Bins and littering
We're responsible for ensuring the borough is kept as clean as possible.
Enforcement Officers patrol the borough and issue on the spot notices of £75 to anyone caught littering.
Report litter problems or littering
Anything less than the size of a bin bag of waste can be classed as littering.
What you can and cannot report
You can tell us about:
- Littering on any public land, such as roads, parks and town centres.
- An accumulation of litter.
- One item of litter if you've evidence of the offender.
- A public litter bin that's overflowing.
- Litter on private land if the land doesn't belong to you. We can serve a notice to the landowner to clean up the litter.
You cannot tell us about littering:
- On land you own. You can report littering as a crime to the police but you'll need to organise removing the litter yourself. Report a non-emergency to the police.
- On train tracks or in a train station. Please report this to National Rail.
- On tram tacks or at a tram stop. Please contact Transport for Greater Manchester.
Emptying public litter bins
How often we empty public litter bins depends on the type of area and the frequency of usage.
As a guideline, we empty bins in town centres and shopping precincts and areas at least once a day.
Through the knowledge and experience of our operatives who patrol the borough, we're able to ensure litter bins in other areas are emptied when required and visited at least fortnightly.
Locations of litter bins
We place bins of varying capacity around the borough depending on the levels of use and other factors.
We have a rolling programme to ensure bins around shop fronts and town centres have the facility to easily dispose of cigarettes and chewing gum.