Every Shropshire round slipped a day after the August bank holiday, and Friday's went to Saturday. Bin colours, the £58 garden charge and bulky waste prices.

Shropshire Council publishes no bank holiday bin page. It does not need to, because the answer is in every household’s own collection calendar, and this year it was the same answer for everyone.

After the late August bank holiday, every round in the county moved one day later. We checked five Shrewsbury addresses on five different rounds through the council’s resident service portal, and each one showed the same shift, flagged as “Rescheduled”:

Your normal day Collected instead on
Monday 31 August Tuesday 1 September
Tuesday 1 September Wednesday 2 September
Wednesday 2 September Thursday 3 September
Thursday 3 September Friday 4 September
Friday 4 September Saturday 5 September

The Friday round is the one that catches people. It does not skip to the following Monday, it goes out on the Saturday. Collections returned to normal from Monday 7 September.

The bins, and what goes in each

Shropshire’s kerbside service splits into four streams. The council’s collection service page sets out what each one takes.

Shropshire Council kerbside containers and what each one takes Four kerbside streams in Shropshire. The purple-lidded recycling bin or recycling boxes take mixed packaging: cans, plastics, glass, foil, aerosols and Tetra Pak cartons, kept loose and not bagged. The blue bag takes paper and card only, including newspapers, magazines, envelopes, cereal boxes and flattened cardboard. The rubbish bin takes anything that cannot be recycled, and is sent to an energy recovery facility. The garden bin is a paid subscription costing 58 pounds a year for each bin, up to three bins. Four kerbside streams, and what each one takes Food waste has no container of its own in Shropshire. It goes in the rubbish bin. Purple-lidded bin or recycling boxes Cans, plastic pots, tubs, trays and bottles, glass bottles and jars, foil, aerosols, bottle tops, Tetra Pak cartons. Loose, never bagged. Blue bag Paper and card only: newspapers, magazines, envelopes, cereal and egg boxes. Rubbish bin Anything that cannot be recycled, including food waste. Burned for electricity. Garden bin Subscription only: £58 a year per bin, up to three bins. Source: Shropshire Council collection service and garden waste pages · Graphic by Shropshire Today

Two details are easy to get wrong.

  • Nothing beside the bin gets taken. The council will not collect side waste, and the lid has to close. The one exception is card: extra cardboard can be left next to the blue bag if it is torn into pieces the size of the bag and tied so it cannot blow about. Carrier bags of card are not collected.
  • Batteries go out loose beside the recycling, sealed in a clear plastic bag so the crew can see them. Lithium batteries are the exception and cannot be collected, per the council’s recycling FAQs.

Households that cannot store bins get Shropshire Council branded sacks instead. Unbranded sacks are not collected. Every household is entitled to one 240 litre rubbish bin, and extra capacity only where six or more people live there permanently.

Find your day, and the calendar trap

Enter your postcode at bins.shropshire.gov.uk and you get a dated calendar for your address, running several months ahead.

Each service on that page also offers an iCal subscription you can add to a phone calendar. It is useful, but read the small print the council buries in the feed itself:

Note: any changes to collections around Christmas / New Year will not show up in your calendar, please check online or in local press for details.

So the calendar you subscribe to is the one thing that will not warn you about the busiest fortnight of the year. Check the portal page directly in December.

Christmas

Nothing has been published for Christmas 2026 yet. Shropshire has no standing bank holiday or festive page at all, and the last full schedule its contractor Veolia put out covered Christmas 2023, so it is no guide to this year’s dates. We will publish the 2026 schedule here as soon as the council releases it.

The recycling centres are the one certainty. All five open 9am to 5pm every day of the year except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.

Garden waste costs £58, and food waste has nowhere to go

Garden collections are a paid subscription. The current terms are:

  • £58 a year per bin, charged in full whenever in the year you sign up
  • up to three bins, at £58 each
  • collections every two weeks, starting once the subscription sticker is on the bin
  • no discounts or exemptions, the council states plainly
  • the year runs 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026, and the price for the next year has not been published

Food waste is the bigger gap. Every English collection authority was required to run a weekly food waste service from 31 March 2026. Shropshire did not, and still does not.

Councillor David Vasmer, the cabinet member for waste, said in the council’s April announcement that the council “fully recognise the statutory duty to introduce weekly food waste collections from 1 April, but the reality is that this is not achievable for Shropshire at this time”. Government funded the vehicles and bins with just over £3.6m, but not the running costs.

The Cabinet report of 15 April 2026 spells out how long that could last. One option on the table is a retrospective transition under the Environment Act regulations, which “would allow the council to delay the implementation of a weekly food waste collection until the end of the existing contract from April 2039”. The council’s PFI contract with Veolia runs to that date. A scrutiny committee split 4-4 on whether to do nothing or start a fortnightly food collection alongside garden waste, and officers were told to report back to Cabinet in July 2026.

Until something changes, food waste goes in the rubbish bin.

Bulky collections

Booked by phone on 0345 678 9007, paid up front, normally done within ten working days. The council’s bulky waste page prices it by the number of items:

Items Price
1 to 3 £52.50
4 to 6 £77.50
7 to 9 £103.50
10 to 12 £124.00
13 to 15 £150.00
1 to 10 sacks of residual waste £79.50

Crews will not come inside a house, garage or outbuilding, and everything has to be liftable by two people. Pianos, safes, sheds, storage heaters, fixtures and fittings, soil, rubble and construction waste are all refused. Taking the same items to a recycling centre yourself is free.

Missed collections

Report within two working days of your collection day, online through the portal or on 0345 678 9007. The council checks four things first, so check them yourself before you call:

  • the containers were out by 7am
  • they were out on the right day and in the right place
  • the lid was closed and nothing was beside the bin
  • the right waste was in the right container

If it was genuinely missed, the crew returns within two working days. Leave the container out. There is no call-back to tell you what was decided.

In an amber or red heat warning, crews can start rounds from 6am, so a 7am bin is already too late. That happened in Shropshire in June 2026.

The five recycling centres

Bridgnorth (Faraday Drive, WV15 5BA), Craven Arms (Long Lane, SY7 8DU), Oswestry (Mile Oak Industrial Estate, SY10 8GA), Shrewsbury (Vanguard Way, Battlefield Enterprise Park, SY1 3TG) and Whitchurch (Waymills, SY13 1TT). All open 9am to 5pm, every day but the three Christmas and New Year closures.

You do not need to book if you arrive by car. That changed on 17 February 2025, and it is worth knowing because the council’s own individual site pages still tell you to book a slot. The rules that actually apply, from the bookings page:

  • car drivers: no booking, but you may be asked to prove you live in Shropshire
  • vans, trailers and some 4x4s: booking required, plus proof of residency on arrival
  • 12 bookings a year maximum
  • Telford and Wrekin residents may use Shropshire sites; other neighbouring areas may not
  • DIY waste is capped at 0.5 cubic metres a month, about a small car boot
  • a full set of car tyres, spare included, per month
  • asbestos needs a call to 0345 678 9007 first, to collect free wrapping

Trade waste is banned outright. Bringing business waste to a site is an offence under section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

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