Henley Bin Collection Days: Christmas Slips to 16 January

South Oxfordshire District Council’s BinDays app will give you your next two collection dates and nothing else. It will not tell you that every collection from 25 December is late, that the catch-up runs for three weeks and does not finish until Saturday 16 January 2027, that a brown bin now costs £78 a year, or that the council has stopped taking fridges and freezers altogether.

This page pulls the whole cluster together for Henley-on-Thames and the rest of the district. Every figure was checked on 1 September 2026 against the council’s own pages, with the source linked beside the fact it supports.

The four containers, and what goes in each

South Oxfordshire runs three wheelie bins and a food caddy. The council contracts the collections to Biffa (South Oxfordshire District Council, what goes in which bin).

• Green wheelie bin, recycling. Plastic bottles, pots, tubs and trays including black ones, food and drink cartons, carrier bags, paper, card, shredded paper, envelopes with plastic windows, glass bottles and jars with the lids on, tins, cans, clean foil, metal lids and aerosols. Everything clean, dry and loose, and a sack has to be clear rather than black (the green recycling wheelie bin).
• Black wheelie bin, everything else. Crisp and sweet wrappers, soft plastics, cling film, polystyrene, plant pots, coffee cups, kitchen roll, tissues, food-stained card, broken glasses, Pyrex, pots and pans, cooled ash and wood (your non-recyclable waste bin).
• Green food caddy, weekly. All raw and cooked food including bones, dairy, tea bags and coffee grounds. Cooking oil is accepted if it is in a plastic bottle no bigger than a litre, inside the caddy or next to it. No glass bottles, and no compostable packaging even as packaging (your food caddy).
• Brown wheelie bin, garden waste. Paid subscription only, and the waste has to go in loose with no liners or sacks.

Two things about that list catch people out. The recycling bin and the food caddy are both green, so “green bin week” means the wheelie bin, not the caddy. And the council’s own electricals page tells you to check “when it’s a grey or green bin week” when the rubbish bin it means is black.

The recycling goes to a materials recovery facility in St Albans. The black bin waste is burned at the energy recovery facility at Ardley near Bicester. The food waste travels the shortest distance of the three: it goes to an anaerobic digestion plant at Benson, near Wallingford, takes 85 days to break down and comes out as fertiliser sold to local farmers.

Three things that go beside the bin, not in it

These are separate weekly and fortnightly collections that a lot of households never use (electrical items, textiles and batteries):

• Batteries go in a clear plastic bag on top of the green recycling bin. Household sizes, plus mobile phone, laptop and lithium batteries with tape over the terminals.
• Textiles go in a tied carrier bag next to the green recycling bin. Ripped and stained is fine, paired shoes are fine, wellies and duvets are not.
• Small electricals and vapes go in a tied carrier bag next to the black bin. Anything with a plug or a battery.

Never put batteries, vapes or electricals loose in any bin. The council’s 2026/27 waste leaflet calls them “a major fire risk”.

Finding your day, and the split that trips Didcot up

Use the council’s BinDays web app, which gives your next two collections from a postcode. The older Binzone service has been retired.

For the whole year, download the calendar PDF instead. This is where the district genuinely does something confusing: it runs two calendars. If you live in Didcot or East Hagbourne, or your property is on the Abingdon Bridge, the printed calendar on the website is not yours and you have to use the postcode search. Everyone else, Henley included, uses the downloadable 2026/27 waste calendar.

Collections start at 6am, so bins need to be out before then, with the lid shut flat.

Bank holidays and Christmas

Every bank holiday moves collections in South Oxfordshire. The whole week slides one day later, and the Friday round is picked up on the Saturday.

That has just happened. The August bank holiday pushed Monday 31 August to Tuesday 1 September, and Friday 4 September to Saturday 5 September.

Christmas is the one worth putting in a calendar now, because the disruption is far longer than a week. The council has already published the full table in its 2026/27 waste and recycling leaflet. Every collection from 25 December to 15 January is late:

Normal service resumes on Monday 18 January 2027. The worst of it is the first week: a Friday round due on Christmas Day waits until the Tuesday, and a Wednesday round due on 30 December waits until the Saturday.

