Blue and brown bins are collected every four weeks in Stockport, green every week. Bank holidays do not move collections, and a garden permit costs £59.
Stockport rebuilt its collection rounds on 26 May 2025 and the frequencies changed with them. Green bins are still emptied every week. Black bins are fortnightly. Blue and brown bins now come round together only once every four weeks, which is the change most people are still catching out. This page sets out the cycle, what happens at bank holidays and Christmas, what the garden permit and a bulky collection cost this year, and the tip rules, each linked to the source it came from.
The four-week cycle
The council’s printed calendars are the authority on this. We downloaded the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday round calendars from the council’s own collection-day service and read them: all five carry the same banner, “From 26th May 2025 there are changes to round collections and frequencies”, and all five run the same four-week pattern.
Your own dates are at the council’s find your collection day service: enter your postcode, pick your address, and it shows the next date for each of the four bins plus a link to download the full printed calendar for your round. That calendar is worth saving, because it is the only place the whole year’s dates appear on one sheet.
What goes in which bin
| Bin | What it takes | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | Newspapers, magazines, junk mail, envelopes, shredded paper, all cardboard, drink cartons, books, greetings cards | 180 litres |
| Brown | Glass bottles and jars, food tins, drinks cans, empty aerosols, plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays, foil and foil trays | 180 litres |
| Black | Everything that cannot be recycled, plus polystyrene, carrier bags, plastic film, crisp packets, tupperware and bottle lids | 140 litres |
| Green | Food waste, and garden waste if you hold a permit | 240 litres |
Container sizes come from the council’s recycling and refuse collections policy, which also covers properties the council judges unsuitable for wheelie bins: those get sacks for rubbish and a black box for glass and cans instead. Homes without a garden waste bin get a 23 litre lockable food container, and there is a 7 litre kitchen caddy on top of that.
Three things catch people out, all of them from the council’s own bin pages:
- Lids from bottles and jars go in the black bin, not the brown one. So do plastic film, carrier bags and crisp packets (brown bin).
- Glittery or foil wrapping paper is not paper. The council’s own test: if you can scrunch it into a ball it is paper, if it springs back it is not (blue bin).
- Stones, rubble, bricks and soil must not go in the black bin, because they damage the compaction gear on the trucks, and soil is refused at the composting plant that takes the green bin waste (black bin).
Branches in the green bin must be no more than 10cm across, or thicker than your wrist, and must fit with the lid closed. Real Christmas trees are fine if you cut them up to fit.
Free food waste liners from the library
You can pick up a roll of compostable food waste liners free at any Stockport library, buy them from the supplier, or get them in most supermarkets: look for the EN13432 mark. Do not use supermarket “biodegradable” bags, which break down into plastic fragments rather than composting. The council also posts liners out on a rota by collection day, and for the current year those dates were on or before 14 March for Monday rounds, 25 April for Tuesday, 6 June for Wednesday, 18 July for Thursday and 29 August for Friday (green bin and food caddies).
Bank holidays: Stockport does not move collections
This is where Stockport differs from most councils, and it is worth stating plainly because the usual advice (“your collection slips a day after a bank holiday”) is wrong here. We checked every 2026 bank holiday against the round calendars:
| Bank holiday 2026 | What the calendar shows |
|---|---|
| Good Friday, 3 April | Friday round collected as normal |
| Easter Monday, 6 April | Monday round collected as normal |
| Early May, Monday 4 May | Monday round collected as normal |
| Spring, Monday 25 May | Monday round collected as normal |
| Summer, Monday 31 August | Monday round collected as normal |
Christmas and New Year are the exception, and what happens depends on your round. Over the last Christmas period the calendars show three different outcomes: the Friday round’s Boxing Day collection was moved to Monday 29 December and was black bin only; the Monday round kept 29 December but again black bin only, with the weekly green collection dropped; and the Tuesday round had no collection at all in the week between Christmas and New Year, going from 23 December straight to 6 January.
The current calendars run out in the first week of September 2026, so the Christmas 2026 dates are not published yet. When the new calendar appears it will be on the find your collection day pages, and given the pattern above, checking your own round rather than assuming a one-day slip is the thing to do.
Getting your bin emptied: the lid rule
Bins must be out before 6:30am on collection day, at the front edge of your property or your nominated collection point, with the lid fully closed. Bags left at the side of a black bin will not be taken.
The lid rule became a live issue in July 2026, when crews were reminded to apply it and hundreds of bins were left. The council apologised for not telling residents first, ran catch-up collections on two weekends, and set out the test it now uses: “If your bin lid is closed, it will be collected. If the lid is missing and waste is level with the lip of the bin, it will be collected” (Stockport Council, 30 July 2026). With blue and brown on a four-week cycle, an overfull lid is now a month’s delay rather than a fortnight’s, which is why this matters more than it used to.
If your household cannot put the bins out, for example because of a mobility problem and nobody else in the house can manage it, the council runs an assisted collection service. Blue bins can also be swapped for a larger 240 litre size, which is the practical answer to a four-weekly paper round. Black bins are harder to come by at the moment: the council says it is prioritising recycling bins and asks you to ring 0161 217 6111 for a damaged, lost or stolen black bin (request a bin).
