Council to reduce recycling collections to every three weeks

[Allshallbewell2021]

I saw this in the fine print coming to us for spring 2025.

Fortnightly for black bins and every three weeks for recycling.

I get it - they're all completely broke.

Ours are upping what can be recycled and black bins will be every 3 weeks. Dreading the summer smell.

We have had a 3 week cycle for a few years now including the general waste. Only our food/garden waste bin is every 2 weeks. Its only the food waste bin that tends to get maggots in the summer

Been a 3 week cycle for at least 15 years here.

We don't have food waste bins, it's either black or recycling. Both tend to be very full every two weeks.

I'm off to read our council pages and hope they haven't changed to 3 weeks.

Whilst the idea is sound, we would be stuffed for 3 weekly recycling. We have two big bins for recycling and they are filled every time to the brim as we recycle so much!

The green bin we pay for which is every two weeks (no issue paying for that) and we have a small black bin. If that goes to every three weeks again we will be stuffed as it's half the size of a normal black bin in an effort to get you to recycle more.

We have a landfill bin, a recycling bin and a cardboard bin which are every 3 weeks and a food bin every week. All perfectly doable (and I don’t use food bin) 🤢

I'd love that level of service. We've had once a month bin collections for all of our bins fir years now so we have to go to the local tip with out household rubbish at least once a week.

We've been four weekly black bins for years. They don't smell though because we have food bins collected weekly, ditto paper, cardboard, plastic, tin, glass collected weekly.

I'm dreading them reducing recycling to fortnightly our trolley block just isn't big enough. Mind you their wagons aren't either. So they'll save money elsewhere.

3 week collections here, it’s a nightmare! Our bins are constantly over flowing. There has been a few occasions where they have refused to take our recycling bin which means it’s 6 weeks before it’s finally collected 😳.

@Whatevershallidowithmylife I used to not bother with the food bin but had to start when we were switched to 3 week collections. It is actually super easy and makes taking the general waste bin outside a dream as it’s now so lightweight and not absolutely stinking 😅.

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

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'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.

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.

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

Collected three times a day here (central London)

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

@RustyBear I'm in Scotland

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.

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