GBP 0-100 by council
Advanced options
fortnightly Mar-Nov is about 20
The green bin charge arrived quietly (most English councils now charge GBP 40-100/yr: it was free within memory) and the alternative maths rarely gets done: a tip run costs fuel + wear (45p/mile) + 45-60 minutes + a boot that smells of hedge. Composting at home handles most soft green waste free (see our compost calculator): the bin/tip question is really about the woody stuff and the autumn surges. Never the log burner: garden waste smoke annoys neighbours and (for commercial-scale burning) the law.
What The Garden Waste Collection Calculator Works Out
- Tip-run cost per year: runs x round-trip miles x the car's running cost per mile, at the HMRC 45p figure by default. Ten eight-mile runs cost GBP 36 of motoring, before any value is put on the nine-odd hours they take.
- Verdict: the green bin fee against the tip-run motoring cost. Most English councils now charge GBP 40 to GBP 100 a year for a service that was free within recent memory; a typical default of GBP 55 is a near-tie on money with the tip, which the time column settles for anyone whose weekends have competing bids.
- The free third option: home composting swallows the soft majority of garden output (grass, leaves, spent bedding) at zero cost, leaving only woody prunings and diseased material for the bin or tip. On that diet many gardens halve their disposal volume.
- Car running cost (advanced): override the 45p a mile. Pure fuel is nearer 15p to 20p a mile; 45p includes wear, tyres and depreciation, and a boot that needs hoovering after every run.
- Minutes per run and value of your time (advanced): a tip run is 45 to 90 minutes of loading, driving, queueing and unloading. Put an hourly value on that and the all-in cards price the time as well as the fuel.
- Number of bins and extra-bin fee (advanced): big gardens often need a second bin, usually at a reduced rate. The subscription card totals all of them and the verdict compares the full subscription, not just the first bin.
- Collections per year (advanced): most schemes collect fortnightly from about March to November, around 20 collections, and many pause from December to February, which makes a spring start better value than an autumn one. The cost-per-collection card divides the subscription by this figure and sets it against the cost of a single tip run.
- All-in verdict (advanced): the bin subscription against tip runs including your time, which is the comparison the basic verdict deliberately leaves out.
- What neither route handles: burning garden waste is the discouraged bottom of the hierarchy (smoke nuisance is actionable), and Japanese knotweed and other invasive or diseased material has its own disposal rules that neither the bin nor the compost heap satisfies.