What to put in your garden waste bin
Items that can go in your garden waste bin
Items must be loose - no bags or sacks.
- dead plants
- flowers
- grass cuttings
- hedge trimmings
- leaves
- shrubs
- small branches and twigs no thicker than 7cm
- tree prunings
- weeds (apart from noxious ones)
- windfall fruit (small quantities only)
If an item is not listed above, please keep it out of the garden waste bin.
Items that should never go in your garden waste bin
- animal waste
- ash
- bags and sacks, including those labelled as compostable
- branches and twigs thicker than 7cm
- clothes and textiles
- coffee grounds
- compost
- compostable packaging
- flowerpots and trays
- food
- hardcore and rubble
- items infected with phytophthora
- items treated with clopyralid, aminopyralid or picloram herbicides
- kitchen peelings and waste
- meat, poultry and fish
- nappies
- noxious weeds (for example, Japanese knotweed, ragwort, giant hogweed, spear thistle, creeping thistle, curled dock, broad-leaved dock, hemlock and horsetail)
- paper, card and shredded paper
- pet bedding
- plastics of any kind, including those labelled as compostable
- soil
- stones and gravel
- tea bags
- turf
- wood and timber
If a bin contains non-accepted items, it will not be emptied.
What happens to my garden waste?
Garden waste collected via our dedicated collection vehicles is taken to the Material Change Facility in Creeting St Mary to be turned into compost.
This facility uses a 'windrow' composting process. Windrow composting is used to process garden waste only and is not able to deal with food waste.
The compost can be purchased from a recycling centre in Suffolk or directly from Material Change.
To find out more about where your garden waste goes, please visit the Suffolk Recycles website.