Rotherham council offer a garden waste disposal service alongside other general waste and recycling collections. RMBC’s paid service is available annually on a subscription basis.
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council green waste collections run from late February or early March throughout the year to collect garden waste fortnightly through the summer months and monthly through the winter. The service has an annual fee, collected when you subscribe each year.
How Do I Sign Up For Rotherham Green Waste Collections?
Residents falling into the RMBC catchment area can sign up to the service online for an annual fee, and will be assigned an additional collection day for their garden bin to be emptied.
Sign up for the Rotherham green waste collection service on the council website. Each year the service can be renewed, by paying for a full year to get another annual set of collections.
What Colour Bin For Garden Waste In Rotherham?
The green waste collections have their own wheelie bin for subscribers, but green bins are already in use for paper and card.
Rotherham’s bin collections use green coloured wheelie bins for garden waste, collected fortnightly through the warmer months and monthly in the winter.
How Much Do The RMBC Green Waste Collections Cost?
The garden waste collection service is a paid option in addition to the regular general household waste and recycling collections that are part of your council tax services.
In the 2021/2022 collection year, the green waste service costs £41 in Rotherham. This is a fixed fee whenever in the year you sign up, so it makes sense to subscribe at the beginning of the annual subscription (usually beginning in late February).
What Can I Put In My Green Waste Bin?
Generally speaking your garden waste service is designed to collect waste that grows in most gardens.
You can dispose of grass, along with clippings from plants, shrubs and hedges in your brown bin for collection as part of Rotherham green waste collections.
In addition you can also place wood shavings and bark into the bin for collection and even small branches too. After the festive season, you can even get rid of real Christmas trees with your garden waste, but make sure you chop it up so that it fits inside the bin with the lid closed.
What Cannot Go In My Garden Brown Bin?
Garden waste is fairly self explanatory for most people, however anyone who has worked as a bin man knows that people try to rid of all sorts in their bins that shouldn’t be there from time to time.
Some common items placed into garden bins that shouldn’t be in brown bins include:
- Food leftovers
Food may be suitable for your compost bin, but it’s not garden waste. - Fruit
Just because fruit often grows on trees, it can’t be thrown away with the tree! - Vegetables
Although vegetables might have grown in the ground in your garden, they don’t qualify as garden waste. - Bricks
- Plasterboard
- Large branches/Tree trunks
Small branches are fine, large ones are not. Use common sense, but a branch thicker than 1/4 inch wide is likely to be considered large. - Turf
Grass cuttings are fine, but turf (strips of grass growing in soil) is not suitable for the garden waste service. - Soil
Soil can be taken to Rotherham tips for disposal, but not placed in the brown bin. - Other Recyclables Or General Waste
Most rubbish and other waste that’s not suitable for brown bin collections can go into one of your other bins for collection, and everything else should be taken to your local tip.
Can I Leave Out More Green Waste Than Fits In The Bin?
Your annual fee allows of a single bin to be emptied on each collection cycle. You can however subscribe twice and get a discount on the second bin.
For the 2021/2022 collection year, additional green bins are available if you generate a lot of garden waste for an annual fee of £32 on top of the cost of the first bin.
How Do I Find Out My Collection Day?
If you are unsure when to put your brown bin out for collection, you can use the RMBC website to find out when your collection day is.
Use the RMBC website to find out which day your bins will be emptied. You can see when each bin day is by entering your postcode or street name.
What If My Bin Has Not Been Emptied?
If you find your bin has not been emptied on collection day, there are two possible courses of action you need to take.
Look down your street if your bin has not been emptied on collection day. If other bins have been emptied, report this to the council after 3pm on collection day or on the next working day. If no-one’s bin has been emptied, leave the bin out for collection the next day.
It’s advisable to report the bin as not being emptied in the afternoon of the next day though if it has still not been collected, because the deadline for reporting is the end of the next working day.
Can’t I Just Put Garden Waste Into The Normal Bin?
While you can throw grass into your pink lid bin with the general waste, it’s not a great option. The green waste collections are taken to be disposed of responsibly, meaning that as much as possible is composted to be re-used by the council for other purposes.
Re-use and recycling is much better for the environment, because its new use doesn’t need new raw materials (or at least not as many), and in addition your waste doesn’t end up being dumped in landfill.
While councils go to huge efforts to reduce the amount of waste from general waste collections that ends up in landfill, using a garden waste collection for your green waste is a better option for households, councils and the planet.
Is It Better To Take My Grass To The Tip After Mowing The Lawn?
All Rotherham tips accept green waste, and that’s certainly a better choice than emptying it into your pink lid bin.
It’s likely that subscribing to green waste collection rounds is worth considering though, as you may spend more on fuel taking your waste to the tip over the course of the year, not to mention the time queueing to get into the tip and unload.
What’s more, the environmental impact of hundreds of households all driving to the tip is much greater than a single dust cart travelling around the Rotherham area on a carefully planned route.
