By the Bin Night Tonight team · Updated July 2026
The green bin looks self explanatory right up until the hedge trimmer comes out. What actually belongs in it, what gets it rejected, and what to do with the pile that a whole month of green bins could not hold: here is garden waste, end to end.
The core list is universal across councils: grass clippings, leaves, prunings, flowers, weeds and small branches. The standard branch limit is around 10 centimetres thick and short enough that the lid closes; a branch that props the lid open can get the bin skipped. If your council runs FOGO, food scraps join the list, which is covered in our FOGO versus home compost guide.
Everything in the bin must be loose. No bags of any kind, including compostable ones for garden material in most councils; a bagged load cannot be checked and often gets flagged. Tip clippings straight in.
Green bin contamination audits keep finding the same well intentioned mistakes:
A serious garden weekend defeats a 240 litre bin in an hour. The options, roughly in order of cost: stage the pile and feed the bin over several fortnights (a tarp over the pile keeps it manageable); take a trailer load to the transfer station, where green waste is charged at a much lower rate than mixed waste, and free in some councils on green waste weekends; book extra or bundled green collections where the council offers them; or for tree loppings, have the arborist take the material, since their quote usually includes chipping and removal, and the chips can stay as your mulch on request, which is the best deal in gardening.
Some councils lend or subsidise mulchers, and several run free mulch giveaways from the processed FOGO stream, which closes the loop nicely: your spring prunings come back as autumn mulch.
Green bins have a calendar. Spring fills them with clippings, autumn with leaves, and in fire prone areas the pre summer cleanup matters beyond tidiness; several regional councils run extra green waste collections or free tip weekends before fire season precisely to get fuel off properties. Deciduous street tree suburbs get an autumn leaf tsunami that no fortnightly bin absorbs, and leaves are the single best thing to divert to a home compost or leaf mould pile instead, since they cost nothing to hoard and turn into premium soil conditioner by spring.
And in drought or watering restriction summers, when the lawn stops growing and the bin echoes, put it out anyway on its scheduled run if it has anything in it; a half empty green bin collected beats a full one fermenting into silage by February.
Almost never. Soil is excluded by nearly every council and makes the bin too heavy to lift; a turf load can leave the bin on the kerb. Small amounts of soil shaken off roots are fine. Larger amounts go to the transfer station as clean fill.
No, tip it in loose. Bags of any kind, including compostable ones, are treated as contamination for garden material in most councils because the load cannot be inspected.
Stage it under a tarp and feed the bin across collections, run a trailer load to the transfer station's green waste rate, or book an extra green collection where your council offers one. For tree work, have the arborist chip and remove, or keep the chips as free mulch.