How to find your Maidstone bin collection day, what goes in the green, black, brown and food bins, bank holiday changes and garden waste costs.

If you have just moved to the borough, or you can never remember whether this week is the green bin or the black one, this is the page to bookmark. Maidstone bin collection works on a four bin system: a green bin for recycling, a black bin for everything else, a brown bin for garden waste if you pay for it, and a food caddy that is emptied every single week. Below is how to find your own collection day, exactly what belongs in each bin, what happens at Christmas and on bank holidays, what the garden waste subscription costs, and how to get rid of the things that will not fit in any bin.

How to find your bin day

Maidstone Borough Council runs a free address checker. Enter your postcode and house number and it returns the day and week for each of your bins.

Whatever day you are given, one rule matters more than any other: your bins must be at the boundary of your property by 6am. That is earlier than many neighbouring districts, and crews do not come back for bins put out late (Maidstone Borough Council, find your bin day).

If you cannot move a bin yourself because of age, disability or illness, the council runs an assisted collection service where crews collect from your property rather than the kerb.

What goes in each bin in Maidstone

Four containers, three different rhythms. Recycling, general waste and garden waste are all fortnightly. Food waste is weekly.

The four Maidstone bins, what they take and how often they are emptied
BinWhat it takesFrequency
Green (or black box)All dry recycling, including glass bottles and jarsFortnightly
Black bin or sacksEverything that cannot be recycledFortnightly
Black and orange caddyFood waste, cooked and rawWeekly
Brown binGarden waste, paid subscription onlyFortnightly

The green recycling bin

The green wheelie bin takes everything dry in one go, with no sorting. If your house has nowhere to keep a bin, the council issues a black box instead. Crucially for Maidstone, glass bottles and jars go straight in the green bin at the kerbside, which is not true everywhere in Kent.

Also accepted: plastic bottles, yoghurt pots and tubs, meat trays, fruit punnets, newspapers, magazines, leaflets, envelopes, cardboard, cans and tins, metal bottle tops and jar lids, kitchen foil and foil trays, empty aerosols, toothpaste tubes and Tetra Pak cartons. Rinse containers out and put everything in loose, never bagged.

Keep out: carrier bags and plastic sacks, cling film, crisp packets, bread bags, polystyrene, nappies, food waste, textiles and shoes, electrical items, batteries, pet food pouches, books and anything sharp (Maidstone Borough Council, recycling bin). Batteries can go to the collection points most supermarkets keep by the till.

Your recycling travels to a Materials Recycling Facility in Crayford, where it is sorted into paper, card, glass, plastic and metal and baled for reprocessing.

The black bin

The black bin, or sacks in some properties, is for what is genuinely left over. The council’s list of what must stay out is the useful part: builder’s rubble, tiles and wood, bulky heavy items, paint tins and other DIY chemicals, electrical items, flammable liquids, gas bottles and fire extinguishers, needles, tyres, car batteries, mirrors and glass panes, ordinary batteries, knives and books (Maidstone Borough Council, black bin or sacks).

What is collected goes to Kent Enviropower at Allington, where it is burned to generate electricity rather than landfilled.

The weekly food caddy

The council supplies a black and orange outdoor food bin and collects it every week, alongside whichever wheelie bin is due. You buy or improvise your own kitchen caddy. Food waste is kept in a separate compartment of the lorry and sent to an anaerobic digestion plant, which produces gas for power and a liquid fertiliser used on Kent farms.

In goes all dairy, bread, cakes and pastries, eggs, fruit and vegetables, meat and fish including bones, rice, pasta, beans, tea bags, coffee grounds and plate scrapings. Out stays liquid, oil and liquid fat, packaging of any kind, plastic bags, compostable cups and plates, and used kitchen towel. You do not have to line the caddy, but it must empty cleanly because crews will not scrape it; a layer of newspaper, kitchen towel or a certified compostable bag does the job (Maidstone Borough Council, food bin).

The brown garden bin

Garden waste is the one collection you pay for separately, covered below. The brown bin takes flowers and plants, grass cuttings, hedge trimmings and prunings, leaves and small branches, and weeds. It will not take kitchen scraps, rubble, stones, turf, soil or compost. What is collected is composted at East Malling and used on local farms (Maidstone Borough Council, garden bin).

Garden waste: what the subscription costs

Your green, black and food collections are paid for out of your council tax. Garden waste is not. It is a separate annual subscription, and no brown bin is emptied until it is paid.

The service costs £53.50 a year per bin, plus a one-off £10.50 delivery fee for each new bin. Every subscription runs to 30 June, whenever you join, and the charge is per bin rather than per property, so a second bin means a second subscription (Maidstone Borough Council, renew your garden waste subscription).

