Fareham empties bins on the usual day every bank holiday, with no catch-up week. Garden waste is £73 a year, bulky collections are suspended, and a miss must be reported in 3 days.

Start with the thing most bin pages get wrong for this borough. Fareham does not move collections for bank holidays. The council’s own wording is blunt: “On Bank Holidays bins are emptied on the usual day. There is no change over Bank Holiday weeks. Over Easter, all the May and the August Bank Holidays, bins will be emptied on the due day.”

That is worth knowing because the reverse is the norm elsewhere: plenty of councils push the whole week back a day. Fareham does not, so if your day is a Monday, the late August bank holiday on Monday 31 August 2026 is a normal collection. Put the bin out by 6am as usual.

Everything below comes from Fareham Borough Council’s own waste pages, read on 15 August 2026. Your own day varies street by street, so check it on the council’s collection day lookup.

The three bins, and what actually goes in them

Container Lid colour How often What it takes
Refuse Green Alternate weeks General household waste only
Recycling Blue Alternate weeks, opposite the refuse bin Paper, card, tins, cans, aerosols, plastic bottles only
Food waste Small outdoor caddy Every week All food, cooked or raw, including bones and tea bags
Garden waste Brown Fortnightly, paid subscription Garden waste only
Fareham bin colours and collection frequency Four Fareham containers. Green lid refuse, alternate weeks, general household waste. Blue lid recycling, alternate weeks, paper, card, tins, cans, aerosols and plastic bottles only. Outdoor food caddy, weekly since 30 March 2026, all food waste. Brown lid garden waste, fortnightly on a paid subscription costing 73 pounds a year. What Fareham collects, and how often Refuse and recycling alternate. Food waste is weekly and goes out alongside whichever big bin is due. Green lid Refuse Alternate weeks Household waste only Blue lid Recycling Alternate weeks Bottles only, no other plastic Food caddy Outdoor food bin Every week Started 30 March 2026 Brown lid Garden waste Fortnightly, subscription £73 a year Glass is not collected at the kerb in Fareham. It goes to a bottle bank. Source: Fareham Borough Council, waste collection and recycling pages, August 2026 Graphic by Fareham News

Two rules catch people out here more than anywhere else.

No plastic except bottles. The council is explicit: “no plastic pots, tubs, trays or packaging”. It also refuses shredded paper, which blows around the sorting plant, and Tetra Pak cartons. The reasoning is set out on its what we can’t recycle page.

Glass does not go in the blue bin at all. Fareham has no kerbside glass collection. Jars and bottles go to a bottle bank, and there are banks at Bath Lane, Malthouse Lane and Palmerston Avenue car parks in town, at Holly Hill in Sarisbury, Middle Road in Park Gate, Locks Heath District Centre behind Waitrose, and at the ASDA on Newgate Lane. The council lists every bank and what each one takes. All colours of glass go in together and you can leave the metal lids on.

Everything in the blue bin must be loose. No carrier bags, no bin liners: the liner partly comes out with the load, tangles in the vehicle hoist, tears and litters the road.

This will change. Under the government’s Simpler Recycling rules, Hampshire County Council is building a new sorting facility at Chickenhall Lane in Eastleigh, planned to open in 2028, and only then will glass and the wider range of plastics be collected from Fareham doorsteps. The council’s Simpler Recycling roadmap sets out the sequence.

Food waste, weekly since March

Weekly food waste collections started in Fareham on 30 March 2026. Kerbside properties got an indoor kitchen caddy and an outdoor food bin; flats with communal bins got a shared food bin instead. The outdoor bin goes out every week, on the same day as whichever big bin is due.

It takes all food meant for people or pets: plate scrapings, out of date and mouldy food, raw and cooked meat and fish including bones, dairy and egg shells, bread, rice, pasta, tea bags and coffee grounds. It does not take packaging of any kind, liquids such as milk or oil, nappies, cat litter, dog waste, cut flowers or garden waste.

The council asks you to write your house number on the outdoor bin in permanent marker, because they are small, identical and easily lost.

