Okehampton and Tavistock along with every other town and city in the England is set to receive a major boost to their recycling services .

The government has announced that over one billion pounds will be given to councils in England to improve recycling services for residents.

Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh said: “Under the Plan for Change, we are pumping more than £1 billion into local recycling services.

“This will revolutionise how we deal with our waste and ensure more of today’s rubbish is recycled into tomorrow’s packaging.”

Under the current regime, the bill for disposing of items like milk bottles, cereal boxes and soup tins is currently footed by local councils with taxpayers paying.

The billion pound investment by the government will change the scheme so businesses that use packaging will be charged the costs of collecting and recycling it.

The costs will be higher for hard to recycle materials and less where packaging can be reused or refilled.

The government says this will encourage businesses to reduce the amount of packaging they use, shift to more recyclable materials and design new products that can be recycled and reused more easily, stopping waste from going to the nation’s landfills or incinerators.

Libby Peake, head of resource policy at Green Alliance, said: “For too long, the costs of dealing with packaging waste and recycling have fallen unfairly on local councils and, ultimately, taxpayers, when they have no control over the packaging businesses use. It’s absolutely right that costs are now shifting to the companies who create packaging and can figure out how to use less of it in future.”

Alongside the new scheme, the government is introducing a Deposit Return Scheme in 2027. This will provide a financial incentive to return empty drinks containers to a collection point, such as at their local supermarket, so that bottles or cans will be recycled.