Cape Town residents, get ready for a sparkling clean holiday season! This guide is your secret weapon to handle all that festive waste like a pro. Learn about special collection days, grab orange tags for extra rubbish, and remember to rinse your recyclables for a second life. Don’t forget drop-off spots for tricky items and how to report any missed collections super fast. Let’s keep our beautiful city tidy while we celebrate!
Cape Town residents can manage holiday waste by knowing special collection schedules, using orange “extra-bag” tags for surplus rubbish, rinsing recyclables, utilizing drop-off sites for specific items like e-waste and paint, and reporting missed collections via the City App or WhatsApp. They should also be aware of proper disposal for braai ash and firecracker casings.
The Urban Waste Management crew switched to “holiday heartbeat” weeks ago. Forty-two garbage trucks now roll on reinforced tyres so teams can string two 14-hour shifts together without blowing a retread. The call-centre night bench has doubled and every beach-front “Bingo bin” has been pressure-washed, deodorised and dressed in fire-engine-red lids that snap shut on baboon fingers as well as the stench of sun-fried sardine skeletons.
Flip open this guide on 1 December and you will see mini countdown clocks beside every tip – cheat codes so you can glide through the season instead of speed-wrecking the planet on Christmas Eve.
Nothing in the next pages is theory; every line is already paid for with your rates and ready to use.
Trucks still reach your kerb on Reconciliation Day, Christmas, Boxing Day and even New Year’s Day. Because schools and offices shut, traffic evaporates and crews finish up to 90 minutes sooner. The magic number is sunrise, not 07:00. Park your bin the evening before or, at the very latest, at 06:00.
If the lorry has not appeared by 21:00, wheel the bin back in and repeat the drill next morning. After 48 hours with no collection, open the City App, hit “Uncollected bin,” upload a photo and you will have a reference number before the kettle boils.
Household rubbish swells 23 % between 15 December and 7 January. To stop bags splitting on the pavement, the City is printing one million bright-orange “extra-bag” labels. Pick yours up at any Shoprite, Pick n Pay or Spar from 10 December onward.
Fasten a tag to a clear bag, park it beside the bin and the tag is scanned for the PAYT (Pay-As-You-Throw) database that sets 2026 tariffs. Forget the tag and the crew will leave the surplus behind. Grab the labels early; they vanish faster than mince-pies.
Paper, card, plastic bottles and tubs, metal cans, glass jars and juice cartons stay on the blue-route train. Tinsel, foil gift wrap, plastic plates, fairy-light wires, polystyrene meat trays and pineapple tops ride the black-bin bus – unless you deliver them to a drop-off site.
A single teaspoon of leftover trifle can destroy 10 kg of paper. Quick splash under the tap is enough; no need to fire up the dishwasher. Flatten boxes and nest them – this frees 40 % truck space and stops the south-easter from redecorating the neighbourhood.
Drag the kid’s old paddling pool onto the patio. Line one half with a clear bag for bottles, the other for paper. Point guests to the colour code instead of the kitchen bin. On 2 January you will own one neat Instagram pile, not five garbage mountains.
Swartklip (Mitchells Plain) and Coastal Park (Muizenberg) stay open 07:00–18:00 (Coastal until 19:00) right across Christmas and New Year. Bellville and Hout Bay shut only on 1 January. Brackenfell and Kraaifontein never close. Garden junk, e-waste, paint, fluorescents, batteries, old engine oil and even used cooking fat all find homes – check the quick-chart printed on page 14 of the PDF you can scan from any bin tag flyer.
Left-over “Granny-Smith-Apple” half-tin? Drop it at Swartklip 09:00–15:00 and walk out with a pre-loved neutral shade. Last season 1 432 litres were re-homed, saving residents R73 k and keeping lead pigments out of the landfill cocktail.
Bring your dried-out pine to any site between 2 and 15 January, watch it fed into the chipper and leave with a 5 kg bag of acidic mulch – ideal for fynbos beds. Fake trees still perky can sparkle for orphans via the Treetop Angels depot at Coastal Park.
Regulation 4.3.7 bans staff from pocketing cash, vouchers, groceries or alcohol. Snap the truck plate, date-stamp the photo and WhatsApp 079 769 8967; you will receive a case number within 12 hours and the matter is taken up internally.
Hand-written card slipped under the lid, homemade ginger biscuits, an ice-cold sparkling water – those never counted as bribes. Crews confess the thank-you note is the first thing they scan when the lid flips.
Fraudsters love December. Genuine staff flash a City ID with a live QR code – scan it in the app and you will see the employee’s name and truck allocation. No QR, no collection, no tip. Call 10111 immediately and quote the vehicle registration.
City App (fastest):* open, tap “Waste,” “Uncollected bin,” allow GPS, toggle “Bin is out,” attach photo, submit. Average confirmation: 12 seconds.
WhatsApp bot:* save 079 769 8967, type “Hi,” choose menu “1,” follow prompts – even works on a 2G Nokia.
Voice line:* dial 0860 103 089, hit 2-3-# to leapfrog ads; keep your municipal account number handy.
E-mail:* wastewise@capetown.gov.za when you need to attach a CCTV clip of the truck sailing past.
# 5forSea challenge:* before you leave the sand, spend 120 seconds grabbing any five pieces of litter. Post the pic; the City sends stainless-steel straw sets to the 100 best tags.
Braai ash:* cool 24 h, douse, decant into a paper bag, then into the black bin. Hot embers melt plastic and ignite landfill fires that smoulder for weeks.
Firecracker casings:* sweep tubes, plastic fuses and coloured paper into a separate bag – heavy-metal inks are toxic to gulls. Do not recycle the pretty wrappers.
