Food waste collections in Slough: rollout times and tips

All residents in Slough will have food waste bin collections from their doorstep by spring 2026.

The weekly collection service is rolling out across Slough borough starting next month, following a trial that has been going on for a year across five areas.

The rollout will be in phases, and the first area is having caddies delivered on Monday, November 3.

Everything from leftovers, bones, used tea bags, fruit and vegetable peelings can be put in – and will be turned into green energy and fertiliser.

The only things that cannot go in is non-food waste like packaging, pet waste and garden waste.

Residents will receive an indoor and outdoor caddy, along with a card informing them of their start date for their collections.

The cards feature a cartoon character, Kit the caddy, who ‘loves every morsel of food’, to encourage the whole family to get involved.

Both caddies are lockable to keep out pests.

The indoor caddy can be lined with any bag – a bin bag, old carrier bags, left over bread bags etc. Then indoor caddy bags can then be simply tied up and placed into the outdoor caddy.

Outdoor caddies will be collected weekly on the same day as the red or grey bins.

Councillor Gurcharan Singh Manku, lead member for environmental services, said:

 “When refuse and recycling collections went to alternate weeks, we promised we would introduce weekly food waste collections.

“[This was] to both free up space in the grey bins and cut down on summer problems like flies.

“It is also cheaper to dispose of food waste – with costs per tonne being less than 10 percent of the cost of normal rubbish.”

Currently around 40 per cent of what goes in a normal refuse bin is food waste.

The food waste collection rollout is scheduled in line with the existing bin collection rounds rather than by geographical area:

• 5,300 houses in November
• 5,300 houses in December
• 10,000 houses in January
• 10,000 houses in February
• 10,000 houses in March
• All flats in April, including flats with communal bins.