Wealden District Council
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Wealden District Council > Recycling & Waste > Garden Waste Service > Garden Waste Service FAQ’s

Garden Waste Service FAQ’s

Yes please:
  • Grass cuttings
  • Hedge trimmings
  • Shrub and flower cuttings
  • Branches
  • Weeds
  • Roots
  • Leaves
  • Herbivorous pet bedding
No thanks:
  • Food waste e.g. vegetable peelings
  • Plastics (including plants pots and polystyrene)
  • Soil and rubble
  • Cardboard and paper
  • Ashes
  • Cat litter and dog waste
  • Japanese Knotweed
  • Treated or painted wood

You can share a bin with a neighbour. However, one of you will need to subscribe to and pay for the service. The bin will be registered to one property and collected from that address. 

If you renew the subscription, please ensure you renew at the same address.

Unfortunately, we are not able to offer any concessions or discounts.

We recommend that garden waste is composted at home or taken to a Household Waste Recycling Site   if you do not wish to subscribe to the garden waste service.

Home composting is the most environmentally friendly method of dealing with your garden waste. Lots of helpful advice is available at the East Sussex website. Great value compost bins can be ordered from Getcomposting, by calling 0844 5714444. Prices start at £22.00 plus £6.99 for delivery.

Residential bonfires cause air pollution and can be a nuisance.

No, garden waste cannot be placed in the rubbish or recycling bin. These bins will not be emptied if they contain garden waste.

If you move house we are not able to transfer your subscription or provide a refund. Any new resident can make use of the subscription until it expires.

Although spring and summer are when most garden waste is collected, the majority of customers continue to use the garden waste service throughout the year as there are many garden maintenance jobs even over the winter.
If you live in a property with communal bins and would like the garden waste service, please ask your managing agent or residents’ association to contact us. It will be their decision whether they wish to pay for the garden waste service. The service is for residential use only. If a paid contractor is used to carry out the garden work, they are required to remove any waste generated and may not use any bins provided by the Council.

Customers will be able to subscribe and pay for up to four garden waste bins at their property. Each bin will cost £60 per year.

No, the service costs £60 per bin each year whether you use a 140 litre or 240 litre bin. The majority of the cost in operating the service is with the vehicles, fuel and staff and this is the same when collecting either size bin.

If you pay for the services of a commercial gardener they have a statutory duty to lawfully dispose of the waste they produce themselves. The brown bins are provided for the use of residents only and must not be used to dispose of waste produced by commercial gardening services.
No, from the experience of other authorities that have started charging for garden waste services there has been little evidence of an increase in the fly tipping of garden waste. The majority of fly tips in Wealden are from commercial sources and rogue traders rather than householders. Wealden has a strong and effective enforcement team that investigates incidents and pursues prosecutions where necessary.

As long as your garden waste was presented on the scheduled collection day at the boundary of your property by 7am and only contained the correct contents, the crews will return. Please report any missed collections by 5pm the following working day, through our online missed bin form on My Wealden . Unfortunately, we are unable to return for missed collections reported later than this.

Garden waste collected from the kerbside in Wealden will be composted locally at the Woodlands Composting Plant, Whitesmith and turned into a quality soil conditioner. Bags of this soil conditioner can be purchased at your local Household Waste Recycling Sites .
All customers who sign up will be sent a licence sticker to attach to the brown bin. Bins that do not display the sticker will not be emptied and may be removed.

If you have lots of garden waste you may wish to pay for extra garden waste bins. You may subscribe for up to four bins at a cost of £60 per bin per year. Alternatively, you can take your garden waste free of charge to your local Household Waste Recycling Site (external link). 

Yes, you can sign up at any point during the year. You will pay for the remaining months on a pro-rata basis until the end of the subscription period.  Registrations for the current year will close when renewals open for the next subscription year (usually early May). New customers registering after this point will be charged pro rata for the remaining month/s of the current year in addition to the cost of the forthcoming year.