Epsom Bin Collection Days: Five Bins, Every Week

Most councils collect your rubbish one week and your recycling the next. Epsom and Ewell does not. Every household here has five containers emptied every single week, on the same day. Only garden waste is fortnightly, and only if you pay for it.

That changes the two questions people normally ask. Bank holidays are a non-event in this borough, because the council states plainly that it works as normal on bank holiday Mondays and Good Friday. Christmas is where it does get disrupted, and the disruption is bigger than most people expect.

Epsom and Ewell Borough Council collects the bins. Surrey County Council runs the tip on Blenheim Road. That split is why the links below point at two different websites.

The quick answer

• Weekly, every week: black refuse bin, green mixed recycling bin, glass box, textiles bag and food caddy.
• Fortnightly: garden waste only, on subscription, £74.15 per bin for 2026/27.
• Bank holidays: collections run as normal, including Good Friday.
• Christmas week: no refuse collections at all. Food and recycling only.
• Bins out by 6.30am, at the edge of your property where the crew can see them.
• One black bin per household, 140 litres, and the council will not give you a second one.
• Find your day: the council’s collection day checker.

What goes out, and when

The service is branded Simply Weekly Recycling. Five things go out together on your collection day, every week.

Source: the council’s Guide to Simply Weekly Recycling and its per-bin pages.

Three rules catch people out here, and all three are the council’s own wording.

• No glass in the green bin. Glass has its own kerbside box, and the box is for nothing else.
• No textiles in the green bin. The council says they cannot easily be separated and may get the whole lorry load rejected.
• No plastic bags or plastic film in the green bin, though you can line your food caddy with any bag except a black one.

The charity bag trap

Textiles go out in a clear, sealed, labelled bag, not a charity bag. The council’s textiles page says crews are instructed not to take charity bags, because of the risk of collecting genuine donations by mistake. Only the covers of pillows, duvets and cushions are accepted, not the items themselves.

New materials since April 2026

Under the national Simpler Recycling rules, the green bin took on extra materials from 1 April 2026:

• cartons, such as juice and plant milk cartons
• foil, clean and scrunched into a ball no smaller than a tennis ball
• clean foil trays
• non-black plastic plant pots, clean and free of soil
• empty squeezy metal tubes, such as tomato puree
• empty squeezy plastic tubes, such as toothpaste

Bank holidays and Christmas

Every bin page on the council’s site carries the same line: “We work as normal on bank holiday Mondays and Good Friday.” There is no revised timetable to check and no day to shift. That covers the late August bank holiday, the two in May, and Easter.

Christmas is different, and this is the part the council’s service pages do not lead with. Its festive services notice sets out what actually happens:

• Christmas week: there are no refuse collections. Put out food and recycling, including glass, and nothing else.
• New Year’s week: refuse restarts, but collection days may change.
• No garden waste at all during either week.
• Collection days can move in both weeks, so the published day is not reliable.
• The council puts a label on your bin handle before Christmas giving the revised dates for your road.

The council publishes the revised dates on a dedicated Christmas and New Year collections page each December. That page is not live in August, so the 2026 dates are not yet available and are not printed here.

Garden waste

Garden waste is the only chargeable collection, and the only fortnightly one. It runs on your normal collection day.

• £74.15 per bin per year for new subscriptions and renewals from 1 April 2026, per the council.
• There is no limit on the number of bins you can subscribe to.
• The agreement runs twelve months and is non-refundable.
• Direct debit renews automatically. Other payment methods get a reminder before expiry.
• No collections during Christmas or New Year weeks.

Branches thicker than your wrist, about three inches, are refused. So are soil, stones, plant pots and any bagged waste. Kitchen waste is refused too, even home-grown, because of the meat contamination risk. It goes in the food caddy instead.

Schools, places of worship and charities can subscribe. Businesses cannot.

Bulky waste

Fees changed on 1 April 2026 and are set out on the council’s bulky waste fees page. Five refuse sacks count as one item.

Missed collections, and extra bins

If the crew genuinely missed you, what happens depends on the bin.

• Black bin, green bin, glass box or textiles: no return visit. They come back on your collection day next week. Leave the excess in a clearly labelled bag beside the bin and they will take that too.
• Food waste or garden waste: they return within two working days of you reporting it.

That is from the council’s missed collection page. Worth being honest about one gap: the council does not publish a deadline for reporting a missed bin. Many Surrey councils give you two or three working days. Epsom and Ewell states no window at all, so report it the same day rather than assume you have one.

If a notice appears on your bin instead, it was rejected for contamination, not missed. Remove the wrong items and it is collected the following week.

On extra containers, the council’s additional bins page splits sharply:

• Extra green bins, glass boxes and food caddies are free, on request.
• Extra black refuse bins are not available. Since collections went weekly, the council allows one 140-litre bin per household.
• A 240-litre black bin is only for households of ten people or more, and only after a home visit from the recycling team.

An assisted collection, which the council calls the Pullout service, is free for residents who cannot move their containers. The crew collects from an agreed spot inside your property and puts the bins back.

A live disruption

The council’s service status page is currently reporting staff shortages. Plastic and cardboard recycling was missed on one route on Thursday 13 August and another on Tuesday 18 August 2026. In both cases the council said it could not return before the next scheduled collection. It asked residents to bag the extra recycling and leave it beside the green bin. Check that page before reporting a miss.

The tip: Epsom Community Recycling Centre

The tip is on Blenheim Road, Epsom, KT19 9DL, and it is run by Surrey County Council, not the borough. The household waste entrance is on Felstead Road. Blenheim Road is the business waste entrance.

Source: Surrey County Council’s Epsom CRC page, reviewed 24 June 2026. Telephone 01372 728722.

Things worth knowing before you drive over:

• It is shut two days a week, Tuesday and Wednesday, all year.
• Bank holidays are normal opening hours, including Easter. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve close at 2pm. Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day are closed.
• Pedestrians are not allowed in. You have to arrive in a vehicle.
• Tyres cost £5 each, whole or part. Bicycle tyres and inner tubes are free.
• There is no Revive reuse shop at this site.
• No booking is required for a car.

If you are coming in a van, pickup, camper van or anything towing a trailer, you need a Surrey van permit first. It costs £10 a year, allows a maximum of 12 visits, and only one is issued per household. You must be a Surrey resident, and the system checks your vehicle against DVLA records for tax and MOT. Large hatchbacks and minibuses with the seats taken out may be treated as vans.

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