East Cambridgeshire District Council leader on recycling

Collecting waste and recycling is the most high profile service that East Cambs District Council undertakes.  In fact, it is our biggest logistical and financial exercise, with around 350,000 bins being emptied every month.

In 2026 all waste collection authorities must bring in a separate weekly food waste collection service.  We will be taking this opportunity to make other changes that we think will be popular with residents and help us recycle more.  

East Cambs residents are already some of the best recyclers in the country – we are in the top 20 of 376 waste collection authorities, but we want to help residents head towards that top spot!

East Cambridgeshire District Council wants to improve its recycling rates. (Image: ECDC)

Around 70 per cent of local authorities are now charging residents to collect green garden waste, but at East Cambs we still provide this service free of charge – alongside having frozen our share of Council Tax for 11 years. 

From 2026, we are planning to extend this service for residents by allowing households to have additional green waste bins free of charge. 

Residents will also be able to ask for additional blue recycling bins, again at no extra cost.  And thanks to the previous Government’s national changes there should be less packaging in the first place and more items will be able to be recycled through the blue bin.

We believe these measures, alongside the separate food waste collection and the rollout of black wheelie bins for residual waste, will help our district improve its recycling rate.

We will be carrying out a huge awareness campaign, including lots of information about what goes in what bin.  Every item that goes in your black bin goes into landfill and stores up problems for future generations – the closer we edge to a 100 per cent recycling rate, the lesser the problem for the future.