Herefordshire Tips Stop Taking Fridges, So Has Collection

All six Herefordshire recycling centres stopped taking fridges on 19 August. The council's £35.15 bulky collection quietly stopped too, with no end date.

Herefordshire’s six household recycling centres stopped accepting fridges and freezers on Wednesday 19 August. The council announced that the day before, and blamed a national shortage of places able to process the appliances.

What the announcement did not mention is the other half. The council’s bulky item collection service has stopped taking them as well. That notice appears only on the service pages themselves, not in the press release.

So if you have an old fridge in the garage, there is currently no route through Herefordshire Council to get rid of it. Not at the tip, and not from your kerb.

Where the suspension applies

All six sites are affected:

Hereford HRC, Chapel Road, Rotherwas
Leominster HRC, Bridge Street
Ross-on-Wye HRC, Station Approach
Ledbury HRC, Little Marcle Road
Bromyard HRC, Linton Industrial Estate
Kington HRC, Eardisley Road

The wording on the recycling centre page covers “any fridges, freezers or cooling appliances”, so it is wider than the two words in the headline. Air conditioning units and similar cooling equipment are caught by it too.

Everything else about the sites is unchanged. You still need to book, bookings are still capped at four per fortnight per household, and summer hours of 8am to 6pm run until 30 September.

The bit that was not announced

Herefordshire Council also runs a paid collection service for large items. It charges £35.45 for three items, but fridges and freezers are priced separately at £35.15 each, with a limit of three per property per year.

That service now carries the same suspension notice, word for word: the council is “temporarily not able collect any fridges, freezers or cooling appliances on our bulky item collection service”.

For most households that is the more significant closure of the two. Getting a fridge into a car is the reason people pay £35.15 in the first place.

Neither notice gives an end date. The council says it is working with its waste contractor to find out how long the disruption will last.

Why it is happening

Herefordshire’s waste is handled by Severn Waste Services, which the council says provides a joint waste treatment and recycling service to both Herefordshire Council and Worcestershire County Council. The two counties share the EnviRecover energy from waste plant, which has taken household black bin waste from both since October 2016.

That shared arrangement shows in the timing. Worcestershire County Council suspended fridges and freezers at its own recycling centres on the same day, 19 August. Its notice gives a fuller explanation than Herefordshire’s, blaming “a national shortage of specialist recycling capacity following multiple facility fires and plant closures across the UK”.

Warwickshire County Council had gone first, suspending its collections with immediate effect on 5 August and citing UK recycling capacity that had “tightened significantly due to facility fires and plant closures”.

Fridges are difficult waste. They contain refrigerant gases and insulating foams that have to be removed under controlled conditions, so only a small number of specialist approved facilities can handle them. When a few of those go offline, there is nowhere for the backlog to go.

What it means for you

If you need to move an appliance now, there are three routes, and none of them is as simple as the tip.

1. Ask the retailer, but expect to pay. The council’s advice is to ask whether the shop taking your order will remove the old one. Worth knowing what the law actually requires: a retailer must offer to take back an item of the same type as the one you are buying, but government guidance states that a retailer “can charge to cover transport costs if you’re collecting items from customers’ homes”. Free collection on delivery is a service some retailers choose to offer, not a right you can insist on. Ask the price before you order.

2. Pass it on if it works. If the appliance is in working order, the council points to reuse routes including Freegle and Freecycle, and keeps a directory of reuse organisations, some of which collect for free.

3. Store it safely. Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Environment Councillor Elissa Swinglehurst put it plainly: “if you can safely keep your old appliance at home for a short while, we’d ask you to do so.”

What the council asks you not to do is hand it to an unlicensed carrier. As Councillor Swinglehurst said: “You could end up with your appliance being dumped illegally and, if it is traced back to you, you could be held responsible.”

That is not a figure of speech. Under household duty of care rules, a resident who passes waste to someone without checking they are licensed can be penalised if it turns up dumped.

The number that makes this worth watching

White goods were already the fastest-growing thing being fly-tipped in Herefordshire, before the tips stopped taking them.

Defra’s fly-tipping figures, which every English council reports through WasteDataFlow, record 33 white goods fly-tipping incidents in Herefordshire in 2024/25, up from 23 the year before and 18 in 2022/23. That is an 83 per cent rise across two years.

It happened while fly-tipping overall was falling sharply. Total incidents in the county dropped from 1,021 in 2022/23 to 726 and then 708.

Graphic by Hereford Today

Two honest caveats sit alongside that. Herefordshire still recorded the fourth fewest white goods fly-tips of the 30 West Midlands authorities in 2024/25, behind only Malvern Hills, Staffordshire Moorlands and Worcester. And Defra warns that councils differ in how thoroughly they log incidents, so a rising count can partly reflect better recording.

The enforcement side is thinner than the investigation side. In 2024/25 the council recorded 592 investigations and 53 warning letters, but issued only six fly-tipping fixed penalty notices, seized one vehicle and brought one prosecution. The year before it had brought ten prosecutions.

What happens next

The council says it will keep the situation under review and update residents when recycling centres can accept the appliances again. No date has been given by Herefordshire, Worcestershire or Warwickshire.

Until then, the practical answer for most households is the one nobody wants: the appliance stays where it is.

Hereford roadworks and travel: what is closed across the county this month, with dates.
Hereford planning: what is being decided near you.

Sources

Herefordshire Council, fridges and freezers temporarily not accepted at Herefordshire recycling centres, 18 August 2026, for the 19 August start, the reason given and Councillor Swinglehurst’s quotes.
Herefordshire Council, household waste and recycling centres for the suspension notice, the six site addresses, opening hours and booking limits, and arrange collection of large unwanted items for the identical notice on the bulky service, the £35.45 and £35.15 charges and the three-per-year limit. Both checked 22 August 2026.
Herefordshire Council, EnviRecover energy from waste facility for Severn Waste Services providing the joint service to Herefordshire and Worcestershire.
Worcestershire County Council, fridges and freezers for its 19 August suspension and the facility fires and plant closures explanation, and Warwickshire County Council, 5 August 2026, for the earlier suspension.
GOV.UK, electrical waste: retailer and distributor responsibilities for the take-back duty and the wording on charging for home collection.
Defra, ENV24 fly-tipping incidents and actions taken in England, local authority dataset covering 2012/13 to 2024/25, for every incident, waste type and enforcement figure quoted.