Worcester collects Tuesday to Friday, so a bank holiday Monday moves nothing. Garden waste is £84.18 plus £12.20, bulky waste starts at £10.60, and one of the two tips needs booking.

Worcester City Council will give you one date if you type in a postcode. It will not tell you that a bank holiday Monday makes no difference here, that the tip on one side of the city needs a booking and the other does not, or that the bin the council cannot collect is the one the tip will take for nothing.

This page puts the whole cluster on one screen. Every figure was checked on 2 September 2026 against Worcester City Council’s own pages and Worcestershire County Council’s recycling centre pages, both linked beside the figures.

Which bins Worcester uses

The city runs an alternate week scheme. Two bins, each emptied every other week, so each type of waste sits for a fortnight.

Bin What goes in it Standard size
Black General household waste 180 litres
Green Recycling, loose, no bags 240 litres
Brown Garden waste, paid subscription only 240 litres

Other sizes exist. Black bins come in 140, 180, 240, 660 and 1100 litres, green in 140, 240, 360, 660 and 1100. All of that is on the council’s wheelie bin sizes page.

Recycling goes in loose. Food waste in the black bin should be wrapped or bagged, which the council asks for to keep the bin usable across a fortnight. Both instructions are on the household waste page.

Some properties cannot take wheelie bins and stay on sacks. Those households get rolls of 52 black sacks and 40 green sacks.

New this year: from 1 April 2026 a replacement black bin costs £39, reduced to £29 if you receive Council Tax Support. That charge did not exist before.

Find your day

Use the council’s own round lookup at selfserve.worcester.gov.uk. It takes an address and returns your collection day and week.

Two things the lookup will not tell you:

  • Collections run Tuesday to Friday only, between 07:00 and 16:45.
  • Bins must be out by 7.00am, at the front edge of your property. Crews do not return if you miss them.

The council also notes that some collection days have changed and that affected households were written to. If your day moved and you never got the letter, the lookup is the thing to trust.

Bank holidays: nothing moves

This is the part worth knowing, and no Worcester page states it plainly.

Worcester does not collect household bins on a Monday at all. So a bank holiday Monday cannot push the week back. Most councils slide every round a day; Worcester has nothing to slide.

The council confirmed it for the August 2026 holiday on its bank holiday collections page: there were no alterations for refuse, recycling or garden waste, because “these services do not operate on a Monday”. Collections carried on as normal on Tuesday 1 September.

Commercial waste is the exception and does move. Businesses on a Monday collection went to Tuesday 1 September for residual and food waste, and Wednesday 2 September for recycling.

Christmas and Easter are different. The council says separate arrangements apply then and get announced on the website. As of 2 September 2026 the 2026 Christmas dates have not been published, so this page does not carry them. When they appear they will be on the bank holiday page linked above.

Garden waste: £84.18, and the admin fee is extra

The brown bin is a subscription, and the headline price is not the whole price.

Charge Amount
Annual subscription, first bin £84.18
One-off administration charge £12.20
Each additional bin £42.09
First-year total, one bin £96.38

Those are the council’s figures on its garden waste application page. The admin charge is paid once however many bins you order.

The service itself:

  • Fortnightly, March to early December, Tuesday to Friday. Nothing is collected over winter.
  • The subscription runs a rolling 12 months from your first collection, not to a fixed April date.
  • No refunds if you cancel part way through, and no concessions for older or disabled residents.
  • You cannot join if you are on a sack collection. The council will not take garden waste in sacks.
  • Kitchen and food waste, soiled pet bedding, soil, rubble and branches over 10cm across are all excluded.

Worcester’s garden waste goes to the composting site at Hill and Moor near Pershore and comes back as a soil conditioner sold as Greengrow. That, and the rest of the small print, is in the council’s garden waste FAQs.

Bulky waste: what it costs, and what they will not take

Two collection days, and which one you get depends on the item, not on where you live. General waste goes on a Tuesday, anything electrical or metal on a Thursday. Collections run 07:00 to 15:30.

Item Charge Day
Single general item £21.30 Tuesday
Two general items £31.90 Tuesday
Three general items £40.90 Tuesday
Bagged garden waste £20.40 per bag Tuesday
Medium white good (cooker, washing machine, dishwasher, spin drier) £31.80 Thursday
Small electrical or metal item (bike, BBQ, microwave) £10.60 Thursday

Counting rules catch people out. A three-seater or corner sofa counts as two items. A three-piece suite counts as three.

The council cannot collect fridges or freezers. Its bulky waste page says cooling appliances are suspended until further notice, blaming national problems with recycling them. The large white goods price of £40.90 is listed but marked not currently available.

That is the gap worth knowing about, because Bilford Road tip does accept fridges and freezers, for free. See below.

Two more things:

  • Bulky collections are free for Council Tax Support recipients, though the council warns of a long wait. Paid slots come sooner.
  • Refunds are only given if you cancel at least 24 hours ahead. The Saturday Skips service no longer runs.

Missed collection: you have five days

Worcester puts a hard limit on this, and it is short.

  • Do not report before 4.45pm on your collection day.
  • The council will not return for anything reported more than 5 calendar days after the scheduled collection.
  • Once reported, it aims to collect within three working days. Leave the bin out.

Report it through the council’s missed bins page.

Crews now leave a tag on the bin explaining why it was not emptied. Overfilled bins, and bins whose lids will not shut, are refused because waste can fall during the lift.

The two tips, and only one needs booking

Worcestershire County Council runs both sites. They have different hours and, more importantly, different rules. Getting this wrong wastes a trip.

Bilford Road (Worcester East) Hallow Road (Worcester West)
Postcode WR3 8PU WR2 6BZ
Mon to Fri 8am to 6pm 8am to 4pm
Saturday 8am to 6pm 8am to 12.30pm
Sunday 10am to 4pm Closed
Bank holidays Open Closed, all of them
Booking Required Sat, Sun and Mon Not needed

Sources: the county’s Bilford Road page and Hallow Road page.

The booking rule is the trap. Worcester City Council’s bulky waste page points you at both tips and never mentions it. The county’s own page is blunt: “If you have not pre-booked, you will not be able to access the site.” Slots are capped at 6 pre-booked visits per 14 days per household, and you need to show the pass on your phone or on paper. Arriving on a bike or on foot does not exempt you.

So on a bank holiday Monday, Hallow Road is shut and Bilford Road needs a booking. That is the one day of the year when turning up unplanned fails at both.

Other useful limits at Bilford Road: fridges, freezers, mattresses, plasterboard, soil and rubble are all accepted, but asbestos is not, and tyres are capped at four a day. Hallow Road does take asbestos, double bagged, if you ring 01905 421116 first to check capacity.

Vans and trailers need a free e-permit at either site, applied for through the county.

Where the recycling goes

Worcester recycles about 37% of its household waste, according to the council’s household recycling page. The council says that is up 21 percentage points on 2003, when kerbside recycling started here.

Also on this site

Customer Services is on 01905 722233 for anything this page does not cover.