If you live in a building with several homes together, such as a flat, bedsit, or in older people's accommodation, you may have shared bins. 

Large, communal bins are found on the ground floor of shared properties, sometimes beside the building or often in bin stores.

You will need to take your waste and recycling and put it into the shared bins, some upper floors might have a chute to send bags of general waste down to the bin.   

What goes where?  

Mixed recycling - large black bin with blue flap on top:

• cans, tins, clean foil and aluminium food trays, metal lids
• plastic bottles, pots, tubs and food trays 
• card, paper, catalogues, envelopes and shredded paper 

Please make sure that all your recycling is clean, dry and not in bags before putting it into the bin.

A few properties may have large blue wheelie bins for their mixed recycling, with a separate one for glass.  

Glass - blue wheelie bins:

• glass jars
• glass bottles

Please empty bottles and jars, rinse them out and remove the lids (they can go in with the other recycling).

No Pyrex, window glass, light bulbs, drinking glasses etc please. 

General waste - large green/silver bins:

These bins are for all your waste that can't be recycled in the black and blue bins as shown above.

There are no shared food waste collections, so please wrap any food scraps and peelings and put them in with your general waste. 

Are your shared bins full?

Shared general waste bins: Most are emptied weekly to avoid them getting too full.

Shared recycled waste bins: Emptied fortnightly, on either a Tuesday or a Wednesday.

If there's no room left in your shared bins please let us know and we'll try to empty them as soon as we can. Please hang onto your bags of rubbish until there's room again in the bins, and don't leave any waste on the floor around the bins or in bin stores.

Rubbish left around bins can attract pests and be a hazard.

Bulky items

Large items, such as furniture, carpets, appliances etc, should not be left by the shared bins.

You can take these items to the Household Waste Recycling Centre for free or arrange for a bulky waste collection.