Waste Collection in Slough: Week A/B Bins, the 30kg Limit & What It Costs

Which bin, which week

The critical rule: grey, red and green bins are not collected within the same week. Your road is assigned to Week A or Week B, and which bin is due depends on both. Enter your road name — not your house number — in the council’s bin day directory to find your schedule.

The council will collect up to two red recycling bins from one property on your recycling day. A larger 240L grey bin is available if six or more people live at the property, but you must upload proof of occupancy such as bank statements, bills or child benefit letters for each person.

The two rules that get bins left behind

1. The 30kg weight limit. Bins weighing over 30kg will not be collected, for crew health and safety. The council’s own rule of thumb is useful: if the bin is too heavy for you to move easily, it is too heavy to be collected, and you should remove some items to lighten it.

That limit bites hardest on the green garden bin, where wet grass cuttings and soil-heavy waste get very heavy very quickly, and on grey bins after a clear-out.

2. No excess or side waste. If there is rubbish beside or on top of the bin it will not be collected, and the bin lid must be closed. The council’s stated alternative is to take the surplus to the Chalvey Household Waste Recycling Centre yourself.

Other reasons a bin is left: it was not in an easily accessible location, it was the wrong bin for that week, or it is not a council-issued bin.

The 7pm reporting rule

The same window applies to communal, grey, red and green bins, and separately to food waste collections. Reporting is done through the council’s Waste and Recycling Portal rather than a simple form, so it is worth setting up the account before you need it.

Note the distinction Slough draws between a rejected bin and a missed one. If yours was left because of weight, excess waste, contamination or being the wrong bin, that is a rejection — and no report will bring the crew back before the next scheduled day.

Garden waste: £55 — plus £52 for the bin

Slough’s garden waste subscription is £55 a year for 25 fortnightly collections, with no collections over a two-week Christmas period. That is the cheapest headline price among neighbouring councils — Buckinghamshire £65, Watford £62.40, Harrow £69, Hillingdon £77, Maidenhead £89.

The catch is the bin. The subscription fee does not include a green bin. If you do not already have a council-issued green bin you must buy one for £52, making the real first-year cost £107. The same applies if you need a replacement.

Subscriptions are annual from the date you take them out — subscribe on 20 May and it ends on 19 May the following year. You need one subscription per bin: two green bins require two subscriptions. Bins without a valid sticker are not collected.

The Chalvey Household Waste Recycling Centre continues to take household garden waste free of charge, which is the sensible route if your garden waste comes in occasional bursts rather than fortnightly.

Bulky waste: from £54, with a £10 concession

Slough’s bulky pricing is per item with a minimum charge, which produces some counter-intuitive results:

Because of the £54 minimum, one item costs £54, two items cost £54, and three items cost £57. A single fridge is £54; a fridge and a freezer is £59.40. The service only represents value if you fill it.

Bulky items are collected on your next scheduled domestic waste collection date after booking, and details appear in the portal three working days after you book. Leave items out with your refuse bin.

Where Slough’s service runs out

Fortnightly-everything plus a 30kg cap plus no side waste creates predictable gaps:

• Anything over 30kg — wet garden waste and post-clear-out grey bins routinely exceed it
• Excess waste of any kind — not collected, at all
• More than five bulky items — or more than two fridges
• DIY and building waste — no kerbside route
• A full house or garage clearance — far beyond the bulky service

We cover Slough, Iver, Denham, Gerrards Cross and the SL postcodes, priced by the load with no weight cap and no item limit:

One useful local quirk: Slough residents can use Buckinghamshire’s Burnham and Langley recycling centres without paying the non-resident access fee, alongside Chalvey. Burnham is closed Wednesdays and Thursdays, so check before travelling.

What goes in the red recycling bin

Paper, card and cardboard, plastic bottles and containers, tins and cans, glass bottles and jars, and cartons — rinsed, loose and not bagged.

What must not go in — this is the difference between a collected bin and a rejected one:

• Food waste
• Plastic bags, film and wrapping
• Textiles, nappies and sanitary items
• Garden waste — that is the green bin, subscription only
• Rubble, soil, timber and DIY waste
• Electricals, batteries and lightbulbs

With everything on a fortnightly cycle and a 30kg cap, contamination is expensive here in a way it is not on a weekly service: a rejected red bin means four weeks between recycling collections. Worth getting right.

How this compares to the neighbouring councils

Six neighbouring authorities run six genuinely different services. If you have moved recently, this is usually the source of the confusion — the rules you are used to may simply not apply here.

Slough has the cheapest headline garden subscription at £55, though the £52 bin charge makes year one £107. It is also the only council of the six with no weekly stream at all for wheelie-bin households, and the only one applying a hard 30kg weight limit.

Two things are worth taking from that table. First, the missed-bin reporting windows are all different — from Watford’s 24 hours to Hillingdon’s 72 — and missing yours means waiting for the next scheduled collection. Second, garden waste ranges from £55 to £89 for a broadly similar fortnightly service, and Slough’s headline £55 becomes £107 in year one if you need to buy the bin.

Slough waste collection FAQs