Garden Waste Subscription Service

Home composting

If you are a gardener, now is the perfect time to create your own mulch or compost at home.

To help with this, Essex County Council has a compost bin special offer for residents where bins are available from only £18. There is also a multi-buy offer for residents with larger gardens or for those who team up with a friend or neighbour to buy a bin.

Composting at home is a quick, easy and cost-effective method of clearing away garden waste and making a free supply of compost to use in your garden for the spring.

Whether it is vegetable peelings and eggshells from the kitchen, a leftover pumpkin from Halloween, compostable products, shredded paper or the cuttings from one last outing for the lawnmower, simply throw it in your compost bin and over the winter months it will break down to produce environmentally-friendly compost.

Find further information on home composting

Community composting 

Compost bin giveaway

Join us in celebrating International Compost Awareness Week (05 – 11 May) by embracing home composting.

Enter our competition for your chance to win one of 30 220-liter compost bins.

Submit your entry by 28 May. 

How to enter

Complete the form to enter the competition

Terms and conditions

To provide you with this service, we need to collect some specific, relevant personal information.

We take our responsibilities under data protection legislation seriously to ensure that any personal information we collect and use is done so proportionately, correctly and safely.

Records of this information will be kept in line with our retention schedule. For more information about how your data is processed, go to www.colchester.gov.uk/privacy

1. The promotion is open to entries from 9am on Tuesday 07 May 2024 until 11.59pm on Tuesday 28 May 2024.
2. The winner will be announced by Friday 31 May 2024.
3. Entries which are received after the closing date will be discounted.   
4. No entry fee or purchase necessary.   
5. No cash or other alternative prizes are available. Prizes cannot be transferred or sold by winners and no cash alternative will be offered.   
6. This competition is open to UK residents aged 18 years or over, except employees of Colchester City Council, their families, agents or anyone else connected with the competition.   
7. The winner will be notified by email within 28 days of the closing date. If the winner cannot be contacted or does not claim the prize within 14 days of notification, we reserve the right to withdraw the prize from the winner and pick a replacement winner.   
8. We will notify the winner when the prize can be collected. Collection will be from Colchester City Council, 33 Sheepen Road, Colchester, CO3 3WG. 
9. If the prize cannot be collected, the promoter reserves the right to select an alternative winner.   
10. The winner agrees to take part in publicity in connection with the competition. We may exercise our sole discretion to use the competition winner’s name and image alongside the winning image and their comments relating to the prize and competition experience for future promotional, marketing and publicity purposes in any media worldwide without notice and without any fee being paid.   
11. By entering the competition you give us the full rights to use your image in any format or medium for future promotional, marketing and publicity purposes in any media worldwide without notice and without any fee being paid. 
12. Entry into the competition will be deemed as acceptance of these terms and conditions.   
13. The promoter’s decision in respect of all matters to do with the competition will be final and no correspondence will be entered into.   
14. No responsibility can be accepted for entries not received for whatever reason.   
15. No information regarding entries or judging will be disclosed to any third party not involved in the conduct of the promotion.   
16. This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook or any other social network.