Bins out by 6.30am, and every bank holiday pushes your day forward one. Garden waste is £99 a year, bulky collections start at £59, and the tip needs a booking.
Worthing Borough Council runs its waste service jointly with Adur District Council, and it splits the answers across five or six separate pages. This one pulls them together for Worthing. Every figure below was checked against the council’s own pages on 2 September 2026.
Your own collection date comes from the council’s postcode lookup, which also lets you download a calendar: check your bin day.
Which bin is which
The bins are identified by lid colour and by the dots embossed on the lid, which is how the crews tell them apart.
- Dark grey or black lid, one dot. General household refuse, collected on alternate weeks. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
- Blue lid, two dots, or a blue box. Recycling, collected on alternate weeks. Some town centre properties get it weekly. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
- Green lid, three dots, 240 litres. Garden waste, weekly, and only if you have paid the annual subscription. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
- Grey bin with an orange lockable lid, 23 litres. Food waste, weekly, being rolled out to every home from September 2026. Flats get a shared 140 litre bin with an orange lid. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
The food waste service is new, and we have covered the rollout separately in Worthing food waste collections start weekly from September.
The council asks that recycling is clean, dry, loose and squashed flat. Plastic bags are not accepted as containers for it. Shredded paper, padded envelopes, paper towels, tissues and photos cannot be recycled at the kerbside, and nor can shiny wrapping paper that fails the scrunch test. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
Worthing and Adur recycle 36% of their waste, a figure the council publishes on its own refuse page as the reason for fortnightly collections.
The rule that catches people out: bank holidays
Put your bins on the kerbside nearest your home by 6.30am. Crews can arrive any time up to 2pm.
After every bank holiday, your collection day rolls forward by one working day for the rest of that week. The council calls this the rollover day system, and it exists because the waste facilities do not open for tipping on bank holidays. Its stated reason for rolling forward rather than catching up is that it stops the same households being inconvenienced every time. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
That rule is not printed on the bin day page. It is buried on the missed collection page, which is why so many bins sit out on the wrong day in late May and August.
Christmas and New Year
The council publishes a dated Christmas timetable each year. As of 2 September 2026 the page still carries the 2025-26 dates, so the 2026-27 dates are not yet available. Last winter’s pattern is a reasonable guide to what to expect, and it was:
- no collections on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Day, or at weekends
- collection days slipping forward one working day after each bank holiday
- a reasonable amount of side waste accepted up to and including 12 January
- garden waste stopping on 24 December and resuming on 13 January
- real Christmas trees collected from 13 January, put out next to your bins by 6.30am
- bulky collections suspended from 24 December, resuming 5 January by appointment only
Garden waste is the one to watch. The subscription buys a weekly collection for 50 weeks, not 52: the terms exclude the first two weeks after Christmas and New Year.
Garden waste: £99 a year
A garden waste subscription costs £99.00 a year for prices running 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, and the price rises each April. You get a 240 litre green lidded bin, a weekly collection, and the waste composted. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
Two practical points from the council’s own page:
- new bin deliveries are taking up to six weeks, and your subscription start date is moved to the first of the month after the bin arrives
- extra garden waste left beside the bin is not collected unless it is in one of the council’s own garden waste sacks
You can apply online or call 01903 851729.
Bulky waste: from £59
The council quotes against three bands, and the quote depends on access as well as the items. Prices apply from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
| Band | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Category 1 | £59.00 | up to 3 items of furniture, or 9 sacks |
| Category 2 | £90.00 | up to 6 items of furniture, or 18 sacks |
| Category 3 | £145.00 | up to 12 items of furniture, or 36 sacks |
No sack may weigh more than 25kg. Bulky crews work Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in Worthing, and you are offered dates up to six weeks ahead. There is no same-week option.
The service will take furniture, carpets and curtains, white goods, televisions and small electricals, and decorating waste such as empty paint tins and old tiles. It will not take asbestos, plasterboard, chemicals or garden waste. For rubble, soil, chalk, large branches and roots you have to ring for advice.
Small electrical items do not need a bulky booking at all. There is a separate kerbside WEEE collection: put the item next to your rubbish or recycling bin on your collection day and the crew takes it. Kettles, toasters, hairdryers, hair straighteners, power tools, DVD players, remote controls, smoke detectors and radios are all on the council’s list. So are vapes, which it asks you to bag so they do not spill into the road, and which must never go in a bin. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
Missed collections: you have two working days
You cannot report a missed bin the moment the lorry fails to appear. The council will only accept a report after 2.30pm on your collection day, and the window closes two working days later. (Adur and Worthing Councils)
It will come back only if the miss was its mistake. It will not return if:
- the bin went out after 6.30am
- the bin was blocked in by a vehicle or was not visible from the road
- the bin was overfilled and the lid was open
- the wrong waste was in it, for example general waste in the recycling or soil in the garden waste
- extra waste was left beside the bin, which is only collected after bank holidays and over Christmas
- the contents were frozen solid
- the garden waste subscription had lapsed
Report it through the bin day lookup, where a “report a problem with this bin or collection” link appears inside the reporting window. General enquiries go to 01903 851729.
The tip: Worthing recycling centre
The Worthing Household Waste Recycling Site is at Hambridge Trading Estate, Willowbrook Road, Worthing BN14 8NA, phone 01903 712632. It is run by West Sussex County Council, not by the borough. (West Sussex County Council)
- Opening hours: 9am to 6pm every day from 1 April to 30 September, and 9am to 4pm from 1 October to 31 March.
- Booking: required for every vehicle visit. Arriving on foot, by bicycle or on a mobility scooter needs no booking.
- Permit: none needed, but you will be asked to prove where you live. (West Sussex County Council)
- Vehicles: under 3.5 tonnes gross and under 2.2m high. Luton vans, horseboxes, twin axle trailers and tippers, flatbeds or drop-sides are turned away.
- DIY waste: the site takes up to 200kg of building, construction and demolition material.
Book through West Sussex County Council’s booking system. Shoreham is the other site covering this area, and the same rules apply.
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