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Your rubbish and recycling collections will continue as normal on the coming Easter bank holidays (Good Friday 29 March and Easter Monday 1 April).
However, our crews will be making an earlier start at 5.30am on both days. If you're due a collection on either of these days, be sure to put out your waste the night before to avoid being missed.
 Sign up for garden waste collections
Sign up or renew your garden waste collection service, ahead of the household waste collection changes that are coming this summer.
This optional, subscription-based service helps reduce waste and benefits the environment.
Your garden clippings, grass cuttings, leaves and weeds are collected from the kerbside every fortnight, then sent to a composting facility where they’re turned into high quality, peat-free compost for growing other plants.
The price for 12 months (1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025) is £86. For those signing up for the first time, the price includes a 240-litre brown wheeled bin for storing garden waste. Find out more or sign up on our website.
Already subscribed? Make sure you've renewed!
Our crews have noticed that quite a few brown bins don't have their green sticker for the 2024/25 service on them yet.
Don't worry if you've ordered yours already, but please bear in mind that we won't empty any garden waste bins from Monday, 1 April if they don't have one.
New charge for replacement bins
From 1 April, a new charge of £40 per bin will be introduced for replacement of broken or missing bins to cover the cost of purchase and delivery. However, it’ll be free if the bin is damaged during collections and reported by our crews.
To make your bin last longer, don’t overfill it as compacted waste can damage it during the emptying process. Also, label the house name or number clearly on your bin, so it can be identified if lost.
 Handy recycling hints on your doorstep
Some friendly new faces are hitting the streets of Wokingham Borough to help you and your neighbours recycle more of your waste.
Our recycling engagement team are now knocking on doors for a chat and giving out helpful tips in the run-up to the waste collection changes in mid-August.
These changes can make essential savings and hugely reduce our environmental impact – but we need you to help us by recycling all you can.
Our team, including newcomers Bethan and Charlotte, are giving out useful leaflets and explaining how to use your green bags and food waste bin to their fullest.
We know change can be hard, but they’re here to show how easy it is to make a few simple changes to your daily routine.
 Get ready for this summer's changes
At the moment, we recycle 57 per cent of all the borough’s waste – which is fantastic, but it would be 70 per cent if everyone recycled everything they could.
As well as producing fewer carbon emissions, which can reduce the effects of climate change, it costs far less to recycle waste than to burn it for energy or send it to landfill.
We’re switching to fortnightly rubbish collections from a new wheeled bin, and fortnightly recycling collections from the existing green bags, as this encourages people to think more carefully about what they throw away.
Food waste collections are staying weekly, so be sure to make use of these. At the moment, food waste is the biggest area where we could be recycling more.
Don’t forget – if you need more green recycling bags or a food waste bin, they’re free at 17 collection hubs across the borough.
 A eggs-citing time to get in the recycling habit
With Easter almost upon us, it's worth remembering that a lot of the packaging from your chocolate egg is recyclable.
Metal foil, plastic trays and cardboard boxes can all go in your green bags for collection - just as they can for other items throughout the year.
You can also take soft plastics, like any sweet and chocolate wrappers inside the egg, to some supermarkets in the borough for recycling.
If you can, we'd appreciate it if you could remove any plastic windows from your cardboard box and dispose of them in your rubbish.
Go the extra mile - reduce instead of recycling
While recycling's far better for the environment than throwing things away, it's even better to reduce how much waste we create in the first place.
If you're hosting a children's egg hunt, you could choose eco-friendly Easter eggs made of biodegradable or compostable materials - or even make and decorate your own using natural materials like paper maché.
This gives the little ones a fun and creative activity, and it makes searching for the eggs more exciting when they know they had a hand in making them!
Also, if you're entertaining this Easter, consider using as few disposable items like plates, cups and cutlery as you can, or encouraging guests to bring reusable ones.
 Choose what you'll use for Easter meals and beyond
This year's annual Food Waste Action Week is encouraging everyone to make their fruit and vegetables go further by buying them loose.
The campaign, organised by the Love Food Hate Waste campaign and fronted by celebrity chef Gino D'Acampo, says the UK could save some 60,000 tonnes of food waste every year if people bought the amounts they needed.
Before you do your Easter food shop, why not have a look at their page? There are lots of handy hints, a video and a short, fun quiz that'll give you some tailored shopping advice once you've answered it.
Gino's top tips for a more sustainable shop:
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Write a flexible meal plan for the week - take stock of what food you've already got and then take a few minutes to plan ahead
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Make a list of what you'll need - think about what you're going to have for each meal and use the free portion calculator tool if you need it
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Stick to your list - whether you're in the supermarket or buying online, tick things off one by one and only buy the exact amounts you need
Recycle your leftovers if you need to
It's important to throw away as little as possible, but you can recycle your scraps rather than putting them in the rubbish.
If you aren't already using our food waste collection service, which is staying weekly when our household waste collections change in August, pick up your free outdoor food bin and indoor food caddy from one of our hubs.
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