Garden waste: £73 a year, and a bin you have to buy

Garden waste is banned from the refuse bin in Fareham. The only kerbside route is the council’s Clip & Collect subscription, and the 2025/26 fees still shown on the council’s page on 15 August 2026 are:

  • £73 annual subscription, or £62 for households that bought a 140 litre bin when the service launched
  • £44 one-off for a new 240 litre brown-lidded bin

That buys fortnightly collections, up to 25 a year. Two things worth knowing before you pay: bins can currently take up to four weeks to arrive in spring and summer, and there is no reduction in the subscription while you wait. The council also says it sometimes reissues recovered and inspected bins rather than new ones.

Christmas trees are collected in January on your usual garden waste day, but only if you subscribe. The council’s bank holiday and Christmas page contradicts itself on how to present the tree, telling you in one line to leave it whole beside the bin and in the next that trees “must be broken up and placed inside the garden waste bin”. Until that is fixed, breaking it up and putting it in the bin is the instruction that cannot go wrong.

Bulky waste collections are suspended

This is the most important thing on this page today. Fareham’s bulky waste service has been suspended since 10 July 2026 because of problems with the collection vehicles. The council is taking no new bookings, has no restart date, and says existing bookings may be delayed. If you have already had a quote, it is on hold.

When it restarts, the council’s published typical charges are £53 for one item including fridges and freezers, £81 for two smaller items, £124 for half a lorry load and £218 for a full load, with the exact price confirmed by quote and sometimes a site visit. Collections run on Mondays only, excluding bank holidays. Cancel before 4pm on the Friday before and you get a full refund; cancel later and there is a £25 administration charge.

It will not take televisions, computer monitors, microwaves, light strips, asbestos, paint, kitchen units, rubble from DIY work, or garden waste. Those go to a recycling centre.

If your bin was missed

Fareham gives you three working days to report a missed bin, and its own example is precise: a bin missed on Monday morning must be reported by 4pm on Wednesday. After that the crews have moved on and the council will not return. If you report in time, it aims to come back within two working days.

Two situations where it will not come back at all, whatever the timing: the bin was not at the kerbside by 6am, or the wrong items were in it, in which case you should find a hanger or tag on the bin explaining why.

Before you report, check the council’s service disruptions page, which lists roads by name and gives the return date. On 15 August 2026 it carried Cams Hill, where blocked access meant refuse bins were not emptied on 14 August and a return is set for Tuesday 18 August from 5.30am, and Woodrush Crescent between numbers 29 and 40. It also carries a long-running arrangement for 24 to 46 North Hill, where the road closure means bins must be presented at the edge of the closure by 6am. That closure is part of the wider disruption covered on our Fareham roadworks page.

Bins are not free here

Fareham is one of the councils where households buy their own bins. A new or replacement refuse or recycling bin costs £44 including delivery, and the council is explicit that residents are responsible for replacing bins that are worn out, damaged, vandalised, lost or stolen, including wheels that snap from age-related brittleness after about ten years. Move into a house with no bins, new build or not, and you buy them.

Other charges from the order a bin page: an extra recycling bin is £44 with no application needed, an extra refuse bin is £44 but only if your application is approved, upsizing to a 240 litre bin is £17, and a replacement 1,100 litre communal bin for a management company is £487.50 plus VAT. Only council-issued bins are emptied. The council also warns of current delays in delivering new and replacement bins.

Recycling centres

The tips are not the borough’s. Hampshire County Council runs them, and you must book a slot before you go or you will be turned away. The site inside this borough is at Segensworth; Gosport Borough Council’s own waste page names Segensworth and Port Solent as the nearest sites licensed to take hazardous household waste such as paint, solvents and garden chemicals.

Fareham’s page says the centres are open every day except 25 and 26 December and 1 January. This page does not publish their opening hours, because they change with the season and Hampshire’s own site could not be read on 15 August 2026. Book and check the times on Hampshire’s recycling centre finder before travelling.

Christmas 2026

Not published yet. As of 15 August 2026 the council’s page says only that “information about Christmas 2026 bin collections will be available nearer the time”, and that garden waste dates will be “confirmed nearer Christmas”. Given the bank holiday rule above, do not assume the Christmas week works the same way: the Christmas and New Year bank holidays are the one period Fareham does publish separate arrangements for. We will update this page when the dates appear.

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