Food waste weekly, recycling fortnightly, black bin every three weeks in Mid Sussex. Bank holidays do not move your collection here, and only Christmas does.

Mid Sussex collects food waste every week, recycling every two weeks and general rubbish every three weeks. That cycle started on 3 November 2025 and it is the thing most people get wrong: the black bin is emptied once in three weeks, not once a fortnight.

The second thing worth knowing is what happens at a bank holiday. In most districts every round shifts by a day. Not here. Mid Sussex District Council states that “collection dates repeat in the same pattern throughout the year”, and that “the only exception is at Christmas and New Year”. (Bin Collection)

So for the summer bank holiday on Monday 31 August 2026, put your bin out on the day you normally would.

The three bins, and the cycle

The Mid Sussex 1, 2, 3 bin collection cycle over three weeks A grid of three weeks. The green food waste bin is collected in week one, week two and week three. The blue lidded recycling bin is collected in week one and week three. The black lidded rubbish bin is collected once, in week one. Over three weeks that is three food collections, two recycling collections and one rubbish collection. One black bin collection in three weeks, three food ones The Mid Sussex 1, 2, 3 cycle, in place since 3 November 2025. Source: midsussex.gov.uk, read 26 August 2026. Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Food waste, green bin collected collected collected

Recycling, blue lid collected no collection collected

Rubbish, black lid collected no collection no collection Garden waste, where a household subscribes, is collected every two weeks on its own schedule and is not shown. Which week you are in depends on your address. The council’s own calendar is the only way to check it. Graphic by Mid Sussex News

Every household got two new containers when the service changed: a 5 litre kitchen caddy for indoors and a 23 litre green bin for outside. Flats got a caddy each plus a shared 140 litre wheelie bin in the bin store. (1,2,3 Waste Collection)

Bin Colour How often What goes in
Food Green, with a lockable lid Every week Meat and bones, fish, dairy, fruit and veg peelings, bread, rice and pasta, plate scrapings, tea bags, coffee grounds, eggshells, solid fats, pet food
Recycling Blue, or black with a blue lid Every two weeks Paper and card, glass bottles and jars, food and drink cans, empty aerosols, foil and foil trays, cartons, plastic bottles, tubs and pots
Rubbish Black, or black with a black lid Every three weeks Nappies, pet waste, non-recyclable packaging, shredded paper, plastic film, polystyrene, crockery

Two things catch people out in the blue bin. Glass goes in it, mixed with everything else, so there is no separate box. But shredded paper does not, and neither do crisp packets, food pouches, drinking glasses, black plant pots, plastic bags or polystyrene. All of those belong in the black bin. (Recycling bin, Household rubbish)

In the food caddy, liners are optional and the council does not supply them. If you want to line it, it has to be newspaper or a compostable liner, not a plastic bag.

Finding your collection day

There is no shortcut. The council’s calendar sits behind its Bins and waste service area, which you have to search by address. It is not a page you can bookmark by postcode, and it is the only place the revised Christmas dates appear.

The practical rules the council sets are these:

  • Bins out before 7am on collection day. Crews work between 7am and 3pm.
  • At the edge of your property, visible from the road, not hidden.
  • Lid shut. An over-filled bin whose lid will not close is left behind.
  • It has to be a bin the council supplied.

(Bin Collection)

If you cannot move your bins yourself, the council runs an assisted collection and the crew will fetch the bin from your garden. It covers rubbish, recycling, food and, if you subscribe, garden waste. Allow three working days for it to be set up. (Assisted waste collection)

Bank holidays and Christmas

Bank holidays do not move anything in Mid Sussex. That is unusual, and it is the council’s own wording: the pattern repeats all year, and Christmas and New Year are the only exception.

For Christmas, what the council did last year is the best guide to what it will do again. In December 2025 it confirmed:

  • no collections at all on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day
  • other dates over the festive period changed, with the revised days shown only in the online calendar
  • garden waste stops for two weeks over Christmas and New Year
  • Christmas trees were taken at drop-off sites across the district for a fortnight from 31 December, and were not collected from the kerb

(Mid Sussex District Council, 22 December 2025)

The council has not yet published its arrangements for Christmas 2026. When it does, they will appear in the service area rather than as a separate page.

