Around 18,000 Colchester homes move to wheeled recycling bins during September, and 17,980 get free caddy liners. Check your own address first.
Around 18,000 more Colchester households move onto the city’s new recycling service during September, in the biggest single step of a rollout that runs to March 2027. (Colchester City Council, 27 August 2026)
A day later the council announced a second September change. From next month 17,980 Colchester households will receive a free pack of compostable food caddy liners, an advice leaflet and a reminder sticker for the black bin, under an Essex County Council campaign called Power Up. (Colchester City Council, 28 August 2026)
The two figures are close enough to look like the same households, but the council has not said whether they are. They are separate schemes with separate funders, and neither announcement lists the streets involved.
What arrives, and what it replaces
Most homes in this phase get two wheeled bins:
- a black wheeled bin for non-recyclable rubbish
- a black wheeled bin with a green lid for mixed recycling
If your home already has a black wheeled bin for rubbish, you only get the recycling one. Glass keeps its own green box, and food waste keeps its weekly caddy. Garden waste, for subscribers, stays in the brown bin and is collected in the same week as recycling.
The point of the change is that most materials now go in together. The council lists paper, cardboard, plastics including flexible plastic, crisp packets and Tetra Pak cartons, food tins, drink cans, aerosols, and metal lids and caps, all in one bin. Glass bottles and jars are the exception and stay in the box. The council publishes the full kerbside list.
Cllr Martin Goss, portfolio holder for waste, neighbourhoods and leisure, used the announcement to correct a point residents keep getting wrong.
“We still hear from some residents who aren’t sure whether tins and cans should be mixed with the rest of their recycling, but the answer is yes,” he said.
Mixed recycling goes to a Materials Recovery Facility, where the streams are separated mechanically before being baled and sold.
How to find out whether it is you
The council has not published a list of streets. The only way to know is to check your own address on the check my service tool. If it gives you a date for bin delivery and a service start date, you are in this phase. If it does not, you are in a later one.
Two things worth knowing before you check:
- Every home is being assessed in person for whether it can take wheeled bins at all. Properties judged unsuitable keep recycling bags and their existing arrangements. If your address has not been assessed yet, the council says that only means the crews have not reached your area.
- Households with a Waste Limit Exemption may get their bins on different dates from everyone else.
Why the council is pushing the caddy
The Power Up campaign is aimed at a specific number. Food still makes up around 30% of the rubbish put in general waste bins across Essex, according to the council.
It matters more under the new service. Rubbish is collected fortnightly, and the council’s own wording is that food left in a general waste bin “can sit in bins for up to two weeks before collection, which can lead to bad smells”. Food put in the caddy instead goes to an anaerobic digestion plant and comes back as renewable energy and fertiliser.
The campaign is run by Essex County Council with district councils across the county, and is expected to reach about 400,000 households county-wide by November. Colchester’s 17,980 are a share of that.
What it means for you
If bins turn up at your house in September, do not assume your collection day is unchanged. Days moved for everyone on 1 June, and the arrival of a bin is a separate event from the calendar change. Our Colchester bin collection days page explains what is collected when, and what the council will and will not take beside a wheeled bin.
Three practical points from the council’s own guidance:
- Do not bag your recycling if you have a wheeled bin. Put it in loose, rinsed and squashed, and you will fit more in.
- Nothing may be left beside a black wheeled bin. Once you have one, side waste is not collected.
- You do not need to buy caddy liners if you are in the Power Up group. The pack is free and arrives from September.
Neither announcement carried a phone number or a street list, so the check my service tool is the only address-level answer available. If your bins do not arrive when the tool says they will, the council’s waste team is the route to chase it.
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