Missed collections
Wait until after 6pm on your collection day before reporting anything, because crews may still be working. Then check the council’s missed collections page first: it carries a live, street-by-street list of roads the crews did not get to, with the date they will return. On the day we checked it named green bins on two roads in Heaviley returning the following Monday and brown bins on around sixty Offerton roads returning the next day, so the answer to “has it already been reported?” is usually right there.
Formally, the council’s policy is that a correctly presented bin not emptied by 6pm will be dealt with if you report it within three working days of the scheduled collection, with the crew returning when they are next in the area. A bin presented late, after the crew has passed, waits for the next scheduled collection and must be taken back in until then.
Garden waste: £59 a year, £39 if you get Council Tax Support
Garden waste has been a paid service since April 2025. Food waste in the green bin is still free and needs no permit; the charge is only for putting garden waste in it.
- A permit costs £59 per green bin for the year 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027.
- £39 if you receive Council Tax Support. That discount covers one bin only; a second permit is £59.
- There is no limit on how many permits and bins a property can have.
- The price does not fall as the year goes on. Buy in January and you still pay £59 for the ten weeks left, because every permit expires on 31 March 2027.
All of that is from the council’s garden waste page, where you can also buy online, or you can order and pay at your local library.
Bulky collections: £30 for one item, £80 for up to eight
The council does collect bulky items from the house, and the pricing is by number of items rather than by type:
| Items | Standard | With 50% discount |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | £30 | £15 |
| 2 | £50 | £25 |
| 3 to 8 | £80 | £40 |
| DIY and building waste | £150 minimum, further hours at £150 | No discount |
The 50% discount applies on production of valid housing benefit, income support or another low-income benefit, or a Band A Leisure Key card (Band B and Lifetime cards do not count) (discounted bulky collection).
Two things about this service are easy to get wrong:
- Bulky waste is split into three streams, collected on different days: electrical items, non-electrical items, and soft furnishings. Sofas, armchairs and any upholstered seating, including dining and desk chairs, count as soft furnishings because of the treatment they need. A mattress is non-electrical. So a sofa and a mattress mean two different collection dates on the same booking (bulky household waste collection).
- You cannot add items to an order once it is placed. Anything extra is a new booking at a new charge, and there is a fee if you cancel. Book on 0161 217 6111, Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 5pm and Friday to 4:30pm, paying in full by card at the time.
Garden and building waste is a separate booking again, and the refusal list is long: no rubble, bricks, paving slabs, soil, turf, plasterboard, glass sheet, greenhouses, gas bottles or anything over 50kg (garden and building waste).
Before you pay for any of it: charity reuse is free. Renewal North West on Shaw Heath (0161 476 2777), Stockport Homes’ furniture recycling project, and the British Heart Foundation shops on Warren Street all take good-quality furniture and working white goods, and the council lists them itself on its bulky items page.
The three tips: open 8am to 8pm, every day
Stockport has three household waste recycling centres, all open 8am to 8pm seven days a week, closed only on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day:
| Recycling centre | Address | Recycling rate |
|---|---|---|
| Adswood Road | Adswood Road, Cheadle Hulme, SK8 5QY | 64% |
| Bredbury Parkway | Bredbury Park Way, Bredbury Park Industrial Estate, SK6 2SN | 62% |
| Rose Hill | Railway Road, Rose Hill, Marple, SK6 6HU | 69% |
They are run by Recycle for Greater Manchester, free for household waste, and open to residents of any Greater Manchester borough except Wigan. No booking is needed for a car. They take general waste, garden waste, cardboard, wood, scrap metal, rubble, carpets, electricals, tyres, oil, batteries, gas bottles and light bulbs (council list). You will be stopped at the gate so an operative can direct you, so separate your load before you set off. No trade waste, and children and pets stay in the car.
If you are driving a van, a hire van, a pick-up or anything with a twin axle trailer you need a permit, and you must apply for the account at least two working days before your first visit (van permit). That is the single most common wasted journey to these sites.
One contradiction worth knowing about: the council’s own page still says “Bredbury is the only tip that has access for vehicles over 2 metres”, but the operator’s site now says the 2 metre height barriers have been removed at its recycling centres, with only Spring Vale in Rochdale and Every Street in Bury still restricted. The operator runs the sites, so its page is the one to trust, but if you are bringing something tall it is worth a call first rather than a wasted trip to Adswood Road.
Where to check
- Find your bin collection day and download your round’s calendar
- Report a missed collection, after checking the live missed-streets list
- Buy a garden waste permit
- What goes in which bin, and Recycle for Greater Manchester for anything unusual
Our other practical pages for the borough: parking in Stockport, Stockport council tax bands, roadworks and travel and house prices.
Sources
- Stockport Council: find your collection day, what you can put in your bins and its blue, brown and green bin pages
- Stockport Council round calendars for the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday rounds, downloaded from the collection-day service on 15 August 2026
- Stockport Council: recycling and refuse collections policy ES 02 (PDF)
- Stockport Council: garden waste, bulky household waste collection, discounted bulky collection, garden and building waste and tips and recycling centres
- Stockport Council: bin collection update, 30 July 2026 and report a missed bin collection
- Recycle for Greater Manchester: recycling in Stockport, Adswood Road, Bredbury Parkway, Rose Hill and van permits
Every figure and date on this page was checked against the sources above on 15 August 2026. Charges and calendars change, so confirm anything you are about to pay for with the council before you commit.
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