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Survey results after the first of the paid-for garden waste collections

By on 10th July 2025 in Environment

In the first week of London Borough of Hillingdon’s new paid-for subscription garden waste collection service  we are running a survey to ask for residents’ experiences on how things went.  With Ruislip and Ruislip Manor’s first collections being on Monday and Tuesday, starting the survey on Tuesday afternoon meant that we could capture the early impressions.

First results are in

As of Wednesday night, we’d had 311 responses to our survey.

  • 84% of responses were from Ruislip and Ruislip Manor (as we’d hope!)
  • 6% from neighbouring Eastcote
  • 4% in Ickenham & South Harefield
  • the remainder were from across the borough – shout outs to Uxbridge, the Northwoods, South Ruislip, Yiewsley and West Drayton

Number of subscribers and tag deliveries

  • Among the responses so far, 69% were from subscribers to the paid garden waste service.
  • Of those who subscribed, only 48% had received their tags.
  • NONE of the 56 subscribers who asked for more than three tags have got them
The national average takeup for garden waste collection subscription varies between 10-45% and Hillingdon predicted a 30% subscription rate, so this 69% is very high – and much higher than the 17% of borough-wide consultation responses who said they would subscribe.

Of course, like LBH’s own consultation, the responders are a self-selecting group though, and a higher rate for Ruislip – one of the more affluent areas of the borough, with the highest number of gardens, and lowest number of flats, is to be expected.

Were subscribers’ bags actually collected?

81% of subscribers put out bags this week.  Of those bags:

  • 87% were collected
  • 13% were not collected (23 households)

What about the bags being returned?

Of the collected bags, 3% weren’t returned.

LBH’s stated rules are that they will replace bags/tags only three times throughout the year’s 42 collections.‎ When we checked what would happen with lost bags, LBH told us:

” A three-time replacement limit is in place to prevent misuse of the service. However, if losses occur more than three times, genuine complaints will be fully investigated, and appropriate action, such as additional replacements, will be taken as necessary”

What are non-subscribers doing instead?

Of the 31% of responders who didn’t subscribe:

  • 78% of them knew they’d have to pay from this week onwards, but decided not to
  • 14% of them didn’t know they’d have to (but a third of them said that they will subscribe)

What do they plan to do with their garden waste now?!

Of the non subscribers who will still have garden waste to dispose of…

  • only 23% will consider composting
  • 61% will drive their bags to the dump
  • 19% will consider putting it in black bags
  • 16% think they’ll burn it
  • 9% consider flytipping
  • 6% might share a subscription with neighbours
  • 6% might pave over their garden
It is difficult to say anything other than that these are terrible numbers for London Borough of Hillingdon.  To SAVE money they surely need people to PAY towards the service, or to compost their own waste.

Garden waste in black bags

19% of people are going to try putting their garden waste into black bags

The council’s own consultation results report showed that it cost the council £40 per tonne to handle green waste, and that it costs £146 per tonne in black bags so it’s neither environmentally sensible nor financially viable for even a kilo of garden waste to go into black bags… it’ll save nothing – but instead cost more than three times as much.

The 19% of non-subscribers’ garden waste going into black bags from Ruislip is consistent with LBH’s own borough-wide figures from the consultation: they recorded 8242 responses, and 2147 people (26%) said they would put their waste in black bags.  It’s clearly the plan going forward for some residents, in which case the new regime is going to cost more money, not save anything… every kilo of grass cuttings in a black bag will cost more than three kilos in garden waste sacks.

Driving garden waste to Harefield amenity site

61% of non-subscribers’ garden waste will be driven to the dump by private cars, where LBH will have to not only process it for nothing, but given that compost isn’t processed even at the dump, the council will then have to arrange its collection and transport move such large additional amounts of green waste to West London Composting.

Sharing with a neighbour?

Other London boroughs acknowledge that residents could arrange between themselves that they share a subscription (we detailed this previously  at the bottom of this page)

Hillingdon do not acknowledge the concept of sharing subscriptions between neighbours, but 6% of non-subscribers say that’s what they’ll do.  Hillingdon’s terms and conditions do not forbid it, but when we checked with the Garden Waste officers in the Environmental Services department, they say that this wouldn’t be allowed:

“The garden waste subscription service is per property and cannot be shared with neighbouring residents. Unless it relates to a to communal gardens, whereby the Managing Agents would need to contact our recycling team via email”

And finally…

To rub salt in the wounds of the 13% of paid subscribers who didn’t get their bags collected, a cheeky twenty non-subscribers put garden waste bags out to see what happened – and 40% of them were collected anyway!

In a few weeks, maybe a month, we’ll repeat the survey to see how the service settles down, and will be able to ask what people did rather than just what they might do.  We’ll run the current ‘first week’ survey until Sunday evening, and update these numbers with the revised totals once the last few survey submissions are recorded.

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches

Thinking about all the Christmas trees that people leave out for collection every January, we also asked Garden Waste officers in the Environmental Services department what would happen with those:  Nothing.  If you’re not a garden waste subscriber, the council have no plans to collect your Christmas tree.

Signing up isn’t possible after the end of December, so anyone thinking of getting a Christmas tree needs to consider that this year’s tree may not just be for Christmas…

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