Green bin payment system now live – or you can tell council you won’t pay and they will collect your bin

An online payment system for residents across Wrexham who want to continue having their green bins emptied is now available.

Earlier this month Wrexham.com reported that letters informing households of the upcoming changes to garden waste collections had been sent out.

From April 1st the local authority will no longer empty your green garden waste bin if you haven’t paid for the service. The political decision was previously explained as being due to ongoing cuts to local government and attempts to generate revenue, and therefore the authority was left with “no choice but to join other councils in charging for this discretionary service.”

The charge will be £25 per green garden waste bin, per year – with the changes coming into play on April 1st.

Residents have until mid-March to pay either online or by phone to have their garden waste collected by Wrexham Council.

If you do register to continue to have your green garden waste bin collected you will receive a label with your address clearly printed on. This label should be placed on the lid of your bin.

Wrexham Council say this “will help the collection crew to quickly identify if the service has been paid for.”

Darren Williams, Chief Officer, Environment and Technical, said: “Introducing this charge is something we have done due to the continued financial challenges that face local government.

“We are not the only local authority to have introduced these charges but we have kept it to the minimum possible charge and it is lower than others are charging.

“We hope you will continue to recycle your garden waste with us but we understand if you wish to use one of the Household Recycling Centres or home compost.”

Payment can be made either online or by telephone 01978 298989 to register for the service.

If you decide you don’t want to pay for you garden waste bin to be collected the council have said they will pick it up. You can request it to be picked up here.

Wrexham Council have also compiled quite a detailed Frequently Asked Questions list about the green bin collection and changes, which can be found here, that includes answers to questions such as “What is the law about charging to collect garden waste?” with the answer: “While we do have a duty to dispose of household waste free of charge, we don’t have a statutory duty to provide free garden collections.”

You can view more Q&A’s on the topic here!

Top picture: Wrexham.com will be requesting that the council collect this image from our servers.