Sunderland City Council manages waste disposal and enforces litter and refuse regulations in the City.

Refuse Collection - This section provides refuse collection to all households throughout Sunderland. This also includes free bulky waste collection service, medical waste collection, dead pet animals, disposal of scrap vehicles, as well as a Trade Refuse collection service.

Street Cleaning - This service provides regular cleaning and litter picking of pavements, footpaths, carriageways and verges throughout the whole City. It also provides a gully emptying service and maintain highway drainage on prescribed routes in the city.   We also provide the maintenance of public conveniences.

Winter Service Programme ( 34 kb) - Provision of a snow ploughing and gritting service to prescribed carriageways throughout the City to maintain the flow of traffic during the winter. We also treat prescribed footpaths to remove accumulations of snow and ice and apply rock salt.

Recycling - Recycling facilities are provided for members of the public in various sites throughout the City. We provide a garden waste and timber recycling service at Beach Street Household Waste Reception & Recycling Centre where householders can also deposit general waste for disposal.

Kerb-it is a new service which will allow you to store materials that can be recycled such as newspapers, magazines, junk mail, white telephone directories, glass bottles and jars, steel and aluminium cans in a separate box. These will then be collected direct from your home.

Eco-team - We have introduced this service at our Household Waste and Recycling Centres to help you dispose of your garden waste and timber in an environmentally friendly way.

Waste Management Under the Waste Management programme, we make arrangements for disposal of all waste collected from household and businesses within Sunderland City Council, at a reasonable cost to its residents and without environmental harm.  We also arrange for the provision and servicing of facilities to permit householders in Sunderland to recycle specified commodities (e.g. glass, newspapers and magazines, cans, textiles, books, foil and compost) and we provide advice to householders and businesses on recycling, waste reduction and minimisation.

Just Bin-it is Sunderland City Council's annual clean-up drive which aims to involve the local community in improving and tidying their local area and surroundings through a series of organised litter picks.

The Big Tidy Up 2008 is Keep Britain Tidy's biggest ever litter tidy up which runs throughout the month of September and is supported by Sunderland City Council.  Groups and organisations can register via www.thebigtidyup.org to obtain event packs.  Sunderland City Council can also be contacted direct on 561 4502 for additional support by way of litter picks, bags and the disposal of collected litter.

This section is also responsible for carrying out highway maintenance.  The 2008-2009 programme is available online.

We enforce litter and refuse regulations and also maintain public conveniences.  If you would like to know more, please contact us

We aim to:

• Show courtesy to all our customers;
• Carry out our refuse collection tasks effectively and efficiently so as to cause the minimum of disturbance;
• Answer 80% of telephone calls within 20 seconds (four rings);
• Return all telephone messages within 1 working day;
• Use clear plain language when we write to you and in all our forms and information sheets.

For more information view our Frequently Asked Questions.

You may find these links to external sites very useful.