Edinburgh's three recycling centres
The City of Edinburgh Council operates three household waste recycling centres, and they are for Edinburgh residents only. You will be asked to prove you live in the city.
Seafield HWRC is at 76 Seafield Road, EH6 7LW, and accepts pedestrian access. Sighthill HWRC is at Bankhead Avenue, EH11 4EA, and also accepts pedestrians. Craigmillar HWRC is at Old Dalkeith Road, EH16 4TB — but note that pedestrian access there has been suspended on safety grounds, and vans are not permitted at Craigmillar at all.
That last point matters more than it looks. If you are in the south-east of the city with a van load, Craigmillar is the closest site and it is not an option — you are going to Seafield or Sighthill.
You need to book a slot
This is the biggest difference from Glasgow. Edinburgh's centres are normally open seven days a week but for booked slots only. You cannot simply drive up with a car boot of rubbish and join a queue.
The exception is arriving on foot or by pedal bike with small amounts of material — no booking needed for that. For everything else, a slot has to be reserved in advance, and opening hours shift around public holidays, so both need checking before you set off. Or skip the trip altogether — we collect from the door, any amount, no slot needed.
- Booking required for all vehicles
- On foot or by bike: no booking needed
- Small amounts only if unbooked
- Open seven days for booked slots
- Van and trailer slots are limited
- Bring your booking confirmation
No slot, no permit, no proof of address
We collect from your door anywhere in Edinburgh, seven days a week. Send a photo and we'll fix the price before we come.
The van and trailer rules
If you are bringing a van or trailer, Edinburgh is strict, and the rules are worth reading properly before you hire anything. Van and trailer users can only book half-hour slots at three fixed times: 11am, 12.30pm and 2.30pm.
A long list of vehicles is barred outright: liveried vans, anything over 3.5 tonnes, tipper trucks, Luton vans, horse boxes, trailers bigger than six feet by four, hire vans rented for more than five days, and any van making thirteen or more visits in a year. That last rule exists to stop trade waste being passed off as household waste.
You also need paperwork. Van and trailer users must bring the booking email plus photographic ID showing an Edinburgh address, and the names have to match across the documents. The council is explicit that anyone turning up without the right documentation will not be allowed on site — so a wasted trip is a real possibility.
The council bulky uplift, and what it won't take
If you would rather the council collected, Edinburgh runs a chargeable bulky waste uplift. It costs £5 per item, waived for households receiving Council Tax reduction, and up to five items are collected per uplift. Items need to be liftable by two people and under about seven feet long.
The refusal list is long and catches people out: no garden waste, no commercial items, no building materials, no pianos, no storage heaters, no gas cylinders, no asbestos, no wheelchairs and no liquid waste such as oil or paint.
So for a sofa and a couple of chairs it is good value. For a flat clearance, a shed's worth of junk, or anything on that refusal list, it is not the right tool — which is where we come in. Our Edinburgh junk removal cost guide has the full comparison.
When it's easier to have it collected
The tip is genuinely fine for a boot load of cardboard and a couple of bags. It stops being fine when you are dealing with a tenement flat, a stair with no lift, a load bigger than five items, or anything the council refuses.
We work right across Edinburgh — Leith, Marchmont, Newington, Gorgie, Stockbridge, the New Town and out to the suburbs. No booking slot, no permit, no proof of address, and we do the carrying. Loads start at £100 + VAT and we recycle over 80% of what we collect under our SEPA registration (WCR/R/3002381).
For comparison, our Glasgow recycling centres guide covers the equivalent sites in the west, which run on a permit system rather than bookings — and we've done the same for Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, Perth, Stirling and Fife.
