Weekly food waste and fortnightly recycling and rubbish collections
We're rolling out a new food waste, recycling and rubbish collection service to households in Cornwall area by area in five geographical stages from 2023 to 2025.
When to expect the new service in your area
Once the new service starts in your area, we'll start collecting:
- food waste from you every week
- your recycling fortnightly, as we do at the moment
- your rubbish fortnightly
We’ll give you:
- a silver kitchen caddy
to make separating your food waste from your rubbish easy - a green outdoor collection caddy
for storing and putting your food waste out for collection in - a wheelie bin or reusable protective sack
for you to put your rubbish out for collection in
New weekly food waste collection
We'll collect your food waste from you weekly.
- Use a compostable bag to line your silver kitchen caddy. A liner helps to keep your kitchen caddy clean, and also makes it easier for the crew collecting the food waste from your green outdoor caddy. We’ve given you a starter pack of compostable caddy liners. You can buy more from the supermarket. Any compostable shop-bought liners will work. No plastic or other non-compostable liners please.
- Use your silver kitchen caddy to separate your plate scrapings and veg peelings from your rubbish each day.
- Empty your silver kitchen caddy into your green outdoor collection caddy as often as you like. When you empty your kitchen caddy, tie your liner at the top and put it in your green outdoor collection caddy.
- Pull your green collection caddy handle forwards over the lid to secure it closed.
- Every week, put your green food waste caddy out for collection by 7am on your collection day, at your property’s boundary or agreed collection point if you have one.
New fortnightly limit on rubbish
Once the new service starts, we'll collect a limit of 180 litres of rubbish fortnightly from each household, or the amount that fits in your wheelie bin or sack with the lid closed. That's about 3 to 4 black bags.
We will collect more rubbish from households under certain exceptional circumstances but you must apply to us to review your fortnightly 180 litre rubbish limit.
Your recycling and rubbish collections will alternate. So, next to your caddy, put out your recycling bags and box if it’s your recycling week, or your wheelie bin/sack if it’s your rubbish week.
Please contain your rubbish in a disposable bin bag before putting it out in your bin or sack.
Please note: you must wait until the rollout programme has reached your area and you've taken delivery of your new bins before you apply to us to review your fortnightly 180 litre limit.
Apply to us to review your fortnightly 180 litre rubbish limit
These changes will bring Cornwall’s rubbish collections in line with most of the rest of the UK, where Councils have already changed to a fortnightly or even a three-weekly service.
We're allowed to introduce these changes under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
What you'll need to do differently:
- Recycle as much as you can if you’re not already, using the usual coloured bags and box system and fortnightly collection service
- Start separating your food waste from your rubbish and put it out weekly for us to collect
- Put your rubbish out fortnightly for us to collect in the wheelie bin or reusable protective sack we give you with the lid closed
If you don’t recycle and separate your food waste it will be harder for you to fit your rubbish into your wheelie bin or sack with the lid closed.
You’ll be using the same coloured bags and black box system as the current services.
You'll also need to:
- put your waste out by 7am
- on your new collection day
- at your usual collection point - for most people, that's the boundary of their property nearest the road
- separate your food waste from your rubbish using the silver kitchen caddy we give you
- put your food waste out for collection in the green caddy we give you. Not the silver kitchen caddy
- use the usual recycling bags and box
- put your rubbish out in the new wheelie bin - or new reusable protective sack with white handles that we give you with the lids closed
We will no longer collect
- rubbish from bins given out by the old district councils.
- rubbish from a bin or sack you've bought yourself, including the old style seagull sacks with black handles.
We will only collect rubbish that fits in your wheelie bin or new sack with the lid closed. That's about 3 to 4 black bags or up to 180 litres.
We’re making these vital changes to help Cornwall play its part in tackling climate change and to save valuable resources like:
- cardboard
- paper
- plastic
- cans
- glass and textiles
Benefits of the changes
These changes will help us all:
- recycle more
- reduce our rubbish
- stop wasting finite resources
- cut Cornwall’s carbon footprint
The new service will meet the new duty for councils to provide householders with a separate food waste collection service.
The new service will allow us to collect your food waste from you each week to recycle into energy to power homes and use as farm fertiliser.
This means we’ll be able to recycle 35% more of the average kitchen bin in Cornwall.
At the moment, Cornwall's average black bag is:
- 22% material that should have been recycled using the current collection service
- 35% is food waste that will be recyclable thanks to the new service and
- only 43% is actually rubbish that couldn't have been reused or recycled
This means that most households will find that once their food waste service starts, the amount of rubbish they need to put out for collection will reduce by about one third.
The fortnightly limited rubbish collection shouldn't be a problem for most households.
- The wheelie bin and sack both hold about 3 to 4 black bags.
- You can prepare for fortnightly rubbish collections by getting started with recycling now (if you haven’t already). Or recycling more (if you’re already recycling a bit).
- We will collect more rubbish from households on application under certain exceptional circumstances.
We’re allowed to introduce these conditions under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
