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Rubbish & Recycling

Wokingham Borough Connect

Check your bin collection days

Your waste collection days will be adjusted temporarily from next week until normal collections resume on Monday 15 January, as our crews will be taking their well-deserved break during the festive season. 

Check the revised collection schedule before putting out your waste during this time.

Please note: 

• There will be no collections on Christmas Day (25 December), Boxing Day (26 December) and New Year's Day (1 January).
• Our crews will work on Saturdays during this period (30 December, 6 January and 13 January), and start earlier at 5.30am. 
• Garden waste collections will follow the same revised schedule.

Revised collection schedule

From 25 December to 29 December

From 1 to 5 January

From 8 to 12 January

New waste collections to make essential savings

We’re changing how we collect rubbish and recycling from most households next summer to help us protect our finances and reduce our impact on the environment.

We should be changing anyway to honour our climate commitments and meet Government recycling targets, but the new system will save us more than £1 million a year.

This will help us as we face unprecedented financial challenges due to rising costs, growing demand for services like social care and years of underfunding from Westminster.

We’ve got to make savings of £12 million in the current financial year (2023/4), which we've already identified, and then more beyond that.

As we consider some tough decisions, we must protect funding to help those who need it most, like older people and children who need extra support at school or home.

Recycling more to spend less

About 60 per cent of our annual council tax spend funds care services, while nearly 80 per cent of our annual revenue budget is spent on all our statutory services.

At the same time, we're getting less funding from the Government per resident than any other unitary council while inflation is at a 40-year high and constantly driving all our costs up.

We must address this “triple threat” to avoid becoming effectively bankrupt, as other councils have done, as this could result in service cuts and significant council tax rises.

The £1million in expected savings from the waste changes will mostly come from people recycling more and throwing less away as rubbish, because recycling costs less to dispose of than rubbish.

Many of our residents are already recycling all they can, but those that aren’t – and we know that more than 50 per cent of what goes in the blue bags could be recycled – will be more likely to recycle more once we go to fortnightly rubbish collections with wheeled bins. Once the wheeled bin is full, you won’t just be able to grab another blue bag and put out more rubbish.

Most English councils have successfully adopted similar systems, and we expect to recycle 64 per cent of our waste instead of 54 per cent after we’ve changed.

Christmas Treecycling for charity

The nationwide charity Sue Ryder is encouraging residents in the Thames Valley area to recycle their real trees through its Christmas Treecycling service. In return for a donation, volunteers from the charity will collect your real Christmas tree for recycling. 

You have to book for your collection online by 31 December. Collections will run from Tuesday 9 January to Friday 12 January in most postcodes in the borough. 

The programme will help raise vital funds for Sue Ryder to continue its compassionate end-of-life care and bereavement support to people in need.

Please note Sue Ryder collection has a tree limit of 10 feet and all decorations and pots should be removed beforehand.