Rubbish collection

Our normal bin day is Thursday; over Christmas and New Year it may well be on Friday or Saturday.

• We have three bins – blue for ‘dry’ recyclable things like paper and plastics; green for garden and food waste and black for anything else.

Blue and green bins are collected one week, black the next. In Hatley, our bins are normally emptied fairly early (particularly the green bin).

South Cambs District Council’s website details ‘What are my bins for?‘

SCDC only collects green bins once a month from mid-December to late February or early March.

Oh – and click on the image on the right for a copy of Cambridgeshire County Council’s Waste Education Centre Newsletter, winter 2025. ‘It is,’ they say, ‘full of useful tips and details of free school and community workshops.’

Regarding your waste

South Cambs District Council has this advice of how to deal with your waste…

• Most packaging can be recycled in blue bins, including cardboard, plastic and foil.
• Food and drink packaging or containers need to be rinsed – they don’t have to be pristine, but food, grease and liquids left inside will spoil paper and card, making it unsuitable for recycling.
• Wet paper and card sticks to plastic packaging, making that harder to recycle too. These problems result in tonnes of items which could have been recycled having to be disposed of in landfill instead.
• It also helps to flatten cardboard boxes and squash plastic bottles – then you can fit more recycling in.
• A reminder – small, used batteries (inside a little bag) can be put on the top of any colour bin – the top, not inside to prevent bin lorries catching fire (which has happened several times over the last year or so).
• You can have more than one blue, green or black bin, but SCDC will charge to empty it – the details are on its website.

Which day?

And if you lose track of whether it’s a blue / green or black week (even though we try to keep this website up to date), you can find out via the ‘which day‘ page on SCDC’s website.

Residents feature on council bin lorries to give recycling advice

The photo top left on this page (and on the Practical matters ‘home’ page) feature an SCDC resident – part of the ‘Let’s Waste Less’ campaign launched by Greater Cambridge Shared Waste Service (GCSWS) in May 2025 with photos of residents and staff on the side of bin lorries to showcase best practice for recycling and preventing waste.

“The campaign aims to shine a light on good recycling habits including rinsing out tins or not putting non-recyclable items like polystyrene into recycling bins,” says an SCDC press release.

“Recycling and waste prevention actions are usually hidden – we don’t see our neighbours rinsing their bean tins, squashing plastic bottles or flattening cardboard and remembering to recycle aerosol cans, so it’s great to bring these important habits out into the light and show how lots of people are doing them.”

_{Page created 26th July 2018; updated 17th February 2026.}