Garden Waste Collection Checker

Most councils charge an annual permit for the brown bin service, and that fee funds the collection itself rather than coming out of general council tax, so each of Scotland's 32 councils setting its own price produces a wide range. A handful charge nothing at all for a service they do provide, while five councils, plus half of one island authority, run no kerbside garden waste service whatsoever, which is why the picture looks patchy rather than a single national rate.

Garden waste collection isn't a statutory service in Scotland the way general refuse is, so each council decides for itself whether to run one. Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, Orkney Islands, Scottish Borders and Shetland Islands currently have no kerbside garden waste service at all, and Na h-Eileanan Siar runs one on Lewis and Harris but not on Uist and Barra. If yours is one of these, your result shows what to do instead.

No Scottish council publishes garden waste pricing through an API, so every figure here comes from that council's own current page, or a dated news source confirming a change. Prices and permit sign-up windows shift most years (nearly every council in this data set changed its price between 2025/26 and 2026/27), and some councils sell permits on a fixed annual cycle while others allow sign-up any time, so use the official link in your result to confirm what's current for your council.

The lookup resolves your postcode to a council through postcodes.io, a free, ONS-backed service that covers the whole UK, then matches the result against this Scotland-only data set. If a match fails, the postcode is likely very new or mistyped, worth checking either way, since all 32 Scottish councils are covered in the full table below.

Grass cuttings, hedge trimmings, leaves and small prunings are accepted almost everywhere. What's explicitly excluded (soil, turf, plastic bags, treated wood) varies enough by council that an accepted and not-accepted breakdown is only shown where a council actually publishes one, which is currently just a few. Where nothing is shown for your council, check the official link in your result.

Yes, it's free, and no: the postcode you type is sent straight to postcodes.io to resolve a council, and nothing is logged or stored by this site.