Answers to your questions about waste and recycling

Changes to Sort It recycling centres

The government now requires all local authorities to regulate the disposal of household DIY waste. To meet this requirement we are introducing a booking system for our recycling centres from March 2025.

Many other local authorities already have a booking system in place, including Bristol, Bath and Gloucestershire councils.

The experience of those areas has shown that booking systems reduce queueing times, make it easier to park on site and improve site safety and efficiency.

A booking system also helps make sure only South Gloucestershire residents use our recycling centres and prevents commercial waste from being disposed of as household waste.

Some people have raised concern about a potential increase in fly tipping. According to research commissioned by DEFRA, this has not happened in most areas that have introduced a booking system. We will monitor and respond to fly tipping, should it arise.

Fly tipping is a crime. Most people are actively against it and therefore unlikely to dispose of their waste illegally.

Before introducing the system we we ran a survey to understand how local people would like it to work. Read the engagement survey response document.

Our 4 Sort It recycling centres are open 7 days a week. For more information about the new booking system check the frequently asked questions.

Changes to black bin collections

Following an extensive public consultation, councillors agreed in March 2024 to introduce 3-weekly black bin collections in 2026.

Recycling (including food waste) will still be collected weekly for most households. Garden waste will still be collected fortnightly.

We are looking at what support will be needed for households with medical and nappy waste.

Arrangements for flats with communal bins will be reviewed separately.

View the results from our public consultation

Who this will affect

This will be for most properties in South Gloucestershire. Properties not suitable for 3-weekly waste collections such as some blocks of flats will stay fortnightly. 

We know that some residents have concerns about the change.

Advice and support will be available. We already have measures in place to help households who need more support, including: 

• larger families 
• people with medical and incontinence waste
• households with babies in disposable nappies
• people who need help to put out their waste and recycling bins and boxes

Some people have raised concern about a potential increase in fly tipping. However, this has not been seen in other areas and we know that around half of South Gloucestershire households already have spare space in their black bins.

Fly tipping is a crime. Most people are actively against it and therefore unlikely to dispose of their waste illegally.

Our 4 Sort It recycling centres are open 7 days a week for when people have waste they cannot dispose of through the waste collection service.

Why the change has been agreed

More than 20 other councils have already moved to 3-weekly collections, including our neighbours in Somerset who changed in 2017. There are 2 councils who have moved to 4-weekly.

This is to meet the government’s recycling target for household waste of 65% by 2035. Our current recycling rate is below 60% and has fallen in recent years.  

To manage the change, Somerset Council increased recycling collections from fortnightly to weekly and offers extra bins for those who need them. We already do both in South Gloucestershire.

In addition we are piloting kerbside collection of soft plastics such as wrappers and plastic bags in some areas, and our aim is to roll that out to all households by the end of 2026.

Currently the average black bin we collect is filled with up to a third of this type of waste. So kerbside collection from all households should lead to less waste in household black bins.

Reducing costs

Disposal of black bin waste costs £7 million a year. Moving to 3-weekly collections is expected to save at least £1 million per year.

Sorted kerbside recycling collections result in high quality of material that we can sell to offset some of the costs. 

Some councils collect mixed recycling. However evidence shows that this approach will not save money or increase our recycling rates because of the extra processes needed to sort it and more items being rejected due to contamination.

Reducing carbon

Black bin waste is disposed of at Energy from Waste facilities. While these are a more sustainable option than landfill, and operated under strict regulations to minimise emissions, they still produce carbon emissions.

Reducing the amount of waste in black bins will help to cut these emissions and reduce the carbon impact of our waste.

Changing the black bin collections from fortnightly to every 3 weeks for most households will cut emissions from our collection vehicles, with an estimated saving of 1,870 tCO2-eq. and contributing towards our goals for net zero.

Read our resource and waste strategy, which we consulted with residents on in 2020.

Council tax and waste services

Costs to run council services such as waste management are continuing to increase.

Current contributions from your council tax cover less than half the cost of our waste management service.

The proportion of your council tax spent on waste services is relatively small, approximately 6.6%. Far more is spent on things like care for the elderly and supporting vulnerable young people.

For example, for a household living in a band D property paying £1,752.11 in council tax, £116.17 of that goes towards waste and recycling services.

Moving to three weekly collections is part of a package of changes to help balance the cost of waste management and reduce our carbon impact. We have already increased the charges for the garden waste subscription collection service to a level that covers its costs, so it is no longer subsidised by council tax payers who do not use it.

Our waste collections contract

The current waste contract with Suez Recycling and Recovery UK is a 25-year private finance initiative (PFI) that started in July 2000 and is due to be replaced in 2025. 

Suez Recycling and Recovery UK provide the council’s household waste management services including kerbside collections, recycling, composting and final disposal of all household waste, the operation of 4 household waste recycling centres (Sort It centres) and 2 waste transfer stations. 

A new 8-year contract for waste and recycling collections has now been awarded to Suez Recycling and Recovery UK which will start from August 2025. The management of the 4 Sort It centres and 2 waste transfer stations will transfer to South Gloucestershire Council when the new contract starts. 

The new contract, worth around £120 million, will allow South Gloucestershire to improve its recycling rate, reduce residents’ environmental impact as well as deliver service improvements over the life of the new contract.

Under the new contract, waste and recycling sorted by residents will continue to be collected from households using recycling boxes and bins. There will be improvements to how the service is operated behind the scenes, with upgraded in-cab systems for better live reporting, communication with the crews and monitoring of day-to-day operations.

Key features of the new arrangements include:

• the Sort It recycling centres will come in-house and be council operated
• household kerbside collections will continue to be run by Suez
• more flats will benefit from food waste collections
• the soft plastics collections trial will be extended
• black bin collections will move to 3-weekly

Increasing recycling

Our current recycling rate for South Gloucestershire is 56.6%.

While this is one of the highest recycling rates in England, we know that around a third of the contents of the average black bin in our area could be recycled through existing kerbside collections.

Also, new opportunities to recycle more materials such as soft plastics are now widely available in supermarkets and will soon be rolled out to more homes in South Gloucestershire.

When new and extended kerbside recycling is fully rolled out, up to two thirds of what is currently being placed in the average black bin will be recyclable from home.

Soft plastics

We are taking part in the FPF FlexCollect project, a national scheme to pilot the kerbside collection and recycling of plastic bags and wrapping.

Currently approximately 20 per cent of homes in South Gloucestershire are taking part in the trial. It was launched in October 2022.

Since the pilot began more than 19 tonnes of soft plastics equivalent to over 7,000 140-litre black bins have been collected in South Gloucestershire. Those materials have been sent to a number of UK based recycling facilities to test different recycling methods.

We are aiming to roll out the service to all households in South Gloucestershire by 2026.

Read more about our soft plastics trial.

Garden waste subscription service (green bin)

We increased the cost of our garden waste subscription from £30 to £60 per year in April 2024.

This cost had been artificially held back for several years, which meant the service was effectively being subsidised by all council taxpayers.

The new subscription level will help the service to pay for itself, funded by the residents who use it.

We continue to provide a reduction in the charge for those residents on certain types of benefits.