Guide to Bins, Boxes & Collections

Bin Collections

East Herts Council has an alternate refuse and recycling collection service. This means your black wheeled bin is collected fortnightly on your waste week with your blue and brown bin being emptied on the alternate week.

For more information on your recycling, composting & refuse service, please see our latest service guide. 

Please note the following;

• Only items that cannot be composted or recycled should go into your black bin or sacks.
• East Herts Council provides each household in the district with one black bin, one brown bin and one blue lidded bin.
• Only waste contained within the wheeled bins will be collected.
• For residents who have difficult access or no front or rear garden we operate a sack collection service. In these circumstances we also provide a green paper box and a blue recycling box which will be collected fortnightly on your recycling week. More boxes are available on request.
• We offer a boundary collection service; this means your bin must be presented with the lid closed at the boundary of your property by 7am.
• The boundary of your property is where the front of your property / garden meets the public highway (pavement or road).
• Operatives will not step onto your property. Extra waste left at the side of the bins or placed on top of the bins will not be collected.
• If you are not physically able to place your bins on the boundary you may qualify for an Assisted Bin Collection.
• If you have a bin that is damaged or you have a bin missing, please request a new bin

Blue Lidded Bin

For further guidance, please see our Blue lidded bins page

Black Bin

These items and many others below can be recycled, often at Local Household Waste & Recycling Centres 

*There are many clothes banks across the District, see our Clothes Recycling centres in East Herts page for more information

Inner Paper Box/Kerbside Box

Please only put the following items in the inner paper/ kerbside box

• Brochures
• Catalogues
• Directories
• Envelopes - white only (please remove plastic windows)
• Junk mail
• Magazines/ Newspapers
• Shredded paper
• Yellow Pages

Brown Bins

Kitchen caddies are small boxes that are useful for food waste. If you need one, please request one via our new or replacement bins page. These kitchen caddies can be wrapped in newspaper or compostable bags to keep the caddies clean. These are available via most good supermarkets or found online in stores such as Caddy Liner website.  Only bags that have the seedling logo can be placed inside the brown bins