Weekly food waste and fortnightly recycling and rubbish collections
We introduced a new food waste, recycling and rubbish collection service to all households in Cornwall between 2023 and 2025.
We collect:
- food waste every week
- recycling every two weeks
- rubbish every two weeks, on the opposite week to recycling
- garden waste every two weeks, if you subscribe to the service
Find your collection day, view and download your collection calendar
We've given you:
- a silver kitchen caddy to separate your food waste from your rubbish
- a green outdoor caddy for storing your food waste and putting it out for collection
- a wheelie bin or reusable protective sack for putting your rubbish out for collection
How to use your food waste caddies
1. Line your silver kitchen caddy to keep it clean if you want to
You don’t have to line your indoor caddy but if you’d like to, you can use any of the following:
- compostable liners
- newspaper or paper bags
- old carrier bags - not ‘bags for life’ as these can be reused for shopping
- food packaging such as bread bags, frozen veg bags or cereal bags
- used fridge and freezer storage bags
- plastic bags bought on a roll
2. Empty your silver kitchen caddy into your green outdoor collection caddy
Before collection, empty your silver kitchen caddy into your green outdoor caddy. You can empty your kitchen caddy into your outdoor caddy as often as you like. We recommend doing it when the liner is 3/4 full, if you’re using one, as it makes it easier to tie the top.
3. Latch your green outdoor caddy shut for collection
When you put your green caddy out for collection, pull the handle towards the front and down over the lid to close the latch securely. Make sure to put it out by 7am at the boundary of your property on your collection day every week.
Once collected, we take it to an anaerobic digestor where it’s recycled into farm fertiliser to help grow more food, and energy to power homes.
Find out more from our contractor SUEZ
Fortnightly limit on rubbish
We only collect rubbish that fits inside the bin or sack we gave you with the lid closed. We won't take extra bags left next to or on top of your bin or sack. All rubbish needs to be bagged before going into your bin or sack.
Both the wheelie bin and protective sack hold 180 litres of rubbish, about 3 to 4 black bags’ worth. If you're recycling everything you can, you should be able to fit all your rubbish in your bin or sack with the lid closed.
We will only collect more rubbish from households under certain circumstances. You must apply to use to review your fortnightly rubbish limit.
Find out how to use your rubbish collection service
How to put your waste out for collection
- Put your food waste, recycling and rubbish out by 7am on your collection day.
- Your rubbish and food waste are collected by different crews, so don’t worry if one bin is emptied before the other.
- Place your waste at your usual collection point – normally the boundary of your property.
- All rubbish must be in your bin or sack with the lid fully closed. We won’t collect any rubbish not in your bin/sack.
- Please take your containers back to your property once they have been collected, so they don’t get lost, damaged, or cause an obstruction.
- If you’ve moved to a new build home, you’ll need to order food waste, recycling and rubbish containers for your property.
We won't collect
- Rubbish put out for collection in a bin provided by an old district council
- Rubbish put out for collection in a bin that you have bought yourself
- Rubbish put out for collection in a protective sack you have bought yourself, even if it is one of our old-style ‘seagull sacks’ with black handles
Waste less and recycle more
It is important that we all recycle as much as we can to help tackle climate change.
Before we introduced our current service, the average black bin bag in Cornwall contained:
- 22% recyclable items that could have been collected through our recycling service
- 35% food waste, which we now collect separately
- Only 43% was actual rubbish that couldn’t be reused or recycled
Now, we are able to recycle more and, with the new 180 litre rubbish limit, waste less.
Before we began rolling out our current service, Cornwall was one of only 2 local authorities in the South-West region that provided weekly rubbish collections. The current service has brought us up to date with the rest of the UK.
Collecting food waste separately means that we can recycle it at an anaerobic digestion facility. The anaerobic digestion process produces renewable energy as well as a biofertiliser which can be used to improve soil quality.
It is also a legal requirement for all local authorities to provide households with a food waste collection service.
We’re allowed to introduce these conditions under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.Read more on the Government legislation website