Last night (18 December 2025), the council voted to instead keep its two-weekly residual waste timetable as is.
Recycling bins and food waste collections will continue to be made weekly.
Bristol had formerly consulted on options for both three-weekly and four-weekly collections, before announcing it would pursue plans to move to three-weekly.
In the same meeting, the council approved plans to replace over 8,000 black bins with sacks and invest £13 million in modernising its collection fleet.
It will also introduce a new collection round to specifically target fly-tipping and update its contract with Bristol Waste to “improve the reliability of waste collections”.
New sacks and new fleet
The council approved plans to move thousands of properties over from black bins and dry recycling boxes to black and orange sack respectively.
These will mostly target properties that do not have easy kerbside access, such as those in the city centre and along major roads.
The council will also explore new recycling containers.
The current fleet will be replaced in fives phases to vehicles which can handle larger volumes of recycling.
Councillor Martin Fodor, chair of the environment and sustainability policy committee, said: “Taking steps to modernise our fleet of vehicles and phase out older more polluting diesel engines will bring about several benefits for our city.
“These new vehicles will have resized compartments to be able to collect more cardboard and plastics, two types of material that we’re seeing more of in household recycling. These larger capacities will mean fewer missed collections.”
Consultation to change collection timetable
Bristol City Council opened a consultation on the proposed changes on 27 January 2025 and closed it on Monday 10 March 2025.
The council estimated that a change to four-weekly black bin collections could result in a 10% recycling rate increase and a 60% reduction in carbon emissions.
It is also estimated to result in around £2.3 million in savings and an additional £1.5 million in avoided carbon tax costs.
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