Re3 | Never miss a bin day again

One year after launching automated bin day reminders across Reading, Wokingham, and Bracknell Forest, Scrapp® has sent over 7.8 million notifications to residents, enrolled 135,000 households, and proven that a simple, well-timed nudge can change how an entire community engages with their waste collection. This case study looks at what the data shows after 12 months — and how the platform is now expanding to reach every resident, regardless of language or ability.

The problem no one talks about: missed bins

Missed bin collections are one of the most common — and most preventable — pain points in municipal waste management. When residents forget to put their bins out, the consequences cascade: waste accumulates at home, recycling rates drop, and councils field a surge in calls and complaints.

Scrapp's research with the Re3 partnership identified four core reasons residents miss collections, split between personal and external factors:

Personal:

• Simply forgetting due to busy lives
• Too many collection types to remember what's due and when

External:

• Communication methods that aren't dynamic enough to keep up with schedule changes
• Conflicting information sources leading to confusion about which bin goes out on which day

The root problem isn't that residents don't care. It's that the information doesn't reach them at the right moment, in the right format. Printed collection calendars get lost. Council website schedules require the resident to actively seek out the information. And when collection dates change — due to bank holidays, service disruptions, or schedule rotations — the existing communication channels can't adapt fast enough.

For the three councils operating under the Re3 partnership, serving a combined population of around 500,000 residents, this added up to significant operational friction. Every missed collection generated downstream costs: additional call centre queries, potential for overflowing bins and street-level waste issues, and the administrative burden of managing complaints and rescheduling.

The councils needed a way to proactively remind residents about their collections — something that was automated, personalised to each household's schedule, and dynamic enough to handle changes in real time.

How Scrapp solved it with one well-timed notification

The concept was deliberately simple. Residents receive a push notification at 6pm the evening before their bins are due to be collected. That's it. No app to navigate, no calendar to check, no website to visit. The reminder arrives on the phone the resident already carries, at a time when they can still act on it — put the bin out before bed, ready for morning collection.

Behind that simplicity, the system handles significant complexity:

• Household-level personalisation — every notification is tailored to the specific address. A resident in Reading gets their Reading collection schedule. A resident in Wokingham gets theirs. Different streets within the same borough can have different collection days, and the system handles all of it
• Multi-stream reminders — residents don't just get reminded that "it's bin day." They're told which bin is due: general waste, recycling, food waste, or garden waste. This eliminates the guesswork that leads to wrong bins being put out
• Customisable settings — residents can set up reminders for multiple addresses and multiple waste streams, useful for landlords, property managers, or anyone responsible for more than one property
• Dynamic schedule management — when collection dates change due to bank holidays or service disruptions, the reminders update automatically. The council updates the schedule once in the system, and every affected household receives the correct, updated reminder without any manual intervention
• 2,409 preloaded annual reminders built into the system from launch, covering every collection round across all three council areas for the full year

The system was deployed through the Scrapp mobile app, which residents across the Re3 area were already using for recycling guidance and waste queries. Adding bin day reminders to the existing app meant there was no new download required for existing users — the feature simply appeared as part of their existing experience.

Scrapp also ran targeted local advertising campaigns across Reading and Wokingham to drive awareness and adoption, using the message "Never miss a bin day again" — a direct, benefit-led hook that resonated with residents.

What 12 months of data shows

Since launching notifications in August 2024, the results tell a clear story about both scale and behaviour change:

• 7,800,000 notifications sent to residents across all three council areas
• 135,000 households enrolled in automated reminders
• 2,409 preloaded annual reminders covering every collection round
• 348 missed collections reported directly through the Scrapp platform
• 50% higher product scan rate when bin day reminders are advertised alongside recycling guidance — showing that reminders drive engagement with the wider platform, not just bin collections
• 30% increase in app downloads when bin day reminders are mentioned in marketing — making reminders the single most effective acquisition hook for the platform
• 10% of surveyed residents specifically said they want to receive council information through a mobile app

That last data point is particularly significant for councils evaluating digital communication strategies. It demonstrates clear resident demand for mobile-first council services — and bin day reminders are the entry point that gets the app onto residents' phones.

The 50% scan rate increase is equally important. It shows that bin day reminders don't just solve the missed collections problem — they create a regular touchpoint that drives deeper engagement with recycling guidance, waste queries, and the broader Scrapp platform. Every reminder is a moment of attention, and that attention compounds into behaviour change over time.

How automated reminders helped Re3's operations

Beyond the resident-facing data, the operational benefits for the councils were concrete:

• Saved on printing, distribution, and resourcing costs — automated digital reminders replaced the need for printed collection calendars and manual notification processes
• Opened unique communication channels — push notifications gave the councils a direct, real-time way to reach residents that didn't exist before, without relying on post, email, or the council website
• Improved customer service and insight accuracy — with 348 missed collections reported directly through the platform, the councils gained a new data source on service performance that didn't require phone calls or manual logging
• Adapted dynamically to service changes — when collection schedules shifted, the system updated automatically, reducing the volume of confused calls to council contact centres
• Supported service optimisation — the data on which reminders were being engaged with, and where missed collections were being reported, gave the waste teams actionable insight into collection round performance

Reaching every resident: multilingual support and accessibility

One of the most important developments in the platform's evolution is the expansion of access to residents who were previously underserved by traditional council communications.

Scrapp's platform now supports multilingual bin day reminders and recycling guidance in Mandarin, Nepali, Polish, and Romanian — languages spoken by approximately 10% of the population across the Re3 area. For non-native English speakers, this is the difference between understanding their collection schedule and missing it entirely. Printed calendars were only ever available in English. The app now speaks their language.

Alongside multilingual support, the platform has achieved WCAG 2.2 AAA compliance — the highest level of web accessibility standards. This ensures that the approximately 11% of registered residents with disabilities can access bin day reminders, recycling guidance, and all other platform features without barriers.

These aren't optional extras. For councils serving diverse populations, accessibility and language support are fundamental to equitable service delivery. A bin day reminder system that only works for English-speaking, fully able residents isn't solving the whole problem. Scrapp's platform now reaches the residents who were most likely to be missed by traditional communication methods.

The environmental ripple effect of a simple reminder

Missed bins don't just inconvenience residents — they have a direct environmental impact. When a recycling bin isn't collected because it wasn't put out on time, that material stays in the household until the next collection cycle. In the meantime, it may overflow, get contaminated with other waste, or end up in general waste out of frustration.

At the scale of 135,000 households, even a small percentage improvement in collection compliance means tonnes of recyclable material entering the correct stream rather than being lost to landfill. The reminder doesn't just solve a logistics problem — it protects the integrity of the entire recycling system.

Through Scrapp's partnership with Plastic Bank, every interaction on the platform also contributes to removing ocean-bound plastic from the environment. Residents across Reading, Wokingham, and Bracknell Forest have collectively prevented thousands of ocean-bound plastic bottles from entering the ocean through their use of the Scrapp platform.

Read the full Re3 partnership case study — covering recycling guidance, waste queries, and cost savings — here.

This partnership won Resource & Waste Management Partnership of the Year at the Awards for Excellence in Recycling & Waste Management. Read more about is here.

Could your community benefit from automated bin day reminders?

If you run a waste or recycling program for a council, municipality, or community and want to reduce missed collections, cut communication costs, and give residents a tool they'll actually use — book a 15-minute call with the Scrapp team.

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