Council to reduce recycling collections to every three weeks

@spanieleyes are you in an area with lots of terrace houses and no where to put wheelie bins?

Where I am the council collect general waste and food / garden fortnightly. And the recycling bins are 4 weekly.

The bin lorries do different areas on different weeks.

Our recycling bin is fortnightly and it is really full by then. Our black, rubbish bin- other waste is fortnightly and usually less than a quarter full. I'd rather the black bin was 3-4 weekly.

Why does it feel like we are continually slipping, falling head over heels backwards. Miss the third week collection for whatever reason and it doesn’t bear thinking about!

We have weekly collection for both recycled and general waste, every two weeks for garden waste collection. We only have bins for the latter, the others are still bag collection. Even to go to two weekly collection would mean changing to bins and adapting the lorries, so far the council have resisted and stuck with bags!

@Angeldelight50 i know I should but most leftovers go to the dogs and it honestly makes me heave so I am admitting defeat on the food recycling 😬

Ours is the other way round, fortnightly for the recycling and black bins every three weeks. Food waste is collected every week though, so even in the summer there wasn’t too much of a smell. We are a family of four with one in nappies and just about manage to fit everything into the black bin and push the lid closed.

We could cope with three weekly if council provided a food waste bin. But until they do, we'd just have to go to the tip to get rid of stuff in between collections.

Ffs

No wonder my council charges the 4th highest council tax in the country, we still have a weekly collection for everything.*

I live alone, so generate a lot less rubbish than a family would. My non-recylable rubbish would barely fill a shoebox, so it wouldn't bother me if they started collecting 4-weekly, and I only put my recycling out every other week. The council here will happily give households a second recycling bin if they ask, and they come in (iirc) 3 different sizes, so you can ask for the biggest.

I suspect that this may change though. The food waste is now collected by a small electric lorry, not the regular binnies with the big truck. I see no reason why the non-recyclable, non-food waste shouldn't be collected fortnightly, and recyclable stuff isn't going to smell or attract flies unless people are putting tins etc in there unwashed.

My only gripe is that the compostable bags for the food bin seem to start to compost themselves in a few days, so often the bags split and all the peelings and stuff fall out all over the pavement. I double-bag mine, but it's not pleasant.

*For avoidance of doubt, this is a joke. I know that waste collection is a tiny part of the overall bill, and that it's adult social care and education that rightly get the lion's share of council tax.

3 weekly here.....
it's a nightmare.

Ours at about to start charging for garden waste.

I've heard 2 people say they'll now go for plastic lawns, as not being able to get rid of the clippings is the decider.

Dreadful.

@RustyBear I'm in Scotland

For us, as a 2-person household, we only need to use one of our 2 allocated black bin bags per fortnight for our rubbish.
So if the council reduced our recycling collections, we'd just fill our spare bin bag with recyclables to get rid of them 🤷🏼‍♀️
I'm sure there will be other unintended consequences like this too.

Two weekly here. Fly tipping and littering is already appalling. I shudder to think how it will be when the service is inevitably cut back more.

Here it's 4 weekly black bin, 1 weekly recycling and food waste, 1 weekly nappy collection and 2 weekly garden waste.

We have a two weekly cycle. Waste one week, recycling the next. The green bin (garden and food waste) is collected every week. Recycling is in bags so there’s no limit to how much of it you can put out (unless you forget to collect the special bags from the shop 🤦🏻‍♀️).
We can also put out batteries and bags of clothes or shoes on bin day and they’ll be taken for recycling too.

The pot holes round here are dreadful but at least the council does a decent job with waste.

2 weekly cycle here, alternates rubbish/recycling but food waste every week. Our recycling is almost always full after two weeks so we’d be stuffed if they went to three.

We have to pay extra for garden waste which is seasonal when they can be bothered.

3 weekly recycling? Jeez!

we are weekly food waste and recycling and general waste every 3 weeks. I manage with that as we will burn stuff we can.

but 3 weeks is absolutely ridiculous

From gov.uk website [From March 2026] “waste collection authorities in England must arrange a weekly collection of food waste for recycling or composting from households.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consistency-in-household-and-business-recycling-in-england/outcome/government-response#annex-a-summary-of-implementation-dates

Collected three times a day here (central London)

My council moved all my collections to every 3 weeks and in the hot weather it's awful

It's crazy to have recyclables collected less frequently than lamdfill though - surely that just encourages people to put recyclables into landfill? We have our recyclables and food waste collected twice as frequently as landfill.

We've had a three week cycle for years. Must be at least ten. It's not an issue. We recycle/compost everything we can. The only times when it was tricky was around Christmas with toys in lots of packaging.

We have a three week cycle. Waste, paper, mixed recycling. Our (small) food bin is weekly though so the waste bin doesn't usually get smelly. Unless we've had a friend visit with a baby in disposable nappies, then it's foul.

We already fill our recycling much faster than the waste. I suppose I could crush things better but not enough to manage 3 weeks.