You want to know when your bin goes out, what's supposed to go in it, and what to do when the council misses it. That should take thirty seconds on the council website. It doesn't.
Liverpool City Council splits its bin information across more than ten separate pages: one for collection days, one for what goes in each bin, one for green bins that doesn't mention the price, a different page again for the actual price, apparently the two facts can't be trusted in the same room, one for food waste, one for missed collections, one for bulky items. I went through all of them to put this together, so you can get the answer on one page instead of six. No clicking required, which is more than the council can say for itself.
The short version
- Use the council's postcode checker on liverpool.gov.uk to find your exact collection day, then put your bin out before 6:30am on that day.
- You've got three bins: purple (general waste), blue (recycling) and green (garden waste, paid). Purple and blue alternate fortnightly, one on, one off.
- If you've got a food waste caddy, it's collected weekly, on top of whichever bin week you're on. Not every street has one yet.
- The green bin is not free. It costs from £50 a year for one bin up to £187.50 for five, plus £25 to buy the bin itself.
- Missed purple or blue bin? Report it by 2pm the next working day. Missed green bin? Report it the same day, no waiting.
- Bulky item collection is free, up to five items, five small electricals and five bags of textiles per booking.
- Liverpool's two tips (Old Swan and Otterspool) are open 8am to 8pm right now, in summer. Otterspool has no walk-in access, you need a vehicle.
How to find your bin collection day
Your collection day depends on your exact address, not just your postcode area. Different streets, and sometimes different sides of the same street, are on completely different rounds, because apparently consistency was never part of the plan. The only reliable way to check is the postcode look-up tool on the council's bin collections page at liverpool.gov.uk, which tells you your day and which bin colour is due.
All bins and bags need to be out before 6:30am on your collection day, not whenever you get round to it. Put wheelie bins on the kerbside with the handles facing the road. If you live in a terraced house, the bin goes at the nearest end of the passage or alley rather than out the front. Recycling bags go on the pavement by your front door if you don't have a bin for them.
The three-bin system: what goes in each bin
Liverpool runs three kerbside bins. Two are collected on a fortnightly rota that alternates week to week. The third is a paid extra that only runs part of the year, and it gets its own section below.
Purple bin: general waste
Your purple bin takes anything that can't be recycled. That includes food waste and pet waste too, unless you've already got a food waste caddy on your street, in which case food scraps go in that instead. Electrical items and garden waste don't go in the purple bin.
Blue bin: recycling
Your blue bin takes glass jars and bottles (lids on), cans (don't crush them), paper, magazines, newspapers, junk mail, flattened cardboard, yoghurt pots, plastic tubs, food trays, foil and foil containers, juice cartons, empty aerosols, and plastic bottles with the lids on and not flattened. Shampoo and cleaning product bottles go in too.
What it won't take: black bag waste, plastic bags, cling film, any metal that isn't a can, food, liquids, textiles, paint tins, electrical items, syringes or wood. If you're not sure, it's usually safer to bin something in purple than to contaminate a whole load of recycling.
Green bin: garden waste
The green bin takes grass cuttings, hedge clippings, dead plants and weeds, bark, leaves and small twigs and branches up to about 7.5cm across. It won't take stone, concrete, timber, glass, plastic, metal, paper, cardboard, plant pots, soil, turf, household rubbish or food waste.
Unlike the other two bins, the green bin isn't something every household automatically gets. It's a paid, opt-in service. More on the cost below.
The food waste caddy: where the rollout has reached so far
Liverpool started rolling out a free weekly food waste collection service in September 2025, with more streets added in phases through 2026. The council's own food waste page doesn't publish exact numbers, but the best independently checked figure puts it at roughly 30,000 properties across more than a dozen wards so far, with more being added throughout the year. If that sounds vague, it's because the council hasn't published a precise, up-to-date count itself, and the reported figures from different sources don't quite agree. The honest answer is: check the council site to see if your street has been added, because it changes regularly.
If your street has the service, you'll have had a letter about six weeks before it started, and a kit with a 5-litre caddy for the kitchen and a 23-litre caddy for outside, plus liners. It takes all uneaten food and plate scrapings, meat, fish, dairy, tea bags, grains, baked goods, fruit and veg included. It's collected every week, on whichever day your purple or blue bin is due that week. It doesn't take packaging, liquids, oils or anything that isn't food.
If your street hasn't had the letter yet, keep putting food waste in your purple bin as normal. There's no fixed date yet for when the whole city will be covered.
Green bin (garden waste): the paid subscription explained
The council charges an annual fee for green bin collections, and the price depends on how many bins you sign up for:
| Number of green bins | Annual collection fee |
|---|---|
| 1 | £50 |
| 2 | £93.75 |
| 3 | £125 |
| 4 | £156.25 |
| 5 | £187.50 |
You can have up to five green bins per property. If you don't already own one, buying the bin itself costs an extra £25, on top of the yearly fee.
Collections run fortnightly, but only between roughly late February and late November. There's no green bin collection through the depths of winter, when garden growth stops anyway. This year's paid-for service started in the week beginning 23 February 2026, which is worth knowing when your renewal comes round, since the sign-up window follows that same yearly pattern.
If the cost is a genuine problem, the council has a separate page covering refunds and help with the collection fee. It's worth checking before you decide to go without, rather than assuming there's no support.
Missed a bin collection: the deadline for reporting it
Before you report anything, check three things: did you put the bin out before 6:30am, is it on the kerbside properly, and is it free of the wrong materials or overweight? Any of those can cause a legitimate non-collection that reporting won't fix.
If your purple or blue bin genuinely hasn't been collected, you can report it once it's past 2pm on the scheduled day. You then need to get that report in by 2pm the next working day at the latest. Miss that window and you'll be waiting for the next scheduled collection instead. It's a tighter deadline than most council replies.
