Lewes bin days: a bank holiday moves your whole week

Lewes District Council does not publish a bank holiday bin notice. It does not need to, because the changes are already printed on the calendar it posted through your door in January. The catch is that almost nobody reads that far down the page.

Here is what the calendar actually says. In the week after a Monday bank holiday, every round in the district moves one day later. Monday becomes Tuesday, Tuesday becomes Wednesday, and the Friday rounds go out on Saturday.

That is happening this week. The summer bank holiday falls on Monday 31 August 2026, so:

The same one-day slip happened after Easter Monday on 6 April, after the early May bank holiday on 4 May, and after the spring bank holiday on 25 May. Good Friday, 3 April, was not moved: Friday rounds were collected as normal that day, and the disruption only began the following Monday.

Those dates come from the collection calendars themselves, which Environment First publishes as a PDF and a downloadable diary file for each of the district’s ten rounds. The council’s own key on the calendar reads “Collection 1 day behind due to Bank Holiday, and will take place as per the calendar”.

Find your own day

Put your house number and postcode into the Environment First lookup. It returns your next refuse and next recycling date and gives you the 2026/27 calendar for your round as a PDF or a calendar file you can subscribe to.

The council links the same tool from its when is my bin collection day page.

Bins must be at the boundary of your property by 6am in Lewes district. Eastbourne is 7am, so ignore any advice aimed at that side of the shared council.

Refuse went fortnightly in February

From the week beginning Monday 9 February 2026, Lewes District Council stopped collecting black sack waste every week. Refuse and recycling now alternate, one each fortnight, on the same day. The council calls it alternate weekly collections, and explains the switch on its alternate weekly collections page.

• Refuse: every two weeks
• Recycling: every two weeks, on the alternate week
• Food waste: every week, on your collection day, in a separate electric vehicle
• Garden waste: every two weeks, paid subscription only

Some properties kept weekly refuse. The council names them as flats, houses in multiple occupation and town centre homes with nowhere to store a bin off the street. Its test is simple: if your refuse goes out in a gull-proof sack rather than a wheelie bin, you are still weekly.

The council’s stated reason is that its recycling rate had been stuck at around 41% for several years against a government target of 55%, rising to 65% by 2035. Its own waste analysis found that 38% of what goes in a Lewes refuse bin is food waste and a further 37% is otherwise recyclable, leaving only about a quarter that genuinely has to be thrown away.

One page on the council’s own website has not caught up. The household waste collection service page says at the top that refuse and recycling are fortnightly, then a few lines below says Lewes collections happen “from 6am on the same morning each week”. The fortnightly line is the correct one.

What goes in which bin

Recycling in Lewes district is a single green bin with a blue lid, and it takes more than many neighbouring districts do.

Yes, in the recycling bin:

• glass bottles and jars
• cartons and Tetra Pak, added to the service recently
• plastic bottles, with the lid back on
• food pots, tubs, trays, yoghurt pots, ice cream tubs, margarine tubs and plastic film lids
• empty aerosols and kitchen foil, scrunched into a ball
• paper, card, envelopes, junk mail and wrapping paper
• shredded paper, but only inside a tied clear bag

No, put these in the refuse bin:

• crisp packets and sweet bags
• cling film, cellophane, plastic wrappers and any kind of pouch, including baby food, pet food and detergent refills
• disposable coffee cups, polystyrene and anything sold as biodegradable or compostable
• nappies, double wrapped so gulls cannot get at them
• kitchen roll, tissues, baking paper, wet paper and metallic wrapping paper
• drinking glasses, Pyrex, ceramics, mirrors and light bulbs

Neither bin:

• Batteries and vapes. The council’s answer is “no, absolutely not” to both bins. They start fires in the collection vehicles. Take them to a recycling site or a shop drop-off point.
• Textiles. Clothes, shoes and bags are refused by both bins. Use a clothing bank or a recycling site.
• Coffee pods, unless they are aluminium.

All of the above is from the council’s A to Z of reduce, reuse, recycle, which covers 125 items.

Food waste is free, weekly, and you have to ask for it

Lewes district’s food waste collection is opt in. Just under a quarter of homes in the district use it, on the council’s own figure, which is why the refuse bins are heavier than they need to be.

Signing up is free and brings a kitchen caddy, an outdoor bin, a roll of compostable liners and a set of instructions. The food waste page has the form. Liners must carry the seedling logo and reference EN13432; the council is explicit that liners sold as “biodegradable” do not compost and are not accepted.

Free replacement rolls are handed out across the district, which is the part almost nobody knows. The pick-up points are:

• Abergavenny Arms, Rodmell
• Barcombe Stores and Post Office
• Ditchling Post Office
• Landport Residents Association
• Lewes District Council offices, 6 High Street, Lewes
• Lewes Tourist Information Centre
• Newhaven Town Council reception
• Newick News and Post Office
• Peacehaven Town Council reception
• Plumpton village hall
• Ringmer Library
• Seaford Environmental Alliance
• Seaford Tourist Information Centre
• Telscombe Civic Centre
• Wivelsfield Village Stores

Collected food waste goes to the Woodlands in-vessel composting facility at Whitesmith and comes back as soil conditioner for local farms.

