Richmond collects on every bank holiday except Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Garden waste is £95, bulky items £85, and Townmead Road needs a booked slot.
Richmond upon Thames collects rubbish, food waste and recycling every week, and it keeps collecting on bank holidays. The council’s own rule is short and unusually generous:
Your waste and recycling will be collected as normal on all bank holidays except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
That is from the council’s collection days page. When Christmas Day or New Year’s Day falls on a weekday, collections run one day later for the rest of that week. Both dates fall on a Friday in the 2026/27 winter, so only the Friday round is affected each time.
Your own day comes from the council’s My Richmond lookup, which takes an address rather than a postcode. Everything else on this page is the part the lookup does not tell you: what goes in which container, what the paid services cost this year, and how long you have to report a miss.
Which containers you get
The borough does not use wheelie bins for general rubbish. It does not supply them either. What you get depends on whether you live in a house or a purpose-built flat.
Houses, maisonettes and flats in converted houses get:
- a blue box for paper, card and cardboard
- a black box for plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, glass bottles and jars, tins, cans, foil, aerosols, cartons and squeezy tubes
- a green food waste caddy, 23 litres outdoors with a 5 litre indoor caddy
- your own dustbin, wheelie bin or sacks for everything else
The council is explicit that it does not provide the general rubbish container: buy a dustbin of about 90 litres with a clip-on lid, a wheelie bin of 120 to 240 litres, or tied black sacks. Not blue sacks, because those get confused with garden waste. Source: the council’s guidance on waste from a house.
Purpose-built flats have communal bins instead: a mixed container bin, a mixed paper bin, and in selected blocks a communal food waste bin. Your managing agent or landlord provides them, not the council. Blocks of eight units or more, flats above shops and properties with no curtilage are not eligible for the kerbside box service at all, and the council keeps a street-by-street list of which those are.
Two rules catch people out. Cartons such as Tetra Paks moved out of the paper stream and into the mixed container stream on 31 March 2026, under the government’s Simpler Recycling rules. And small electricals are collected free from the kerbside: leave them in an ordinary open carrier bag next to the black box.
When to put it out
Present everything between 8pm the night before and 6am on your collection day. Crews start at 6am, and in hot weather the council says they may start as early as 5am to keep staff out of the afternoon heat.
If you have a front garden, containers go just inside the front entrance, within arm’s length of the boundary and visible from the road. If there is no space, the pavement is allowed, but only between 8pm and 6am and only immediately beside your own boundary.
Residents who cannot manage that can ask for an assisted collection, taken from the doorstep instead. It is granted only where nobody in the household can use the standard service, runs for 36 months for long-term cases and 12 months for short-term ones, and is requested by phone on 020 8891 1411. The contractor assesses the outside of the property within two weeks.
Missed collection: two working days
This is the deadline the council’s page states and most people miss:
Missed collections can only be reported within two working days of the collection date.
Before reporting, check there is no tag on your container explaining why it was left, and wait until after 4pm or until the rest of the street has been done. Report it online. The council then returns within two working days. Garden sack misses use a separate form, also within two working days.
Garden waste: £95 a year, or £25 for ten sacks
Garden waste is the borough’s one charged household collection, and there are two ways to buy it.
| Option | Price 2026/27 | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| 12-month bin subscription, under 75 | £95 | Fortnightly emptying to 31 March 2027 |
| 12-month bin subscription, aged 75 and over | £71 | Fortnightly emptying to 31 March 2027 |
| The bin itself, if you do not have one | £40 | 240-litre green bin with a blue lid |
| Garden sacks | £25 per pack of 10 | Collection cost included, book each one |
| Single sack from a library | £2.15 | Collection cost included, book each one |
Source: the council’s garden bin subscription page and its garden sacks page. The council says fees rose this year to cover its costs. A six-month subscription running from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027 opens for sign-up in September 2026, with the price not yet published.
Three details worth knowing:
- Bin collections run all year except two weeks, 4 to 15 January 2027.