The scheduling rules are worth knowing before you sign up:

  • You can have a maximum of three 240 litre bins per property, collected on a two-weekly cycle.
  • New accounts started between July and March are charged pro rata to the following 30 June. Start in April, May or June and you are charged through to 30 June of the following year, so a first bill can cover up to 14 months.
  • Invoices go out in batches from mid-May to mid-June, and renewals fall due on 1 July. Permits arrive by post within about three weeks and must be stuck on the back of the bin, below the handles, or it may not be emptied.
  • The annual fee does not buy a guaranteed number of collections, and the service is suspended for at least two weeks over Christmas and New Year so the crews can support the general waste rounds (Maidstone Borough Council, order a garden bin).

Miss the renewal date and you cannot simply pay late: you have to take out a new subscription, and if an account stays unpaid the contractor is instructed to take the bin away.

Bank holidays and Christmas

Collections in Maidstone do not stop for bank holidays, they shift. The council’s standard pattern is that the affected day and the days after it move back, so a Thursday round becomes a Friday and the week ends with a Saturday collection. Only the day changes; the bin due is still the bin due.

Christmas and New Year are the big disruption. In the most recent festive period the council brought crews out from 5am on Christmas Eve, moved New Year’s Day collections to the following Saturday, and ran shifted days right through until the middle of January (Maidstone Borough Council, Christmas waste collections). Real Christmas trees are collected alongside the brown bin if you subscribe to garden waste; if you do not, they go to the tip.

The dates change every year, so check the council’s seasonal advice pages in December rather than assuming last year’s pattern holds.

If your bin is missed

Report it within 48 hours of your collection day and the council aims to empty it within two working days. Leave it longer than 48 hours and you wait for the next scheduled collection, which for everything except food waste means a fortnight.

Before you report, check the bin was at the boundary by 6am, was not too heavy, damaged or unsafe to lift, was not contaminated with the wrong materials, and was in the right container. One quirk worth knowing: crews emptying a reported miss may mix recycling and rubbish together, so if keeping them separate matters to you, wait for the normal round instead (Maidstone Borough Council, report a missed bin collection).

If a lorry could not get down your road at all, the council will take extra waste next time: up to five black sacks of general rubbish and recycling in a box, though not extra garden or food waste.

Bulky items and the tip

For furniture and appliances, the council runs a chargeable collection: £34 for up to four items and £44 for five to eight, with white goods priced separately at £25 for one and £50 for two. Sofas, armchairs, mattress-side upholstered furniture and similar items count as persistent organic pollutants and add £5 to the bill. Households on Council Tax support get one discounted collection a year at £24 for up to four items. Fridge and freezer bookings are currently suspended because of a national disposal problem (Maidstone Borough Council, bulky collections).

Otherwise there is the tip. Allington Household Waste Recycling Centre, Laverstoke Road, ME16 0LE, opens 8am to 4.30pm Monday to Saturday, 9am to 4pm on Sundays and bank holidays, with a two metre height barrier and a booking system run by Kent County Council (Allington recycling centre). There is a second site at Tovil.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find my bin collection day in Maidstone?

Use the council’s find your bin day tool and enter your address. It returns the day and week for your green, black, brown and food bins. Everything must be out at the boundary of your property by 6am.

Are Maidstone bin collections weekly or fortnightly?

Both. Recycling, general waste and garden waste are collected fortnightly. Food waste is collected weekly, on the same day as whichever wheelie bin is due that week.

Can I put glass in the green bin in Maidstone?

Yes. Glass bottles and jars go in the green recycling bin at the kerbside, along with plastics, paper, card, cans and cartons. There are also glass banks at several locations across the borough, including Grove Green, Senacre, Barming and East Farleigh.

How much is garden waste collection in Maidstone?

£53.50 a year per bin, plus a £10.50 delivery fee for each new bin. Subscriptions run to 30 June regardless of when you join, and the charge is per bin rather than per household.

Do bin days change on bank holidays in Maidstone?

Yes. Collections are pushed back rather than cancelled, so the days after a bank holiday shift along and the week finishes with a Saturday round. Christmas and New Year bring the biggest changes, and they can run into mid-January.

What do I do if Maidstone misses my bin?

Report it within 48 hours through the council’s missed collection page and crews aim to return within two working days. After 48 hours you wait for the next scheduled collection.

Sources

Charges and rules are those published by Maidstone Borough Council and were checked in August 2026. Fees are reviewed annually, so confirm on the council’s own pages before you pay. For the other things new residents ask about, see our guides to council tax bands and parking in Maidstone, or start from the Maidstone Live home page.

Image: The Street in Bearsted, one of the villages served by Maidstone Borough Council’s kerbside collections. “The Street, Bearsted” by Chris Whippet, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Street,Bearsted-geograph.org.uk-_5032673.jpg).