You have to pay per collection in my area not sure of the cost I compost a lot but also have quite a lot that family or friends will take to the tip for me.
I suppose the £47 will depend on your circumstances and the amount of waste you generate if there is a lot of waste it may be worth it and save you time and money on disposing of it yourself.

Ours is collected for free once a fortnight apart from during January and February when it is collected just once a month. Seems fair enough given that not much grows up here at that time of year - even the weeds go into hibernation! We all got given one free green wheely bin for garden waste but you could buy a 2nd one (can't remember how much it cost) but that is also collected for free.

I compost a lot of stuff but my garden generates just too much to compost all of it and it's great for getting rid of the woody stuff that never properly composts down unless you invest in a shredder. Plus my garden is surrounded by mature trees and before this garden waste collection was started I had the thankless task of disposing of up to 20 big bin bags of dead leaves every Autumn. There's a limit to how much leaf mould you dig in! I still bag them up but dispose of them over a fee collections with the help of the neighbours who don't mind me filling up the spare space in their bins the night before the collection. As I don't drive it means that I am not reliant on friends taking me to the local recycling centre to get rid of them.

Overall, to be honest, I think that I get good value for money for my council tax. I've been shocked these last few months to how much my Mum and Dad pay in Liverpool for a smaller house and garden and how little they seem to get in return for it now that their local library and swimming pool have been closed down.

SM

Ours still goes into our normal rubbish bags. Garden waste isn't collected in our county.

So does it just go to landfill, Helen? We are really discouraged from putting anything that can be recycled or composted into our general rubbish to the extent that we have 4 separate bins! Black bins for recyclables, Green bins for garden waste, brown bins for food waste and a purple bin for anything else.

Apparently one of the reasons why they don't charge for collecting garden waste and we have to separate food waste out is because it reduces the need for landfill sites and also reduces the methane risk when a landfill site is full and covered over. The other reason is that they compost garden waste and sell it!

SM

Thanks for the replies, it seem as if we will be the first to be charged, unless you know better