Garden waste costs £89

The subscription runs from April to the following March. For Lewes district in 2026/27 it is £89 for the first bin and £59 for each extra bin, according to the council’s garden waste page. Eastbourne pays £84, so do not use that figure.

Points the sign-up page makes that are worth knowing before you pay:

• There is a four-week break in collections from mid-December to mid-January. You still get the same annual price.
• Join in November and you pay the full year, then renew again by 31 March.
• Miss the 31 March renewal and the service stops. You have to start a new one.
• No monthly payments. The full annual fee, per bin.
• A lost, stolen or damaged garden bin costs £50 to replace, including delivery.
• Cancel more than 14 days after signing up but within 12 weeks and there is a £10 fee.
• Two neighbours can legally share one bin, though it stays registered to one address.

Real Christmas trees can go in the brown-lidded bin if you cut them up, or to a free collection point. Last winter those were Brook Street car park in Lewes, Bay Vue in Newhaven, Piddinghoe Avenue in Peacehaven, and Richmond Road or The Buckle in Seaford.

Bulky waste: £57, and your area has one fixed day

Lewes district charges £57 for one to five items and £88 for six to ten. Book through the bulky waste page. Everything must be at the front of your property before 6am. Crews will not knock, will not go into a garage and will not collect from round the back.

Collections run to a fixed weekly rota by area:

The council’s own page introduces that table with the line “Bulky waste collections are Monday through to Thursday every week”, then lists four areas on a Friday. Go by the table.

What it will not take is a longer list than most people expect: carpets and underlay, kitchen or bathroom units, fences, sheds and decking, plasterboard, rubble, bags of soil, large panes of glass, mobility scooters, gas bottles, paint, tyres and pianos.

Before you pay, the council points to free routes: Freecycle, Freegle, Furniture Now, the British Heart Foundation, St Wilfrid’s Hospice, Age UK East Sussex and Anglo Doorstep Collections.

Missed collection: you have 48 hours

You can report a missed bin if it was out by 6am and had not been emptied by 3pm on your collection day. Reports must be made within 48 hours, and the council’s missed collection page adds that you should tell them on the day or the day after.

If your bin never went out, there is no return visit. The council says so plainly. You wait for the next round or take the waste to a recycling site yourself.

Food waste is collected by a different crew at a different time of day, so a full food caddy at lunchtime does not mean it has been missed.

New and replacement bins are free. Refuse bins come in 140 litre and 240 litre sizes, and the council will only collect one per household unless there are ten or more people living there or someone needs a clinical waste service. You can have as many recycling bins as you want. If the pavement outside your home is too narrow to store a bin, you can ask for a gull-proof sack instead.

The three tips, and the ones that will turn you away

East Sussex County Council runs the recycling sites, not Lewes District Council, and you must book a slot before you go. Booking has been compulsory since 24 November 2025. Slots are 30 minutes, bookable up to two weeks ahead or on the same day if there is space.

Seaford’s site is shut Monday to Thursday, and it was shut for the summer bank holiday on 31 August 2026 as well. Lewes and Newhaven both opened as normal that day. Each site page carries its own special dates table, which is the only reliable place to check a bank holiday.

The traps, from the county council’s site rules:

• Lewes does not allow pedestrians at all. The county council’s reason is that the road to the site has no pavement. Cyclists are allowed, through the main entrance. Newhaven and Seaford both have pedestrian entrances.
• Vans only on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Every site has a 2 metre height barrier that only lifts on those days. The exception is a Blue Badge holder in a vehicle over 2 metres, who can visit any site on any day.
• Plasterboard is only accepted at Newhaven, of the three. So is bonded asbestos.
• Tyres are accepted at Lewes and Newhaven, not Seaford, at £2.70 each with a limit of four a month.
• Hardcore, soil and plasterboard are free up to two 50 litre bags a week, then £6.50 a bag.
• You will be turned away if you try to visit two different sites in the same week.
• Non-residents of East Sussex pay £8.75 a visit.

Christmas 2026 is the long one

Christmas Day 2026 falls on a Friday, which is the worst case for a fortnightly service. The calendars already show the replacement dates, and there is no collection at all on 25 or 26 December.

Every round’s dates, tree drop-offs and tip hours over the holiday are on our Lewes Christmas bin collections page.

The number that matters is the gap. A bin that is normally emptied every 14 days will wait between 16 and 18 days over Christmas, depending on your round. Thursday and Friday rounds get the full 18 days, and Friday rounds go 11 days with nothing collected at all between 18 and 29 December.

That is a strong argument for signing up to the free weekly food waste collection before December, since food waste is the reason bins smell and it is the one stream that keeps running weekly.

More Lewes local information: roadworks and travel, parking in Lewes, council tax bands, house prices and planning news.

Every figure on this page was checked against Lewes District Council, Environment First and East Sussex County Council on 31 August 2026. Charges and dates change; confirm with the council before you rely on one.