Woodbridge's black bin is emptied every three weeks since 1 June, food waste weekly. What goes in each lid, £56 garden waste, and bulky bookings suspended.
Woodbridge’s general rubbish bin is now emptied every three weeks, not every two.
That changed on 1 June 2026, when East Suffolk Council switched the whole district to what it calls Better Recycling. Every household got an extra bin with a green lid for paper and card, and a grey food caddy that is emptied weekly. The old single recycling bin became the blue-lidded bin, and it now takes glass.
The rollout has not gone smoothly, and the council has said so in public twice this summer. Both statements are below, along with what actually goes in each container, what garden waste costs, and how long you have to report a bin the crew did not take.
Checked against the council’s own pages on 24 August 2026.
The five containers, and how often each is emptied
| Container | What goes in | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Grey food caddy | All food waste, including meat, fish and bones | Weekly |
| Blue lid | Glass, plastics, metal, cartons | Every three weeks |
| Green lid | Paper and card only | Every three weeks |
| Black or grey lid | Everything that cannot be recycled | Every three weeks |
| Brown lid (paid) | Garden waste | Fortnightly, 26 a year |
The council’s reasoning for the three-weekly rubbish bin is that the extra recycling capacity means the combined volume of your bins has not fallen. It also says the change saves 6,500 tonnes of carbon a year compared with fortnightly collections.
What goes in the blue-lidded bin
Glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, soft plastic bags and film, cartons including Tetra Pak, tins, cans and aerosols. Everything must be clean, dry and loose. No bags.
What goes in the green-lidded bin
Cardboard, paper, envelopes, magazines, books and shredded paper wrapped in paper. Nothing with glitter on it, and nothing greasy or food-stained. Anything with food residue on it belongs in the black bin, not the green one.
What the council will not empty
The household bin collections page lists the reasons a crew will leave your bin:
- the wrong waste in the bin
- the wrong bin put out
- a lid that will not close because the bin is overfull
- a bin the crew cannot move safely
- loose ash or cinders, which must be bagged and sealed in the black bin
Batteries and vapes must never go in any bin. The council’s own leaflet calls them a fire hazard and says to take them to a recycling centre or a battery bank.
How to find your collection day
There is no printed calendar for the town, because the rounds vary street by street. Use the council’s bin collection date finder, which takes your address and returns your next dates for all four streams.
Two things worth knowing before you look it up:
- Put your bin out by 6am. The council says collection times can change at any time.
- The order of your collections may have changed since May, even if your day did not. The council flagged this specifically when the new rounds started.
Bank holidays and Christmas
East Suffolk publishes almost nothing about bank holidays. The council’s own bin pages mention only one change: over Christmas and New Year all collections move, and you have to use the date finder to see your own dates.
For ordinary bank holidays there is no published rule at all. When the late May 2026 bank holiday came round, the East Anglian Daily Times reported that East Suffolk had confirmed no changes to its scheduled collections. The council has published nothing about the August bank holiday on 31 August 2026, so check the finder rather than assume.
Two things that went wrong this summer
This is the part the council’s service pages do not lead on, and it matters more than anything else on this page if your bin has been missed.
29 July: the council apologised for continuing delays. In a statement on the rollout, East Suffolk blamed a combination of mechanical and hydraulic adjustments to the new food waste vehicles, entirely new rounds and routes, staff sickness, and hot weather. It said contractor East Suffolk Services Ltd was working to a “rhythm” intended to make sure no household goes two consecutive weeks without a food waste collection. The advice if your caddy is not emptied:
- leave it at the kerb on your assigned day, handle up
- if it is not emptied, bring it back in and store it outside with your other bins
- put any extra food waste in the black bin in the meantime
14 August: collections in Woodbridge were suspended because of the heat. The council named the affected rounds, and Woodbridge was one of them, alongside Kesgrave, Nacton, Kirton, Martlesham, Little Bealings, Rushmere St Andrew, Bucklesham, Purdis Farm and Foxhall. Residents were told to leave bins out, and that general and garden waste would be prioritised over recycling.
The council has since appointed a Waste Operations Specialist on a four-month contract worth £62,400, and is spending a further £102,000 on temporary customer service staff to handle the calls and emails. Both are paid from the Waste and Recycling Strategy reserve.
Reporting a missed bin
You have two working days from the day your street was collected. After that the council will not take the report.
Use the council’s missed bin collections page, but note two exceptions:
- Do not report missed food waste on that form. Bring the caddy in and wait for your assigned day the following week.
- A contaminated bin cannot be reported as missed. If the crew leaves a sticker, the council will not come back. The bin is emptied on its next scheduled date, which under the new system is three weeks away.
Crews work until 5pm, so the council says you may not be able to report a bin until after that.
Garden waste: £56 a year
The garden waste scheme is an annual subscription costing £56.00, which buys 26 fortnightly collections across the whole year. Extra bins cost the same £56 each, plus a £20.00 delivery fee if a new bin has to be brought out.
Your garden bin lid is being swapped for a brown one as part of the same Suffolk-wide tidy-up of lid colours. The council cannot give a date for your street, and asks you to leave the bin out until the end of the working day on your collection day so the refitting crew can reach it.
Branches must be under 6cm thick. No bagged waste, no soil or rubble, no invasive weeds such as ragwort or Japanese knotweed. Garden waste is also free at any Suffolk recycling centre, so the subscription is a convenience, not the only route.
Bulky waste: bookings are currently suspended
East Suffolk is not taking new bulky waste bookings. The council has suspended them to clear a backlog and free up capacity for the Better Recycling rollout. If you already have a booking, leave the items out and they will be collected.
When the service is running the prices are:
- up to 3 items: £55.00
- each additional item: £20.00
A mattress counts as a separate item, and the service is non-refundable. Because of rules on upholstered seating and persistent organic pollutants, sofas and armchairs can no longer be collected alongside other items, so a booking may be split across two visits.
In the meantime, bulky items are free at a recycling centre, and any item put out for a council collection may be passed to The Benjamin Foundation, which repairs and resells through its Lowestoft store.
Recycling centres near Woodbridge
The tips are run by Suffolk County Council, not East Suffolk, and you must book a slot before you go. The three closest to Woodbridge are:
| Site | Address |
|---|---|
| Foxhall | Foxhall Road, Brightwell, Ipswich, IP10 0HT |
| Felixstowe | Carr Road, Felixstowe, IP11 3RX |
| Leiston | Lovers Lane, Leiston, IP16 4UJ |
Opening hours are the same at every site in the county, per Suffolk Recycling:
- April to September: 9am to 5pm, and until 7pm on Thursdays from May to August
- October to March: 9am to 4pm
- Every Wednesday: closed. The Foxhall charity re-use shop still opens
- Sundays and bank holidays: open, on the normal seasonal hours
- Closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day
Household waste is free. Hardcore, rubble, soil, ceramic bathroom fittings and plasterboard are not classed as household waste even from your own home, and are only free up to four 25-litre bags per visit and four visits in any four weeks. The council checks that allowance against your vehicle registration.
Leiston has a specific trap: the compactor bins there take items up to about 1 metre by 1.5 metres, so anything larger needs a word with the site staff first.
Extra bins
Additional blue and green bins are available for a one-off fee covering the cost of the bin. Additional black bins are free, but only for households of six or more people or where a medical condition produces extra waste, and proof is required.
If you need a new or replacement bin, the council has a separate ordering page, and an assisted collection service for anyone who cannot get a bin to the kerb.
Also on this site: parking in Woodbridge, Woodbridge council tax bands and current roadworks and travel disruption.
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