Trade waste collections

All businesses and other non-domestic waste producers must make their own arrangements for waste collection, this may be through the council or a private contractor authorised to carry waste.

Your waste, your responsibility

As a business, you have a legal responsibility to ensure that you produce, store, transport and dispose of your business waste without harming the environment. This is called your duty of care.

The duty of care has no time limit. You are specifically responsible for your waste from when you produce it until you have transferred it to an authorised person. However your duty does not end when you hand over the waste to the next holder. It extends along the entire chain of management of your waste. If you think that your waste is not being managed correctly you must take action to check and prevent this.

You must:

  • Segregate, store and transport your waste appropriately and securely, making sure that you do not cause any pollution or harm to human health
  • Check that your waste is transported and handled by people or businesses that are authorised to do so
  • Complete waste transfer notes, including a full, accurate description of the waste, to document all waste you transfer, and keep them as a record for at least two years
  • Present glass, metal, plastic, paper, and card (including cardboard) for separate collection.

Our business service

Our team can provide a waste collection to non-domestic properties across our authority region, to allow you to manage your waste in accordance with your duty of care.

We provide all our trade waste customers with a fortnightly collection for glass, metal, plastic, paper, and card (including cardboard) so you can present your recycling separately from your non recyclable waste. A recycling permit will allow you to take those materials to one of our four recycling centres.

To set up a collection service please email wasteservices@eastlothian.gov.uk 

Food waste

There is also a legal requirement for 'food' businesses (within a postcode classification area) that produce more than 5kg of food waste per week to present this separately for collection.

The council does not operate a commercial collection service for food waste, but we can help signpost you to a local service provider.

If you would like to set up a trade waste collection service please contact Waste Services.