How to put your bins and sacks out for collection

This page explains how to present your bins, food caddies and sacks to help avoid common issues that lead to missed collections.

The right day and time

Recycling and rubbish is collected fortnightly on alternate weeks and food waste caddies are collected every week.

Your bins and sacks must be out for collection:

• before 7am on collection day
• no sooner than 6pm the night before

If your property can't accomodate wheelie bins, you're provided with sacks instead. Put lilac sacks out on the same day as green bins and clear sacks on the same day as blue bins.

If you subscribe to the Garden waste Collection Scheme, put your garden waste out on the same day as green bins.

Bins and sacks can obstruct others, especially wheelchair users and people with pushchairs. Remember to remove your empty bins from the pavement as soon as possible after collection.

Check your bin collection dates (and sign up to email reminders).

Additional recycling and waste

If you have bin collections:

• if your blue bin is full, put extra recycling in a clear sack or bag and place it on top or at the side of your blue bin
• if your green bin is full, you must not put out any extra rubbish as we won't collect it 
• close all lids and don't pack the bins tightly - the contents should be loose enough for the bin to be inspected and emptied easily

If you have sack collections:

• use as many clear sacks for recycling as you need and put these out as usual
• we won't take any more than 3 lilac rubbish sacks per collection round

See What to do with extra rubbish.

Position your bins so our crews can access them

Unless you have assisted collections, our crews do not:

• walk onto your property
• move any obstacles
• open gates

You must put your bins and sacks at the edge of your property and they must be clearly visible to the collection crews.

We won't collect lilac sacks from properties that can accommodate wheelie bins. 

If your road is particularly narrow you should place your bin as close as possible to the boundary of your property.

Correct bin presentation examples

This image shows a blue recycling bin and food caddy presented correctly. It is positioned outside the property and up close to the border.

Our collection crews can easily access both bins and they cause minimal obstruction to other users

This image shows a blue recycling bin presented correctly. It is positioned at the entrance to a property.

Our collection crews can easily access this bin without walking onto the property.

This image shows a green rubbish bin presented correctly. It is positioned just to the side of the property entrance and there's no obstruction or gate to open.

Our collection crews can easily access this bin without walking onto the property.

Incorrect bin presentation example

This image shows a blue bin and green bin that are not presented correctly for collection. They are positioned at the far end of a property.

These bins will not be collected because our crews would need to walk onto the property to collect them. This issue will be logged on the live reporting system and we will not return until your next collection day.

Related content

• Report a missed collection
• Request a blue bin, green bin or food caddy