement in England sits with the Environment Agency, which can issue a compliance notice setting out what you must do and by when. Ignoring a notice is an offence. In practice the agency has said it will focus on helping businesses comply first, but a campsite that has made no arrangements at all by April 2027 is exposed, and a complaint from a guest or a neighbour is all it takes to prompt a look.
A plan for the winter
If you close or slow down over winter, the timing works in your favour. Here is a sensible order.
- Now (autumn 2026): Walk the site with a notebook. Where does waste appear, how much of it is food, and how far is each spot from a bin? Note the peak-week volumes from this season while they are fresh.
- By December: Get quotes from two contractors for separate food, paper and card, mixed recycling and general waste collections. Confirm the collection days work with your changeover days.
- January and February: Order bins, caddies, liners and signage. Decide where the main station goes and whether units need their own caddies. Brief whoever cleans the site.
- March: Update your welcome folder, your site rules and the arrival email guests receive before they come, so the first thing they read includes where the recycling goes. Put the new signs up. Take a photo of the finished station for your records.
- 31 March 2027: Separate collections running. That is the whole requirement.
Telling guests before they arrive
Most recycling failures on campsites are guests who never knew the rules, not guests who ignored them. The cheapest fix is to say it early. If your booking system sends an arrival email a few days before check-in, add two lines about the bins and where the food caddies are. On Campiamo the pre-arrival email is a template you can edit once, and your site rules appear on the booking page before anyone pays, so the message reaches every guest without you repeating it at check-in. Whatever system you use, the principle is the same: put it in writing before they pitch up.
The short version
- England: separate food waste, paper and card, mixed plastic/metal/glass, and general waste. Larger sites since March 2025; under 10 full-time-equivalent staff by 31 March 2027.
- Guests' waste counts as yours. Food waste must be collected even with no kitchen.
- Wales has required it since April 2024 with more streams and a 5 kg food-waste threshold; Scotland since 2014, with a rural exemption for food waste.
- Sort the contract and the bins over winter, then tell guests before they arrive.
For the wider picture of what a site must provide, see our guide to what facilities a campsite legally needs in the UK.
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