Kingston collects on every bank holiday bar Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. Garden waste is £104 a year, bulky waste £48, and the tip needs booking.
The Royal Borough of Kingston collects on every bank holiday except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. That is the council’s own rule, stated in one line on its collection day page, and it is the answer to the question most people search for in May and August.
What the council does not publish anywhere is what happens on those three days, or when collections shift over Christmas week. Its garden waste terms say only that collections “might take place later than usual” at Christmas and New Year, and that changes will be communicated to residents. There is no Christmas timetable on the website in August. This page will be updated when one appears.
Everything below is from the council’s own waste pages. Two things are worth knowing first.
- Bins must be out by 6.30am, on your property boundary or as close to it as possible, without blocking the pavement. Crews work until 6pm, so a bin still uncollected at 4pm has not necessarily been missed.
- You get 20 tip bookings a year, and no more. The recycling centre operates a fair use policy that caps bookings per household per calendar year.
Which bin is which
Kingston splits recycling in two, and this is where most contamination happens. Paper and cardboard do not go in the green recycling bin. They go in the blue-lid bin. The green bin or box takes bottles, jars, cans, cartons and rigid plastic packaging, and nothing made of paper.
The other trap is plastic. Semi-rigid packaging such as yoghurt pots and meat trays is recyclable. Soft plastic is not. Clingfilm, salad bags, film lids, crisp packets, bubblewrap and polystyrene all go in the black bin. So do rigid plastics like plant pots, watering cans, toys and coat hangers, which look recyclable and are not.
Three rules that save an argument with the crew:
- Extra recycling is taken, extra rubbish is not. Put surplus recycling out in a plastic tub or cardboard box beside the bin and the crew will take it. Anything left on top of or beside the black bin is left behind.
- Never use a black bin bag for extra recycling. The council says so explicitly.
- Flatten the cardboard, and make sure one person could carry it. Remove polystyrene first, because the crew cannot take that.
The food caddy is a two-part system: a kitchen caddy indoors and a lockable outdoor bin that goes out weekly. Keep the outdoor handle upright to secure the lid against foxes and rats. Liners are optional. You can buy compostable liners from any Kingston library for £2.90, or put food in loose or wrapped in newspaper.
Kingston’s food waste goes to an anaerobic digestion plant, which turns it into farm fertiliser, biogas for the grid and fuel for the collection trucks themselves.
Sacks instead of bins
Not every home in the borough gets wheelie bins. Flats above shops, properties with a steep slope to the kerb, properties with more than three steps to the kerb and properties with no front garden are put on sack collections instead. The council assesses the property before it agrees.
The sack colours do not match the bin colours, which catches people out when they move:
- clear sacks for paper and card
- blue stripe sacks for dry mixed recycling
- red stripe sacks for non-recyclable rubbish, except flats above shops, which use plain black sacks
Sacks are delivered four times a year, enough for one of each type per collection day.
Garden waste: £104 a year
Garden waste is a paid subscription, collected fortnightly for 12 months. The charges, set out on the council’s own costs page:
| What you are paying for | Cost |
|---|---|
| 12-month subscription, per bin | £104 |
| First garden waste bin, if you need one | £44 |
| Each additional bin | £34 |
| Roll of 10 compostable sacks (sack properties only) | £45 |
You can have up to five bins at one address. The bin is a 240 litre grey body with a green lid, hired rather than bought, and it goes back to the council when you cancel.
The refund rule is unusually tight. You can cancel within three working days of paying and get your money back. After that you get nothing, even if you cancel in month two. There is also no refund if the bin is missed because it was too heavy, contaminated or not put out.
Timings differ depending on whether you need a bin. If you order one, the council takes 10 working days to deliver it, and the year runs from your next garden waste collection after that. If you already have a bin, it is four working days.
Bulky waste: £48 for up to four items
Bulky collections are booked online for a slot in the next eight weeks:
- £48 for one to four items
- £73 for five to eight items
Items must be outside by 6.30am on the booked day, on your property, as close to the road as possible and visible from the footpath. Not on the pavement, road or verge. In a block of flats, leave them outside the bin store. Collection runs from 6.30am to 4.30pm, and if nothing has been taken by 5pm you can report it as missed.