Green bin is quicker: you can report a missed collection immediately on the scheduled day, no need to wait until 2pm. That only applies if your green bin subscription is active and paid up. An expired subscription won't get a missed collection actioned.
The council's missed collection page doesn't say anything about food waste caddies specifically, so it isn't clear whether the same rules apply to a missed caddy collection. If yours gets missed, your safest bet is to contact the council directly rather than assume either deadline applies. Reports for purple, blue and green bins all go through an online form on the council website.
Bulky item collection: free, with limits
The standard bulky item collection is free for Liverpool residents, no charge to book, which is the council's polite way of discouraging fly-tipping. Each collection covers up to five bulky items, five small electrical items and five bags of textiles.
Accepted items include furniture like sofas, wardrobes and bed frames, appliances like washing machines, fridges and cookers, TVs, carpets, bikes, mattresses, garden furniture and small electricals. It won't cover full house clearances, hazardous waste, gas cylinders, range cookers, sliding wardrobes, damaged glass items or builders' waste.
Collections happen within a 7:30am to 4:30pm window, scheduled around when the council's crews are next working in your area, so it's not a fixed same-day or next-day service. Book through the online request form on the council website.
If you'd rather not wait, or your items don't fit the limits, there are alternatives: donate to charities such as Emmaus Merseyside, Alder Hey Children's Charity or British Heart Foundation, some of which collect furniture for free, list items on Freecycle or Gumtree, or take things to a Household Waste Recycling Centre yourself, which is also free.
Taking things to the tip yourself (HWRC)
Liverpool has two Household Waste Recycling Centres: Old Swan on Cheadle Avenue, L13 3AF, and Otterspool on Jericho Lane, L17 5AR.
Opening hours change with the season. Right now, in summer, both sites are open 8am to 8pm, from 1 April to 30 September. From 1 October to 31 March they close earlier, at 5pm. Both are shut on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day.
One detail that trips people up: Otterspool has no pedestrian access. You need to arrive by car, van or other vehicle, you can't walk in with a bag of rubbish. It's the only tip in the city where turning up on foot counts as the wrong kind of green. Standard cars generally don't need to book ahead, but if you're turning up in a van, trailer or flatbed, you may need to book, and there's a cap of 12 visits a year for van and trailer users.
If you're in a flat, or need extra help
Some properties, mostly flats, use communal bins instead of individual kerbside collection: a shared blue bin for loose recyclables, tipped from a reusable bag, and a shared purple bin for bagged general waste, both accessible any day of the week. These are emptied based on how full they are rather than a fixed schedule, and you can report an overflowing one online. Leaving bags beside a communal bin instead of inside it counts as fly-tipping, with its own separate reporting route.
If you live alone and can't put your bins out because of ill health or disability, and there's genuinely no one else who can do it for you, you can apply for an assisted collection through an online form. The council aims to respond within 7 working days. Assisted collections last two years, after which you need to reapply.
Why the system is changing
The push behind the food waste rollout comes down to Liverpool's recycling record. In 2022/23, the city's household recycling rate was reported at 17.9%, ranking 332nd out of 333 local authorities in England, second worst in the country. Not a league table anyone frames. That's a few years old now, so treat it as the reported context for why things are changing rather than today's exact figure.
The food waste scheme is run with the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority, which processes what's collected through anaerobic digestion instead of sending it to the incinerator. That process produces biogas and biofertiliser rather than just burning it, which is the main practical reason council waste strategy has shifted this way.
Who runs your bin collection, and what they can't do
Liverpool City Council runs the kerbside collection service directly, including the postcode checker, missed collection reports, bulky item bookings and communal bins. Food waste processing is delivered in partnership with the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority.
What the council won't do: collect a green bin without an active, paid subscription, collect food waste from a street the rollout hasn't reached yet, take hazardous waste or building rubble as part of a normal bulky collection, or fix a missed collection you reported after the deadline. In each of those cases, you're either paying, waiting for the rollout, or waiting for the next scheduled round. No refunds, no exceptions.
Final verdict
Once you know the rhythm, Liverpool's bin system is simple enough: purple and blue alternate fortnightly, a food caddy runs weekly if you've got one, and green bin is a seasonal paid extra. The problem has never really been the system itself, it's that the council splits the explanation across too many separate pages, several of which leave out the one detail you came for. Bookmark the postcode checker, note your green bin renewal date if you have one, and keep the missed-collection deadlines somewhere you'll see them on the day you need them.
Explainer box
- Bins out by: 6:30am on your collection day
- Purple and blue bins: alternate fortnightly
- Food waste caddy: weekly, where the rollout has reached you
- Green bin cost: £50 to £187.50 a year for 1 to 5 bins, plus £25 to buy a bin
- Green bin season: roughly late February to late November
- Missed purple/blue bin: report by 2pm the next working day
- Missed green bin: report the same day, no wait
- Bulky item collection: free, up to 5 items + 5 electricals + 5 textile bags
- HWRC hours now (summer): 8am to 8pm at Old Swan and Otterspool
- Otterspool tip: vehicle access only, no walking in
Sources
- Liverpool City Council: Bin collections
- Liverpool City Council: What goes in my bins?
- Liverpool City Council: Green bins
- Liverpool City Council: Pay for a green waste collection
- Liverpool City Council: Refunds and help with the collection fee
- Liverpool City Council: Food waste collections
- Liverpool City Council: Missed bin collection
- Liverpool City Council: Bulky item collection
- Liverpool City Council: Communal bins
- Liverpool City Council: Assisted bin collections
- Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority: Find a recycling centre
- BBC News: Liverpool City Council "disappointed" at being second worst for recycling (Feb 2024)
- Birkenhead News: New Liverpool food waste collections set to begin
