Royal Borough crews now work bank holidays, so nothing moves on 31 August. Blue bin weekly, black fortnightly, garden waste £89, bulky items from £50.
The single most useful thing to know about bins in Windsor, Maidenhead and Ascot is that the Royal Borough no longer moves collections for bank holidays. Most councils push every round back a day. This one does not. Below is your bin day, what goes in each colour, what the tip will and will not take, and the bulky waste prices the council does not publish on its website.
The quick answer
Blue recycling and the food caddy are collected weekly. The black rubbish bin is collected fortnightly. Put everything at the front boundary of your property by 7am. The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead collects on bank holidays, Christmas and New Year excepted, so Monday 31 August is a normal collection day. Garden waste is a paid subscription at £89 a year. A large item collection starts at £50 for one item.
Which bin is which
The Royal Borough uses four containers, and only one of them costs money.
- Black bin, fortnightly. Household rubbish that cannot be recycled: nappies, cat litter, pet waste, polystyrene, plastic film, broken crockery, dirty paper and card, food pouches, foil-coated wrappers.
- Blue bin, weekly. All dry mixed recycling together, loose, no bags. Glass bottles and jars go in this bin, lids included.
- Food caddy, weekly. A 23-litre black outdoor caddy, or a communal brown bin.
- Green bin, fortnightly, £89 a year. Optional garden waste subscription.
Two rules catch people out. Recycling must go in loose, because a bagged blue bin can be marked as contaminated and left. And the council collects only what is inside the bin with the lid closed: sacks left beside a bin are not taken, and an overfull bin may be left entirely (household rubbish collections).
One flattened cardboard box may be left next to the blue bin. That is the only permitted side waste (blue bin recycling).
What the blue bin will not take
The list is longer than people expect, and every item on it can get your bin tagged and skipped until the next collection: crisp packets, bubble wrap, disposable takeaway cups, hard plastics, flowerpots, polystyrene, packaging tape, light bulbs, prescription bottles, textiles, toys, wood, vapes, and tissues or kitchen roll whether clean or used.
Batteries and small electricals are also banned from both the blue and the black bin. The council runs a free kerbside collection for them (small electricals and batteries).
Food waste: no caddy liners supplied, and any bag will do
The Royal Borough is unusual here. It does not supply indoor caddies, and it does not insist on compostable liners. You can line your indoor container with any plastic or paper bag, tie it, and drop the bag into the outdoor caddy. An ice cream tub or a takeaway container will do as the indoor caddy (food waste).
Keep the outdoor caddy locked with the handle, or the lid will not stay shut.
Finding your collection day
The council runs a free postcode lookup that returns your recycling, food, rubbish and garden waste days: find your bin collection day. Garden waste subscribers are assigned a Week One or Week Two slot and a day between Monday and Friday.
Bank holidays: your day does not move
This is where the Royal Borough differs from most of its neighbours. The council’s own holiday page states it plainly: “We are now collecting on Bank Holiday dates (excluding Christmas and New Year). If your bin is due to be collected on a Bank Holiday, please present it at kerbside by 7am on the day” (holiday collection dates).
So for Monday 31 August 2026 there is nothing to remember. Monday rounds run on the Monday, and the rest of the week is unaffected.
Christmas and New Year are the exception, and the council publishes those changes closer to the time rather than in advance. Garden waste is also suspended for two to three weeks over Christmas and New Year, which is written into the subscription terms rather than the holiday page (green garden waste terms and conditions).
Garden waste costs £89, and a second bin costs the same
The green bin is an opt-in subscription. £89 for one year, running twelve months from your first collection, not from April. It is open to any household with a garden, including flats and maisonettes with private gardens.
- A second bin is another £89 for the year, or £44 if you ask for it within six months of your renewal date.
- Fees are as at 1 April 2026 (green garden waste subscription).
- Christmas trees are collected in January, but only cut up and inside the bin. A tree left beside the bin is not taken.
- Branches must be under two inches thick, and soil is refused. Bins with loose soil in them may be left.
- Fallen fruit goes in the food caddy, not the green bin. Bags, plant pots, tubs and trays go in the black bin.
The subscription buys a service, not a set number of collections. The terms say the council aims to collect fortnightly all year but does not guarantee it.
