Weekly food waste collections begin across East Hampshire from 5 October. Do not use your caddy until the week of your first collection, the council says.

Weekly food waste collections start across East Hampshire in the week beginning Monday 5 October. It is the biggest change to household bins in Petersfield, Alton, Bordon, Liss and Liphook in years, and every home in the district is affected.

Caddies are already being delivered. The council’s instruction is to leave them alone for now.

“Do not start using your caddy until the week of your first collection,” East Hampshire District Council says on its food waste collections page.

From Monday 21 September the new crews start driving the rounds without collecting anything. The council announced the route testing on 18 September. It is checking that the routes work and that the new vehicles can reach every home.

That matters for one practical reason. Testing can change your collection day. The council says days will be published through MyEHDC in late September, then adds that it is “worth double-checking your collection day on 3/4 October before collections begin”.

Two-column list of what East Hampshire will accept in the food waste caddy, including all raw and cooked food, meat and fish with bones, tea bags, peelings, shellfish shells, dairy, eggshells and pet food, against what it will refuse, including packaging, glass, liquids such as milk and gravy, cooking oil, cat litter, pet bedding and garden waste
Graphic by Petersfield Online. Source: East Hampshire District Council.
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What you get, and when

Caddy packs are being delivered across the district now. The council says distribution takes about six weeks and that some homes will not get theirs until the last week of September.

Most homes receive:

  • a five litre caddy for the kitchen
  • a 23 litre outdoor caddy, which is the one crews empty
  • stickers for both caddies and for the refuse bin

Flats and homes that share a bin store get the kitchen caddy and access to a new 140 litre shared bin instead.

The outdoor caddy locks shut. The council makes a point of this in its questions and answers page, arguing that a lockable container emptied weekly should attract fewer flies and less pest activity than food left in a green bin for a fortnight.

Two rules are easy to miss:

  • The caddies are yours, paid for by central government. Lose or damage one and you may be charged for a replacement.
  • You must put out the council’s outdoor caddy. Its caddy instructions warn that “non-standard outdoor caddies may not be emptied”. You can use whatever you like indoors.

No liners are supplied, and the council does not want you to buy compostable ones. Bags are removed at the digestion plant and thrown away separately, and it says compostable bags are more carbon-intensive to make and harder to strip out than an ordinary plastic bag you already have.

The law says this should have started in March

The change comes from the Environment Act 2021, through the rules the government calls Simpler Recycling.

Defra’s own policy update says that by 31 March 2026 councils in England were required to collect the core recyclable waste streams from all households, “including introducing weekly food waste collections for most homes, unless a transitional arrangement applies”.

East Hampshire starts more than six months after that date. The same document sets out when a council can take longer: where “long-term waste disposal (mechanical biological treatment and energy from waste) contracts present a barrier”. East Hampshire’s refuse is burned, as the council’s own page confirms when it says recycling food will cut “the amount of waste sent for incineration”. The council has not published which arrangement applies to it, or why the start date is October rather than March.

What the government has paid for it

The money is on the record, even though the council has not put a figure on it locally.

Defra publishes its food waste grant determinations authority by authority. East Hampshire District Council appears twice:

  • £258,680 revenue funding for 2024/25, under determination 31/7654
  • £108,557.11 revenue funding for 2025/26, under determination 31/7989

That is £367,237.11 in revenue grant across the two years. Neither of the two capital annexes published on the same page lists East Hampshire at all, so the capital cost of the caddies and the new vehicles is not in the public record there.

For scale, the 2025/26 list has East Hampshire between its two neighbours: Test Valley on £107,370.78 and Winchester on £117,908.37. The largest Hampshire allocation that year went to New Forest, £151,133.46, and the smallest to Eastleigh, £6,357.37.

What happens to the food

Food waste is about 30% of what currently goes in the green bin, according to the council. At the moment that share is burned.

Instead it will go to anaerobic digestion, which produces gas for electricity and a soil improver for farms. The council has not named the plant that will take East Hampshire’s food waste, and points readers to a video made by Winchester City Council, saying the process here will be the same.

Collections are being run by East Hampshire Norse, the council’s joint venture, which has recruited crews and is taking delivery of specialist vehicles.

What it means for you

  • Nothing changes this month. Your green refuse bin stays on its fortnightly round, and your recycling is unaffected.
  • Keep the caddy pack when it arrives. Read the leaflet, put the large sticker on the outdoor caddy and write your house number or name on it in permanent marker, so yours does not get mixed up with a neighbour’s.
  • Do not start using it yet. Wait until the week of your first collection.
  • Check your collection day twice. Once when MyEHDC publishes days in late September, and again on 3 or 4 October, because route testing may have moved it.
  • If your neighbours have caddies and you do not, the council asks you to report it through MyEHDC as a general enquiry, choosing food waste.
  • You do not have to take part, but the council recommends keeping the caddies anyway, because replacements may be charged for later.

Our Petersfield bin collection days page covers the rest of the calendar, including the one thing East Hampshire never puts on a web page: bank holiday collections run as normal here, and only Christmas and New Year move.

Sources