- Sack collections must be booked by 12 noon on the working day before, maximum ten sacks, and the sacks biodegrade, so use them within 60 days of buying them.
- Stickers are gone. Crews now identify subscribers by in-cab technology, so write your house number large on the side of the bin, not the lid.
Bulky items: £85, or free if you are on a low income
The standard charge covers up to five items in one collection.
| Who | Up to five items | Each extra item | Collections a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full price | £85 | £9.90 | No limit |
| Aged over 60 | £29 | £7.80 | 5, then full price |
| Low income, on a qualifying benefit | Free | n/a | 2, then full price |
Fridges and freezers are booked separately and priced separately: £74.90, or £26.50 for over-60s, or free on a low income. American-style and side-by-side fridge-freezers are refused outright on size. Both tables are from the council’s bulky item and fridge and freezer booking pages. The qualifying benefits are Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, Pension Credit Guarantee Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, Universal Credit and Housing Benefit.
Your collection date is always the weekday after your normal collection day. Book a Tuesday round and your bulky slot will be a Wednesday. Collections happen between 7am and 4pm, you do not need to be in, and items must be at street level: nothing is taken from inside a property, from a basement, or down steps.
The council will not take garden waste, rubble, plasterboard, bathtubs, carpets, fitted kitchen units, pianos, range cookers, gas bottles, motor vehicle parts, oil or anything over six feet that will not fit the vehicle. A sofa over six feet has to be broken down first.
Mega Skip Days are the free alternative. On selected Saturdays the council places skips in one part of the borough for two hours, 9am to 11am or until full, run with RHP and the Richmond Furniture Scheme. Six items per household, no cardboard, no rubble, no paint. Because they move around and are advertised only to nearby streets, the way to catch one is the council’s email alerts, which are sent by postcode.
Townmead Road: free, but you must book
The borough has one household recycling centre, and turning up without a slot does not work.
- Address: Townmead Road, off Mortlake Road, Kew, TW9 4EL
- Residents: Monday to Saturday 8am to 4pm; Sundays and bank holidays 9am to 4pm
- Trade: Monday to Friday 8am to 3.30pm, closed at weekends and on bank holidays
- Closed: Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day
- Booking: required, up to 14 days ahead, through West London Waste’s booking system. Residents arriving without one are turned away
Cars must be off site within 15 minutes of the slot ending; vans get 30. Only cars, motorcycles, bicycles including cargo bikes, and small vans with a load space no larger than 1.7m x 1.5m x 1.2m are allowed. Pedestrians are not permitted. The site takes no tyres and no asbestos.
Because Richmond is in the West London Waste Authority, residents of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow can use Townmead Road too, and Richmond residents can use theirs. Proof of address is asked for only if you arrive in a van or with DIY waste.
Most household waste is free. Construction and demolition waste is charged unless all four of the council’s conditions are met: you produced it at your own home, nobody was paid for the work, it is under 100 litres or a single item no bigger than 2000mm x 750mm x 700mm, and it is your fourth visit or fewer in four weeks. Full detail on the Townmead Road page.
The site also sells compost bins at £20.20 for 220 litres and £22.70 for 330 litres, and takes donations of usable furniture, laptops, bikes and baby equipment at its reuse drop-off in zone 1.
What it costs the borough
Richmond’s disposal is handled by the West London Waste Authority, which charges the council a levy. The 2026/27 budget sets that levy at £9.588m, or £48.36 per resident, up from £9.149m the year before. That is in the council’s Guide to Council Tax and Business Rates 2026/27, and it is roughly 4% of what the borough spends on services. See our council tax bands page for the rest of the bill, and the roadworks page for closures that can move a round.
Contacts
- Waste enquiries and bookings by phone: 020 8891 1411
- Townmead Road, during opening hours: 020 8876 3281
- Recycling queries: recycling@richmond.gov.uk
- Food waste queries: foodrecycling@richmond.gov.uk
Every figure on this page was taken from the council’s own pages on 30 August 2026. Charges change on 1 April, and garden waste prices change with the subscription year, so check the linked page before paying.
Have your say