Garden waste stops completely from 25 December and restarts on 11 January 2027.

Garden waste: £78 a year

The brown bin is not included in your council tax. The charges for 2026/27 are set out on the council’s garden waste page:

• £78 for a full year, 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027
• £39 for six months, available from 1 October and running to 31 March 2027

The permit is a sticker for the bin lid, and a permit bought late does not extend past March. Garden waste is collected on the same day as your recycling. New customers without a brown bin should allow 15 working days for delivery.

Two dates are worth knowing if you already pay. Permit holders get free extra garden waste collections twice a year, and the autumn window is 2 to 13 November 2026. You can leave up to four extra sacks per subscription beside the bin, standard 60-litre refuse sacks or open boxes, left open so the crew can see inside. Builders’ bulk bags are refused outright as too heavy to lift. The spring window ran from 20 April to 1 May 2026 and has passed.

Branches have to be under 10cm thick, and soil, turf and rubble are refused. The garden waste itself is composted in open windrows at a facility near Wallingford and sold to local farmers as a soil conditioner, which is why packaging of any kind, compostable included, is banned: it blows off the heap into neighbouring fields.

Bulky collections start at £62.50, and fridges are off the list

A bulky collection costs a minimum of £62.50 and that covers up to three items. Extra items cost £12.00 each, to a maximum of six (bulky waste collections). So one mattress costs the same as three, and it is worth filling the booking.

The council will take furniture, televisions, washing machines and mattresses. It will not take:

• fridges and freezers, suspended because of a national shortage of processing capacity
• commercial waste, or items designed for commercial use
• DIY waste, fixtures or fittings
• anything over six feet long that has not been dismantled, sofas excepted

Items must be visible and accessible from 6am, close to the highway but still inside your boundary. If the crew judges the carry unsafe they leave the item and there is no refund, and no booking can be changed once made.

A missed bin: you have until 5pm the next working day

If your bins were out before 6am and have not been emptied by 6pm, report it. The window is short: 5pm on the next working day after your scheduled collection (missed bins). Report online, or contact Biffa on 01235 422123 or admin.southoxford@biffa.co.uk.

Check the bank holiday table first. If snow, ice or extreme heat has stopped collections across the district you do not need to report it at all: leave the bins out for two days and the crews catch up.

Overflowing bins are not emptied. Extra recycling can go beside the green bin in a clear sack or cardboard box, and extra food waste in a bag on top of the caddy, but extra black bin rubbish is never collected (extra waste). Assisted collections are available if age, illness or disability makes putting bins out difficult, and the council will visit to assess (assisted collections).

The tip: Oakley Wood, and you cannot walk in

The recycling centres belong to Oxfordshire County Council, not the district. The nearest one to Henley is Oakley Wood, Old Icknield Way, Crowmarsh, near Wallingford, OX10 6PW (Oxfordshire County Council, Oakley Wood recycling centre).

• Open every day, 8am to 5pm. Last vehicle entry 4.55pm.
• You must book a slot in advance, every visit.
• Pedestrians are not allowed on any Oxfordshire site. There are no segregated walkways. Cyclists can use it, including with a bike trailer.
• Bank holidays are normal. Closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, and closing at 3pm on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.
• Vans and larger trailers need a free permit, checked before you travel.
• Small amounts of DIY waste are free if you select the DIY option when booking. Beyond the allowance it is charged.
• No trade waste at Oakley Wood. Businesses have to use Redbridge in Oxford.

Fridges and freezers are the pinch point across the county as well as the district. Oxfordshire has cut the booking window for them to one week ahead rather than two, and capped each household at one visit every three months with a maximum of two units. The county’s own advice is to use a retailer takeback scheme instead, and it publishes indicative August prices ranging from free with Amazon if arranged at checkout to £44 at B&Q.

Also on The Henley Post

• Parking in Henley: the three-hour cap, Sunday charges and what each car park costs
• Henley council tax bands: the full band A to H table for 2026/27
• Henley roadworks and travel: what is shut and what is coming