Large item collections start at £50, and the prices are not on the council website
The Royal Borough’s large item collections page sets out the rules but prints no prices. The 2026/27 charges were approved by Cabinet on 24 February 2026 and appear in Appendix E of the budget report:
| Items | 2026/27 charge | 2025/26 charge |
|---|---|---|
| One item | £50.00 | £47.00 |
| Two items | £57.00 | £55.00 |
| Three items | £65.00 | £63.00 |
| Four items | £72.00 | £70.00 |
| Five items (the maximum) | £80.00 | £78.00 |
| Fridge or freezer, per unit | £55.00 | £52.00 |
Five items is the hard limit, and the counting is stricter than it sounds: a table and four chairs is five items, and a three-piece suite is three.
The terms are unforgiving. Collections run on Wednesdays and Thursdays only, no time slot is given, the date cannot be changed once booked, and there is no refund if you cancel, if you fail to put the items out, or if someone else takes them off the pavement first.
American-style fridge freezers are refused, as are boilers, doors, mirrors, glass of any kind, mattresses excepted furniture with glass doors, pianos, sheds, soil and rubble. Duvets and pillows do not need a booking at all: bag them and put them out with the rubbish.
If the item is still usable, Thames Hospice and the British Heart Foundation both collect furniture free.
Missed collections: report from the day after, and no later than two working days
The window is tight and it is worth knowing exactly. The council asks you to report within 48 hours of the expected collection, and says a report can be made from the day after your scheduled date and no later than two working days after it. It will then recollect within two working days (report a missed bin).
Before you report, check the obvious refusals: bin out after 7am, a contamination tag on the lid, or a collection vehicle that could not get down the road because of parked cars. None of those count as a missed collection.
New and replacement bins and caddies take up to 10 working days. The council will supply only one 180-litre black bin per property, and issues a larger one only to households of six or more, five or more with a baby in nappies, or where there is a medical need (order a new bin or caddy).
The tip: Stafferton Way, seven days, no booking
There is one household waste and recycling centre for the whole borough, and it is in Maidenhead: Stafferton Way, Maidenhead SL6 1AY, signposted as the Civic Amenity Centre.
- Open seven days a week, and closed only on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
- April to September: opens 8am, last entry 7.45pm.
- October to March: opens 8am, last entry 4.15pm.
- No booking system. You need proof that you live in the borough: an Advantage Card, or photo ID plus a council tax statement or utility bill. Display it on the dashboard.
- Vehicle access only. You cannot walk waste onto the site.
- Height barrier 2.1m. Trailers are allowed up to 2m by 1.3m, with a maximum combined car-and-trailer length of 5.56m.
- Vans and commercial-type vehicles need a permit for every visit (van permits).
- Home improvement waste is capped at one car boot load, six sacks, per trip per month.
The site takes all domestic waste, including mattresses, carpets, plasterboard, paint, motor oil, gas cylinders handed to staff, and up to three sheets or sacks of cement-bonded asbestos if it is double wrapped and labelled. It will not take car tyres, clinical waste, demolition or construction waste, Celotex and loft insulation, ink cartridges, lithium fridges, or UPVC window and door frames (Stafferton Way HWRC).
Two other sites you are allowed to use
Royal Borough residents can also use Chalvey HWRC in Slough. And if you have an Ascot postcode, the council says you may use Surrey County Council’s Lyne community recycling centre near Chertsey, which is a good deal closer than driving to Maidenhead.
If you live in North Ascot, this is probably not your council
Ascot sits on a boundary, and the SL5 postcode is split between four authorities. We checked a sample of 100 live SL5 8 postcodes against the Office for National Statistics postcode directory through postcodes.io on 26 August 2026: 89 of the 100 were in Bracknell Forest, in Winkfield parish, not the Royal Borough. The same check on SL5 7, SL5 9 and SL5 0 returned Windsor and Maidenhead every time.
If your postcode starts SL5 8, check before you use any of the above. Bracknell Forest runs a different bin system, a different tip and a different council tax bill. GOV.UK’s council finder settles it from your postcode in one step.
What this page does not cover
The council does not publish its Christmas and New Year collection dates until nearer the time, so they are not here. It also does not publish the price of a replacement bin, or the fee for the household clinical waste collection, and we have not printed a figure for either rather than guess at one.
Also on this site: parking in Windsor, Windsor council tax bands and Windsor roadworks and travel.
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