UK Waste & Tip Finder

What does UK Waste & Tip Finder do?

Not sure which tip near you takes a mattress, rubble, or a foam sofa? Enter a postcode and find out in seconds. UK Waste & Tip Finder answers the question every UK household, removal company, house clearance business, and man-in-a-van outfit eventually gets stuck on: which nearby tip actually takes this? Give it a UK postcode and it returns the nearest household waste recycling centres, sorted by distance, with opening hours, address, and a clear yes/no/unconfirmed on each material you're trying to get rid of, from batteries and garden waste through to mattresses, rubble, and asbestos.

Data is pulled live from OpenStreetMap civic amenity sites and geocoded with postcodes.io, no scraping of individual council websites, so it works the same way whichever of the UK's 300+ waste authorities you're near. Run it on demand, via the Apify API, or on a schedule.

Why use UK Waste & Tip Finder?

• Removal and house clearance companies: get a straight answer on which sites are within range before you load the van, and a clear warning that free household tips are not for trade waste (most councils will turn a liveried van away or fine you, you need a registered waste carrier and a licensed trade facility instead).
• Furniture stores and man-in-a-van businesses: check disposal options for bulky or awkward items before promising a customer "we'll take the old one away."
• Residents: stop guessing whether the local tip takes a mattress, a fridge, or a car battery, and find out about the material categories that genuinely trip people up, like POPs-containing furniture (foam-filled sofas and chairs made before 2023, which most sites now require to be separated out) and materials councils commonly charge for even at a "free" site (rubble, plasterboard, asbestos, tyres, paint).
• AI agents and apps: a clean, structured JSON answer to "nearest tip that takes X near postcode Y", no HTML to parse.

How to use UK Waste & Tip Finder

1. Click Try for free or Run.
2. Enter a UK postcode (full, e.g. "SW1A 1AA", or partial, e.g. "SW1A").
3. Optionally tick the materials you need to check, and pick Resident or Trade/commercial so you get the right disclaimer.
4. Run the Actor. Results land in the dataset, sorted nearest first.

Input

Field	Description
postcode	A UK postcode, full or partial. Required.
materials	Which materials to check acceptance for. Leave empty to just get the nearest sites with no material check.
audience	resident or trade_commercial. Trade/commercial adds a warning that household tips generally aren't for trade waste.
radiusKm	Search radius in km. Default 15.
maxResults	Maximum sites returned, nearest first. Default 10.

Output

{
  "name": "Barby Road Household Waste Recycling Centre",
  "distanceKm": 1.8,
  "address": "Barby Road, Rugby, CV22 5DH",
  "operator": "Warwickshire County Council",
  "openingHours": "Mo-Su 09:00-17:00",
  "accessNote": null,
  "materialsChecked": {
    "scrap_metal": { "title": "Scrap metal", "accepted": true, "confidence": "confirmed", "oftenChargedByCouncils": false },
    "rubble_hardcore": { "title": "Rubble / hardcore", "accepted": null, "confidence": "unconfirmed_call_ahead", "oftenChargedByCouncils": true },
    "pops_furniture": { "title": "Upholstered furniture with POPs (foam-filled, pre-2023 sofas/chairs)", "accepted": null, "confidence": "unconfirmed_call_ahead", "oftenChargedByCouncils": false }
  },
  "tradeWasteWarning": null,
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1118877104"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel, or pull it via the API.

Data table

Field	Meaning
name	Site name
distanceKm	Distance from the postcode you entered
address	Street address, where recorded
operator	Council or company running the site, where recorded
openingHours	Opening hours, where recorded
materialsChecked	Per-material breakdown: accepted (true/false/null), confidence (confirmed or unconfirmed_call_ahead), oftenChargedByCouncils (a general awareness flag, not a quoted price)
tradeWasteWarning	Set when audience is trade_commercial
sourceUrl	The OpenStreetMap record behind this result, so you can check or correct it

Why some materials come back "unconfirmed"

Open data tracks common household recyclables well: batteries, paper, glass, plastic, cans, cardboard, textiles, garden waste, scrap metal, oil, light bulbs and tubes. It does not reliably track bulky or hazardous items at site level: mattresses, rubble, plasterboard, asbestos, POPs furniture, car batteries. Rather than guess, those always come back flagged unconfirmed_call_ahead, most sites gate these behind a permit or booking system anyway, so a call ahead was always going to be needed.

Pricing / cost estimation

Pay-per-event: you're charged per site returned in the dataset. A typical search returning 8-10 nearby sites costs a few cents. See the Pricing tab for the current rate. No charge for a search that finds nothing, no minimum spend, no subscription.

Tips

• Results come from a shared free community data source (OpenStreetMap's Overpass API). On a busy day some categories can time out server-side, when that happens the run still completes with whatever it found and logs exactly what it had to skip, rather than failing the whole search. Re-running a few minutes later often fills in the gaps.
• Widen radiusKm in rural areas where the nearest tip might be 20-30km away.
• Leave materials empty for a fast "what's near me" lookup without the per-material breakdown.
• sourceUrl links back to OpenStreetMap. If a detail is wrong or missing (a lot of UK civic amenity sites are thinly tagged), anyone can fix it there and future runs will pick up the correction.

FAQ, disclaimers, and support

Does this work for trade waste? Not directly, and that's on purpose. UK household waste recycling centres are for household waste only, most councils will turn away or fine a liveried van. Set audience to trade_commercial and every result comes back with a clear warning to that effect instead of a false green light. You'll still need a registered waste carrier and a licensed trade waste facility or permit for genuine trade waste, this Actor tells you that up front rather than after a wasted trip.

This Actor reads open geodata (OpenStreetMap, ODbL licensed) and a free UK postcode geocoder (postcodes.io). It is not affiliated with any council, the Environment Agency, or OpenStreetMap. Opening hours, acceptance, and charges change without notice, always confirm with the site directly before a special trip, especially for hazardous or bulky items. Found a bug or a gap? Use the Issues tab, replies come from a real person.

Found this useful? If this saved you a manual council-website hunt, a one-line review takes 20 seconds and helps a lot.