About the service, sign up, or renew your subscription

You can sign up to have your garden waste collected from your home every two weeks. 

The benefits of this are:

• it is more convenient for you
• save money not having to drive to the recycling centre
• it’s better for the environment
• it will help raise Torbay’s recycling rates
• a local farm will turn your green waste into compost

We will give you a 240 litre brown bin for your garden waste. If you have a lot of garden waste, you can subscribe for up to three brown bins. There is a fee for each bin you have.

To use this service you must have room to store your brown bin. You cannot keep it on a public footpath or road.

Collection days

Collections will be on the same day of the week as your current recycling and waste. We usually collect garden waste on the alternate week to general waste.

If we collect your general waste weekly, we will give you fortnightly collection dates when you sign up to the service.

We reserve the right to change your collection day subject to providing you with prior written notification.

If we can't collect your garden waste on the normal day we will try and collect it within 48 hours.

There is a break each year for one month over Christmas and New Year. This year we will make the last scheduled collections on Friday 13 December 2024. They will resume on Monday 13 January 2025.

What we will collect

We will collect:

• grass cuttings
• flowers
• small tree branches (up to 10cm thick)
• loose leaves
• shrub trimmings
• hedge trimmings
• weeds

If your bin contains any items not listed above, you must remove them before your next collection day. Your bin will be considered contaminated, and we will not empty it. If you contaminate your bin regularly, we will remove it. We will not refund you for any remaining collections.

We will not collect commercial waste. Garden waste that is not contained within your bin will not be collected.

Fees

There is a charge for every bin you have of:

• £50 per year
• This is £40 per year if you receive Council Tax Support 

You can also sign up online. You have the option to pay by Direct Debit - £5 a month over 10 months for a full year’s worth of collections.

Sign up

Paying annually

The subscription starts from the date of the first collection for a rolling period of 12 months.

Paying by Direct Debit

The period will start after we receive the first Direct Debit payment. It will continue indefinitely unless a Direct Debit payment fails.

What happens next

After you have signed up we will:

• Aim to deliver your brown bin within the 10 working days after receiving payment.
• Send you a collection dates calendar.
• If you pay annually, we will contact you six weeks before the end of your subscription about renewal.

Renewing your annual subscription

If you pay annually and your subscription is due to expire, please follow the below link to renew.