Christmas Waste Collection 2024/2025

To find out about your local collections please visit: https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/myarea

or call 0300 1234 141

What’s changing?

This year all household waste collections will change over Christmas and New Year and it’s important that everyone checks the new arrangements.

Why is it changing?

With the fortnightly collections and new bins, if we didn’t make these changes, some households could be waiting over two weeks for a collection. We want to avoid anyone having to wait more than a couple of extra days.

When will the collections happen?

What about Clinical Waste?

We’ll contact our customers who have regular clinical waste collections to let them know when we’ll collect their waste.

How are we communicating the changes?

Households in areas that have the new collection services will receive an Annual Service Leaflet which includes the Christmas collections. These will start to arrive in the post from Monday 11 November.

Households in the Area 5 for the new collection service will receive their first “Get Set” leaflet before Christmas which includes the Christmas collections. These will start to arrive in the post from Monday 21 October.

We’ll also be using our usual communication channels from mid-November to draw attention to the changes.

Food waste

This is the first year that we’ll be collecting food waste for recycling from most households. We’ll provide extra messages about the things residents can recycle after Christmas, including turkey bones, potato and sprout peelings and any leftovers. We will also be reminding people only to buy what they need and to try to avoid too much food waste.

We will collect extra food waste. If households have more food waste than will fit in their outdoor caddy, they can put it out for collection in a compostable liner on top of their outdoor caddy.

Extra recycling

Cardboard boxes, Christmas cards, envelopes and wrapping paper are recycled in your orange cardboard bag. Please remove decorations like ribbon, foil, glitter, plastic film, tinsel and bubble wrap, as these cannot be recycled. If you have more cardboard than will fit in your bag, please flat pack it and secure it near the rest of your recycling. If you have extra plastics or glass that do not fit in your bags or boxes, you can put these out for collection in a suitable container.

Christmas trees

We’ll only collect Christmas trees from people who subscribe to our garden waste collection service. Households with a subscription should put their tree out beside their bin or bag on their garden waste collection day. If households don’t have a garden waste subscription, they shouldn’t put their tree out for collection because we will not collect it. Some local charities collect trees, please help promote any schemes you’re aware of in your local community or you can take it to a Household Waste and Recycling Centre (HWRC).

Don’t put batteries out for collection.

Batteries in your rubbish or recycling can start fires if crushed or damaged in the back of rubbish lorries or at waste facilities. You can take batteries (including button batteries and battery packs) to a supermarket or HWRC for recycling.

Commercial waste – reminder that businesses shouldn’t use the household waste services.

The law says holiday lets, hairdressers and any other businesses run from home must pay to dispose of their commercial recycling and rubbish, not use household waste services. We offer value-for-money commercial waste collections.