Garden waste: £99.50, and a waiting list

The garden waste service is a paid subscription. It costs £99.50 a year, paid as one annual fee by direct debit, and you get:

  • a 240 litre green-lidded garden bin
  • collections every two weeks
  • 25 collections a year, excluding two weeks at Christmas and New Year

There is a catch that matters right now. The council says demand is high and there is a waiting list, which applies to new subscriptions, to properties that already have a bin sitting there, and to existing subscribers asking for a second one. Applications are processed in date order.

Two rules on this service are easy to fall foul of:

  • Fruit and fruit peelings are banned from the garden bin. So are kitchen scraps of any kind. The composting facility is not licensed for them, and they belong in the weekly food bin instead.
  • No refund if you cancel part way through the twelve months.

Ash dieback material, Japanese knotweed and other non-native invasive plants are also excluded. (Garden Waste)

Bulky collections: £27.50 for the first item

Serco collects bulky items for the council on a booked, paid basis.

What Cost
First item £27.50
Items 2 to 10, each £18.00
Maximum per booking 10 items

Households getting Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit may get 50% off, and the council checks entitlement during booking. Council tax discounts and disregards do not count for this.

Expect about a fortnight, not a few days: Serco makes contact within five working days of the request, and collection follows within about five more.

The exclusion list is where bookings go wrong. The service will not take carpet or underlay, fitted kitchen or bathroom units, doors, windows, fence panels, sheds, greenhouses, boilers or storage heaters, or any DIY, building or garden waste. A bed base and its mattress count as two items, not one. Changes and cancellations have to be in by 2.30pm the working day before, or there is no refund. (Bulky Household Waste)

Missed collection

Report it through the same Bins and waste service area. The one timing rule the council does publish is at the front end, not the back: do not report a miss until after 3pm on your normal day, because the crew may still arrive.

The council does not publish a deadline for reporting a missed bin, so this page cannot tell you how long you have. If that matters to you, phone the waste team on 01444 477440 rather than assume.

The tips: Burgess Hill and East Grinstead

Recycling centres are run by West Sussex County Council, not the district, and you must book a slot before driving in. Two serve Mid Sussex.

Burgess Hill East Grinstead
Address Fairbridge Way, RH15 8AR High Grove, Imberhorne Lane, RH19 1TZ
Open Seven days Closed Tuesday and Wednesday
Hours, 1 April to 30 Sept 9am to 6pm 9am to 6pm
Hours, 1 Oct to 31 March 9am to 4pm 9am to 4pm
Vehicles over 2.2m high Allowed Not allowed
Phone 01444 243041 01342 323967

Two points that are not obvious:

  • Arriving on foot, by bike or on a mobility scooter needs no booking. The slot system only applies to vehicles.
  • East Grinstead takes residents from a handful of Surrey and Kent postcodes, because Surrey County Council contributes to its running costs: RH7 6, RH10 3, RH19 2, RH19 3, TN8 5, TN8 6 and TN8 7. Those residents may not bring a van, trailer or pick-up.

Neither site accepts Luton vans, horseboxes, twin-axle trailers, tippers, flatbeds, drop-sides or anything over 3.5 tonnes. You need proof of West Sussex residency. (Burgess Hill, East Grinstead)

Nappies, and the second bin

Three weeks is a long gap if you have a baby. The council trialled a free collection for absorbent hygiene products, found demand too low, and did not roll it out. Its advice for everyone else is to double bag.

The exception it does make: if you have two children in nappies full time, you can ask customer services for a second black bin. That is not advertised anywhere on the main bins pages. (1,2,3 Waste Collection)

Did the change work

The council’s own figures say yes, by a wide margin. In the first four months of the new service, Mid Sussex collected 2,214 tonnes of food waste, about 21 tonnes a day. Over the same period:

  • the district’s recycling rate rose from 42.98% in 2024/25 to 55.59% in 2025/26
  • contamination in the dry recycling fell from 5.86% to 4.07%
  • food waste in the black bin stream dropped by 2,537 tonnes

Mid Sussex was the first council in West Sussex to roll food waste collections out across a whole district, ahead of the government’s 31 March 2026 deadline. The scale of it was 72,000 households, 144,000 new bins and caddies, 40 new collection rounds and 36 new jobs. (Mid Sussex District Council, 26 March 2026)

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