Used cooking oil:* pour back into the empty bottle, drop at Brackenfell or Hout Bay. One litre converts into 800 ml bio-diesel that powers municipal buses.
Polystyrene #6 foam:* Coastal Park squashes 50 m³ into a single brick exported for picture-frame moulding – bring your packaging peanuts.
Retired phones:* Athlone site feeds them to UCT’s “Mining the City.” Each handset holds 0.034 g gold; proceeds fund maths camps for 300 kids.
Toys:* list functional gadgets on the Telegram channel t.me/capetowntoyswap. Last December 1 200 items swapped hands, saving parents R340 k and 1.8 t of plastic from burial.
Turkey timeline:* sandwiches day 1, stock day 2, soup day 3, bones frozen in a brown bag day 4 – many drop-off sites now accept frozen bones for high-temperature compost.
Peel crisps:* beetroot and butternut skins, olive oil, sea salt, 12 min at 200 °C – kids devour the zero-waste snack.
Freezer masking-tape date:* slap a “use-by” strip on every leftover; no more mystery box that liquefies in February.
Twelve-day recycling carol:* add one clean item daily – tub, can, jar – until even toddlers can separate HDPE from LDPE.
Granny’s ornament swap table:* retirement villages traded 37 angels and 54 glass balls last year, keeping 3 kg of glitter out of the bin.
Compost-a-Poo worm farm:* R120 kit turns 1 kg dog droppings into 200 g plant food; bentonite cat litter, however, still heads to landfill – switch to pine pellets.
Road closure application deadline: 9 December. You need one 240-litre wheelie per 25 guests and a bottle-drum for recyclables – the City loans colour-coded drums free.
Glitter equals micro-plastic. Trade your pot for biodegradable mica sparkle at the Long Street booth; one gram equals 10 000 petro-plastic fragments.
Behavioural science says armed-with-numbers citizens recycle 27 % better – drop these stats between the crackers and the pudding.
✓ Bin out by 06:00, back by 21:00
✓ Orange tag = side-waste collected
✓ Rinse, squash, lid-off for blue bin
✓ Paint, oil, phones, foam – drop-off sites
✓ Missed pick-up? App or WhatsApp in under 38 s
✓ Scan the QR on every blue-shirt – no code, no tip
Keep this guide in the kitchen drawer or take a screenshot; the links, numbers and addresses update live on the City site. Celebrate hard, waste less, enter 2026 with cleaner beaches, emptier bins and a fatter wallet.
[{“h3”: “How has Cape Town’s Urban Waste Management prepared for the 2025/26 holiday season?”, “answer”: “The Urban Waste Management crew has been on a \”holiday heartbeat\” for weeks, with 42 garbage trucks equipped for extended shifts, a doubled call-centre night bench, and all beach-front \”Bingo bins\” pressure-washed, deodorised, and fitted with new lids. The city aims to make waste management efficient throughout the festive period.”}, {“h3”: “What are the special collection schedules and rules for extra waste during the holidays?”, “answer”: “Waste collection will continue on public holidays, including Reconciliation Day, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day. Residents should place their bins out the evening before or by 06:00. For extra rubbish, which is expected to swell by 23% between December 15 and January 7, residents must use bright-orange \”extra-bag\” tags. These tags, available from December 10 at Shoprite, Pick n Pay, or Spar, should be fastened to clear bags and placed next to the bin. Untagged surplus waste will not be collected.”}, {“h3”: “How can residents ensure their recyclables are properly processed during the festive season?”, “answer”: “Recyclables like paper, card, plastic bottles/tubs, metal cans, glass jars, and juice cartons should be rinsed (a quick splash is sufficient to prevent contamination of paper) and flattened to save space. Items like tinsel, foil gift wrap, plastic plates, and polystyrene trays are not accepted in the blue-route recycling bins unless delivered to a drop-off site. A \”two-tub\” life-hack for parties involves using a paddling pool lined with clear bags for separating bottles and paper.”}, {“h3”: “Where can residents dispose of tricky or specialised waste items?”, “answer”: “Drop-off sites like Swartklip (Mitchells Plain) and Coastal Park (Muizenberg) will have extended hours during the holidays, with some sites even remaining open on Christmas and New Year’s Day. These sites accept garden junk, e-waste, paint, fluorescents, batteries, old engine oil, and used cooking fat. There’s also a ‘free paint dating lounge’ at Swartklip for re-homing leftover paint and a ‘real-tree mulch magic’ program for converting dried-out Christmas trees into acidic mulch.”}, {“h3”: “What are the guidelines for interacting with waste collection staff regarding gifts and identifying genuine collectors?”, “answer”: “City regulations prohibit staff from accepting cash, vouchers, groceries, or alcohol. Legally permissible gestures include hand-written cards, homemade biscuits, or cold drinks. Residents should be wary of fraudsters; genuine staff carry City IDs with live QR codes that can be scanned via the City App. If a collector lacks a QR code, residents should not tip them and should call 10111 immediately, quoting the vehicle registration.”}, {“h3”: “What is the fastest way to report a missed waste collection?”, “answer”: “The fastest method is using the City App: open it, tap \”Waste,\” then \”Uncollected bin,\” allow GPS, toggle \”Bin is out,\” attach a photo, and submit. The average confirmation time is 12 seconds. Alternatives include the WhatsApp bot (save 079 769 8967 and follow prompts), the voice line (0860 103 089, then 2-3-#), or email (wastewise@capetown.gov.za) for detailed reports or attaching CCTV footage.”}]
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