From 31 March, the green-lidded bin became garden waste only. It was the last district in the county to collect the two together.
Epping Forest District Council introduced separate food waste collections on 31 March 2026, bringing it into line with every other Essex authority. Households received a kitchen caddy and an outdoor brown caddy, collected weekly on their usual collection day. Food waste can no longer go in the green-lidded wheelie bin.
That bin is now for garden waste alone, collected fortnightly for households that subscribe to a new annual service which opened for applications on 1 February 2026. The council was explicit about its reasoning: it was the last Essex local authority still collecting food and garden waste together, continuing to co-mingle the two would have carried significantly higher processing costs, and aligning with neighbouring districts matters ahead of local government reorganisation.
Epping Forest will form part of a new West Essex Council alongside Harlow and Uttlesford from April 2028.
Why separation costs less
Co-mingled food and garden waste has to be composted rather than sent to anaerobic digestion, which handles food waste and produces both energy and fertiliser. Keeping the streams apart opens up the cheaper and more productive route for each.
The same logic governs commercial waste, which is why Simpler Recycling requires businesses to separate food waste from dry recyclables and general waste. Larger firms have been covered since March 2025 and micro-firms come into scope on 31 March 2027.
For pubs, cafes, care homes and schools across the district, food waste is the stream that dictates the schedule. It needs emptying frequently regardless of volume, particularly in summer, which usually means a smaller dedicated container on a weekly or more frequent round rather than one large bin. Businesses arranging commercial waste collections in west Essex tend to find the food element is the part worth getting right first.
Caddy liners help with the household version of the same problem. Newspaper works as well as a compostable liner, and keeping the outdoor caddy in shade through summer does more for odour than anything sold to solve it.
What the subscription model signals
Garden waste has been moving to subscription across Essex for several years, and Epping Forest’s version follows that pattern. It is a reasonable charge for a service that is not statutory, but it has a side effect worth noting: households that decline the subscription need somewhere else for garden waste, and fly-tipping tends to rise where disposal routes narrow.
Households with occasional bulky garden or household clearance can use household waste recycling centres, hire a skip, or book a van collection through a registered carrier. Any operator removing waste for payment must be registered with the Environment Agency, and the householder can be held responsible if waste handed to an unregistered carrier is later dumped. That check takes a minute on the public register and applies equally to wheelie bin hire and one-off clearances.
Two containers where there was one is a modest change on paper. In practice it is the same shift Essex has been making for a decade: fewer materials going to the expensive disposal route, and more going somewhere useful.