Do not pay for bulky waste you could give away. Kingston has arrangements with four charities that will collect free of charge:
- Sue Ryder takes furniture, homeware, sports equipment, televisions, speakers and small electricals. Upholstered furniture needs its fire safety label.
- TRAID takes clothes, paired shoes, accessories and household linen. The minimum is one large bag or three small ones.
- Little Lives UK takes clothes, toys, books, records, pictures and electronics including laptops and phones.
- Anglo Doorstep Collections takes clothing, footwear, books, small electricals, kitchenware, toiletries and toys.
The full list of what each will take is on the council’s site. None of them will take broken items.
TRAID also has clothing banks on seven housing estates, part of a six-month trial:
- Alpha Road, Surbiton
- Blakes Lane, New Malden
- Kingsnympton Park, Kingston
- Penryhn Gardens, Kingston
- Ripon Gardens, Chessington
- School Lane, Tolworth
- South Lane, Malden Manor
Leaving bags beside a full bank counts as fly-tipping and can be fined. Report a full or damaged bank to TRAID on 020 8733 2582.
Missed collections: two working days
You have two working days from the collection day to report a missed bin, and the crew will return within two working days of the report. Leave the bin out in the meantime.
You do not need to report anything if the whole street was missed. The council treats that as a known problem, usually a vehicle breakdown or an access issue, and the crew comes back.
The crew will not return if the bin was not out by 6.30am, was not visible on the boundary, was too heavy, was overflowing or held the wrong items. In those cases you wait for the next scheduled collection and fix the problem yourself first.
If you cannot put the bin out because of illness, disability, pregnancy or physical needs, and nobody else in the household can, the council runs an assisted collection service.
New and replacement bins
There is a £20 administrative fee on top of the container price, and £10 for each extra container ordered at the same time. The containers themselves cost:
| Container | Cost |
|---|---|
| 180L or 240L wheelie bin (refuse, recycling or garden) | £24 |
| 360L wheelie bin | £38 |
| Dry mixed recycling box | £5.20 |
| Indoor and outdoor food caddies | Free |
Delivery is within 10 working days and you do not need to be in. The council will only ever empty one rubbish bin per household, so ordering a second black bin means paying for a bin that is never collected. If a crew breaks or swallows your bin, the replacement is free, and a faulty new bin reported within seven days is replaced free too.
The tip: Villiers Road, and you must book
The borough has one household reuse and recycling centre, at 20 Chapel Mill Road, off Villiers Road, Kingston KT1 3GZ.
| Day | Open |
|---|---|
| Monday to Friday | 7.30am to 4.45pm |
| Saturday | 7.30am to 4pm |
| Sunday and bank holidays | 9am to 4pm |
It closes on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
Arriving by car means booking in advance, and without a valid booking you will not be let in. You need to be a Kingston resident and bring proof of address, such as a driving licence or a recent council tax bill.
Arriving on foot or by bicycle needs no booking at all, but the window is narrow: Saturdays and Sundays only, 3.15pm to 4pm. Within that window you can go as many times as you like.
The site rules that catch people out:
- a maximum of 20 bookings per household per calendar year
- a maximum of six bags per visit of soil, sand, hardcore, rubble and DIY waste
- no commercial waste, and no hazardous waste such as asbestos, chemicals, oil-based paints, varnishes or tyres
- batteries must be taken out of anything going in a rubbish bag
- black bag waste may be opened and inspected for recyclables
Separate entry conditions apply to vans, trailers and large vehicles.
For asbestos, chemicals and oil-based paints, the council points residents at the City of London hazardous waste service, which collects. Fly-tipping hazardous waste carries a fine of up to £50,000, imprisonment, or both.
Clinical waste, meaning dressings, swabs, syringes, sharps and prescribed drugs, is collected free by Essentia on 020 7188 9399. Incontinence pads go in the black bin, and out-of-date medicines go back to a pharmacy.
What the numbers say
Kingston makes around 800,000 rubbish and recycling collections a month and recycles 46% of what it picks up. Both figures are in the council’s own 2026-27 council tax booklet, posted to every household in March.
Related: parking in Kingston, Kingston council tax bands and Kingston roadworks and travel.
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