Sevenoaks' New Wheelie Bins Arrive From 12 October - Here's What Changes

Sevenoaks District Council will introduce wheelie bins and alternate-weekly waste and recycling collections from Monday 12 October, the council confirmed this week. Most of the 45,000 affected households should have their new bins by now, with deliveries to the remainder continuing until Sunday 11 October.

Households moving to the new service get two bins: a 240-litre wheelie bin with a green lid for all dry recycling - including glass bottles and jars for the first time, meaning no more separate trips to the bottle bank - and a 180-litre black wheelie bin for general waste. The two are collected on alternate weeks rather than both weekly. Food waste collection doesn't change: it continues weekly in the orange and black caddy, by a separate vehicle. Residents should have had a postcard confirming their first collection dates; anyone who hasn't, or has lost it, can check at sevenoaks.gov.uk/collectiondays.

From 12 October the council is also aligning garden waste collections with the new general waste week, so some garden waste customers will find their collection has moved to a different week than before. Garden waste sack collections are being suspended entirely for one week, from 12 to 16 October, while the council manages the changeover.

The reusable green recycling sacks they're replacing cost £255,000 to buy and distribute, but the council says they kept around four million single-use clear plastic sacks out of use and produced a net saving of about £225,000, alongside a 3.5% rise in recycling rates. They're being retired now because of newer regulations requiring councils to run simpler collection systems with less manual handling for crews. Residents can keep their green bags for their own use, or wait for a dedicated council collection to recycle them, expected in early 2027. A small number of properties without suitable storage or access - flats above shops, for instance - will keep using sacks, and nothing changes for blocks of flats that already use communal bins.

Cllr Irene Roy, the council's Cabinet Member for Cleaner and Greener, said the change - the biggest to the service in a generation - would likely bring "some teething problems as residents and our crews adjust," and asked for patience while they're resolved. This builds on the reusable bag scheme this site covered back in August, which was always billed as a bridge to this wheelie bin rollout rather than a permanent fix. Source: Sevenoaks District Council