30 November 2023

Household waste, recycling, and garden waste collections over Christmas

There will be changes to your collection days over the Christmas period.

Waste collection crews will not be working on Monday 25 December, Tuesday 26 December and Monday 1 January.

Garden waste collections will pause for two weeks, the last collection will take place on Friday 22 December. Service will resume Tuesday 9 January, and your normal collection day will be delayed by one day, starting with collections which would normally have taken place on Monday 8 January.

Normal service will resume for all collections on Monday 15 January.

Make sure you know when you should be presenting your household waste, recycling and garden waste bins by checking your online waste collection calendar or by checking the graphic below:

HRC operating hours

All of our Household Recycling Centres (HRCs) have now switched to their annual winter opening hours.

The opening hours of all ten of our HRCs is now 10am to 4pm on each day that they’re open.

If you are visiting one of our recycling centres, remember to sort out your waste before you arrive so that together we can recycle as much as possible.

Did you know what happens to your waste?

Reusing or recycling waste are our top priorities, but where waste can’t be managed this way, we treat the waste to generate energy from it.

We work hard to reduce the amount of waste that is sent to landfill, with only 15.6% of household waste being sent there last year. Most of Wiltshire’s household residual waste is actually diverted to energy recovery facilities. The waste that does go to landfill mostly comes from our household recycling centres and large item collections. Sometimes non-recyclable items that are put in blue-lidded recycling bins also has to go to landfill, that’s why it is so important to put the right things into recycling bins.

Recycling tip of the month

Are you having more deliveries than usual this month? With Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas being so close together, the number of online deliveries inevitably increases and with that, so does packaging.

The great news is that carboard boxes can be recycled from home in your blue lidded bin, but it is important to make sure you are recycling these correctly.

Here are some useful tips:

• Remove all non-cardboard/paper packing such as bubble wrap or polystyrene.
• Break down your cardboard boxes so that they can fit inside your bin.
• Keep your recycling clean and dry, we may not collect your cardboard if it is wet as it can’t be recycled.

Recycle your unwanted electricals

Out with the old and in with the new? With ever-evolving technology, the number of our unwanted electrical items increases. Anything with a plug, battery or cable can be recycled.

If you have unwanted small rechargeable electricals that you need to get rid of, remember to use our small rechargeable electrical collections for unwanted items. If it’s a rechargeable device, i.e. has a rechargeable battery and would ‘fit in a shoe box’, we will collect this from home. These items should be presented in a supermarket carrier bag by the side of your blue-lidded recycling bin, or blue recycling sack.

This includes:

• Smart speakers (these must not be mains powered such as devices and Google assistants)
• Mobile phones
• Tablets and E-readers
• Laptops

Find out more about which items we will collect.

All other electrical items can be recycled at your local HRC.