What do you need before you start?
- Home Assistant: any recent release. The integration is a custom component, so it installs through HACS, which is built into Home Assistant from 2026.11 (see our HACS marketplace guide) and a separate install on older versions.
- Your council: the project reads data from council websites, so check yours is listed. If you are unsure which council collects your bins, the gov.uk "find your local council" tool tells you.
- Your address details: your postcode and house number, and for some councils a UPRN (Unique Property Reference Number) or a USRN (street reference number).
- The Companion app: to get the reminder on your phone. Our notifications guide covers setting it up.
Step 1: Install UK Bin Collection Data through HACS
Open HACS, search for UK Bin Collection Data, and choose Download. The project's README also lists the manual route: add the repository as a custom repository of type Integration, or copy the custom_components/uk_bin_collection folder into your configuration directory. Restart Home Assistant afterwards so it loads the new integration.
The project is open source under the MIT licence and run by volunteers, so there is no account, subscription or cloud service involved. The integration's manifest classes it as cloud polling: your Home Assistant fetches the data from your council's own web pages.
Step 2: Add the integration and pick your council
Go to Settings > Devices & services > Add integration and search for "UK Bin Collection Data". The first screen asks for a name, your council from a drop-down list, and an optional icon and colour mapping. Choose a short name such as "Home", because Home Assistant builds entity names from it.
The second screen shows only the fields your chosen council needs. According to the integration's README these can include a URL, UPRN, postcode, house number, USRN and a Selenium web driver. It also offers a request timeout (default 60 seconds) and an update interval (default 12 hours, minimum 1 hour). Twelve hours is plenty: bin days rarely change at short notice, and polling a council site every few minutes is poor manners. The project asks users to collect data for personal use only, at a suitable frequency.
Do you need Selenium to read your council's bin dates?
Only some councils need it. The README says that for councils whose configuration includes a web driver, the integration checks for a Selenium server and a local Chromium browser and reports what it finds on the setup screen. If your council is one of them, run a Selenium container (the project suggests selenium/standalone-chrome) and enter its address, for example http://<your HA IP>:4444, in the remote Selenium field. If your council does not show a web driver field, skip this entirely.
Step 3: Check the bin entities Home Assistant creates
For each bin type your council returns, the integration creates a main sensor whose state reads Today, Tomorrow or "In N days", plus a days attribute with the number of days remaining. From the integration's source it also creates helper sensors named after the bin and a calendar entity per bin type. Entity IDs depend on the name you chose and the bin names your council uses, so open Developer tools > States, filter on your name, and note the real IDs. The examples below use sensor.home_general_waste and sensor.home_recycling; swap in yours.
| Entity | What it gives you | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| Bin sensor | State: Today, Tomorrow or In N days; days attribute | Notification conditions, dashboard cards |
| Next Collection Date sensor | The collection date itself | Showing a date on a dashboard |
| Days Until Collection sensor | A number | Numeric triggers or a countdown |
| Calendar per bin type | Collection events | The calendar card and calendar triggers |
Step 4: Build the bins-out-tonight notification
The simplest reliable pattern is a time trigger in the early evening plus a condition that the bin sensor says "Tomorrow". Replace the notify service with your own phone's, which you can find under Developer tools > Actions.
alias: Bin night reminder
triggers:
- trigger: time
at: "19:00:00"
actions:
- choose:
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id: sensor.home_general_waste
state: "Tomorrow"
sequence:
- action: notify.mobile_app_your_phone
data:
title: "Bins out tonight"
message: "General waste is collected tomorrow."
- conditions:
- condition: state
entity_id: sensor.home_recycling
state: "Tomorrow"
sequence:
- action: notify.mobile_app_your_phone
data:
title: "Bins out tonight"
message: "Recycling is collected tomorrow."
If both bins go out on the same night you get two notifications; that is a small price for keeping each message obvious. Add a third branch per extra bin (food, garden, glass). For more on building and debugging this kind of automation, see our Home Assistant automations guide.
Step 5: Make the reminder smarter
Once the basic version works, a few additions are worth the effort:
- Remind both people: add a second notify action, or send to a notification group, so the reminder does not depend on one phone.
- Remind only when someone is home: add a state condition on a person or zone entity, covered in our presence detection guide, so you are not buzzed while away.
- Morning check: a second automation at 07:00 with the state "Today" catches anyone who forgot the evening alert.
- Dashboard card: put the bin sensors in an Entities card so the next collection is visible at a glance. The Calendar card works with the per-bin calendar entities.
- Voice: an assistant can read a sensor state aloud; see our voice assistant guide for the options.
Common problems and fixes: why are my bin sensors unavailable or wrong?
The sensor shows unavailable after setup. The first fetch from the council site probably failed or timed out. Check Settings > System > Logs for lines prefixed with the integration's name, then raise the timeout in the integration options. Council sites are occasionally down for maintenance.
It stopped working after months of being fine. Council websites are scraped, so when a council redesigns its site the parser breaks until a volunteer fixes it. Update the integration in HACS, then reload it. If nothing changes, search the project's GitHub issues for your council before opening a new one.
The dates are right but the next one is stale. With the default 12-hour interval the data refreshes twice a day. If you chose manual-refresh-only mode, nothing updates until you call the uk_bin_collection.manual_refresh service with your config entry ID, which the README shows scheduling daily at 07:00.
The wrong bin colour or icon appears. Colours are not read from the council. You set them yourself with the icon and colour JSON in the integration options, and the bin name in the JSON must match the name your council returns exactly.
Sharing logs or screenshots on the forum. Your postcode, UPRN and house number can identify your household. The integration keeps sensitive values out of its own logs, but double-check anything you paste.
What to do next
Pair the reminder with a smart-home habit you already have: flash a hallway light on bin night, or add the bin sensors to a wall tablet dashboard. If you would rather avoid a custom component, many councils publish an iCal feed or text reminders, and Home Assistant's built-in calendar integrations can read an iCal URL, though few UK councils offer one. The community integration remains the more complete route because it covers councils that have no feed at all.
