Privacy

Who we are

Is It Bin Day? is run by Andrew Lee, trading as Is It Bin Day ("we"). We're the controller for the information described on this page. You can reach us at [email protected].

What's saved on your phone

The app saves these on your phone so it can open straight to your answer and work offline:

• the addresses you add, with their postcodes and council address IDs
• your latest bin dates for each address
• your alert settings, and any alerts you set up yourself

We don't receive a copy. Removing an address in the app deletes its saved dates. Uninstalling the app removes what it saved on your phone.

If looking up an address fails or comes back empty, and our own status check has also had trouble reaching the council's lookup, the app keeps a note of which council and the times involved (never the address) for up to 14 days, so it can tell you when a later check reaches that council again; the note stays on your phone and isn't sent anywhere.

If your phone backs up app data to your Google account, Android may include this app's saved data in that backup. That backup is between you and Google, and we can't see it.

Your location

The app only asks for your location if you tap "Use my location" when adding an address, and only while you're using the app. It doesn't use your location in the background.

Your phone takes one reading and matches it against a list of UK postcodes built into the app (from the Office for National Statistics). It suggests the nearest postcodes, you pick one, and the reading is thrown away. Your location isn't sent to us or stored by the app.

Who the app talks to, and why

Your council

To get your bin dates, your phone sends your postcode and the address you picked straight to your council's website, just as if you'd looked it up there yourself. It does this when you open the app and about once a day in the background, so your alerts stay right. For most councils the request doesn't go through us. The council's own privacy notice covers what it does with it.

Calderdale's bin day finder only answers once its "I accept the Privacy Notice" box is ticked. When you look up a Calderdale address, your phone ticks that box for you, as the council's own form does when you tick it. The council's Privacy Notice for Waste says that completing the form is consent to it using your details. Our server isn't involved.

West Suffolk's bin days are on the council's own Find my nearest map site, maps.westsuffolk.gov.uk, rather than its main website. Your phone asks that site directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, just as the council's When are my bins emptied? page sends you there. Our server isn't involved.

A few more councils keep their bin lookup on a different address from their main website, still the council's own. Your phone asks that address directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, as the council's own page does, and our server isn't involved. These are Barnsley (waste.barnsley.gov.uk), Bath and North East Somerset (api.bathnes.gov.uk), Bolsover (selfservice.bolsover.gov.uk), Charnwood (my.charnwood.gov.uk), Cherwell (forms.cherwell.gov.uk), Dartford (windmz.dartford.gov.uk), Denbighshire (refusecalendarapi.denbighshire.gov.uk), Derbyshire Dales (selfserve.derbyshiredales.gov.uk), Dover (portal.waste.dover.gov.uk), East Hampshire (waste.selfservice.easthants.gov.uk), Fenland (yourbins.fenland.gov.uk), Flintshire (digital.flintshire.gov.uk), Glasgow (onlineservices.glasgow.gov.uk), High Peak (bins.highpeak.gov.uk), Lincoln (contact.lincoln.gov.uk), Luton (myforms.luton.gov.uk), Malvern Hills (swict.malvernhills.gov.uk), Melton (my.melton.gov.uk), Mid Devon (my.middevon.gov.uk), Milton Keynes (mycouncil.milton-keynes.gov.uk), Moray (bindayfinder.moray.gov.uk), North Lincolnshire (m.northlincs.gov.uk), North West Leicestershire (my.nwleics.gov.uk), Oadby and Wigston (my.oadby-wigston.gov.uk), Peterborough (report.peterborough.gov.uk), Reading (api.reading.gov.uk), Shropshire (bins.shropshire.gov.uk), Slough (waste.slough.gov.uk), South Derbyshire (maps.southderbyshire.gov.uk), South Hams (waste.southhams.gov.uk), St Albans (gis.stalbans.gov.uk), Staffordshire Moorlands (bins.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk), Tameside (public.tameside.gov.uk), Telford and Wrekin (dac.telford.gov.uk), Uttlesford (bins.uttlesford.gov.uk), Vale of Glamorgan (myvale.valeofglamorgan.gov.uk) and West Lancashire (your.westlancs.gov.uk). Tamworth's bin dates are on the website of the joint waste service it shares with Lichfield District Council, www.lichfielddc.gov.uk, which is not Tamworth's own council address: your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, as the Bin collection dates page the Tamworth council site links to does. Basingstoke and Deane (www.basingstoke.gov.uk), Birmingham (www.birmingham.gov.uk), Breckland (www.breckland.gov.uk), Bury (www.bury.gov.uk), Central Bedfordshire (www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk), Cherwell (www.cherwell.gov.uk, as well as its forms.cherwell.gov.uk address above), Conwy (www.conwy.gov.uk), Cumberland (www.cumberland.gov.uk), Fareham (www.fareham.gov.uk), King's Lynn and West Norfolk (www.west-norfolk.gov.uk), North Tyneside (www.northtyneside.gov.uk), Rhondda Cynon Taf (www.rctcbc.gov.uk), Runnymede (www.runnymede.gov.uk), South Tyneside (www.southtyneside.gov.uk), Stroud (www.stroud.gov.uk), Swindon (www.swindon.gov.uk) and Warrington (www.warrington.gov.uk) are asked at their main council websites, directly from your phone.

The City of London, not yet in the app, has no bin day lookup by address. The app will ask which kind of home you live in, or which building from a short list, and your phone reads the council's collection page for that kind of home, the same page anyone can read on the council's website. Your postcode, your address and the building you pick aren't sent to the council or to us. Our server isn't involved.

Councils we ask for you

Thirty-six councils, four of them not yet in the app, can't be asked directly from your phone. Their websites block requests from phone apps, can't be reached from a phone at all, or (Havering, and the iTouchVision councils below) need a key that we keep on our server, not in the app. If your address is in one of them, your phone sends our server only what that council's own website asks for, and our server passes it straight to that council and nowhere else:

• Enfield: your postcode, then the council's ID for the address you picked.
• Hammersmith and Fulham: your postcode and house number.
• Halton: your house number or name and your postcode, then the same with the council's ID for the address you picked.
• Havering: your postcode, then the council's ID for the address you picked.
• Newham: your postcode, then the council's ID for the address you picked.
• Blaenau Gwent, Boston, Canterbury, Chesterfield, Eastleigh, East Renfrewshire, Epsom and Ewell, Gateshead, Great Yarmouth, Harborough, Hastings, Hyndburn, Mole Valley, Newport, Preston, Somerset, South Ayrshire, South Holland, Southampton, Sunderland, Swale, Swansea, Test Valley, Torfaen, West Devon and Winchester: your postcode, then the council's ID for the address you picked.
• Chichester and Stockton-on-Tees: your postcode, then the council's ID for the address you picked, with the town and company name from that address.
• East Lindsey: your postcode, then the council's ID for the address you picked.

Our server doesn't keep any of it. It doesn't write your postcode, house number, address or bin dates to its logs or anywhere else (apart from Halton's bin dates, below), and it forgets them once it has passed the council's answer back to your phone.

For Eastleigh and Preston the council's site only lets a real browser through, so our server first opens the council's own page in a browser, as you would, to pass its check, then asks the council for the address list with your postcode and for the dates with the ID of the address you picked. Nothing is kept for Eastleigh. For Preston our server keeps the council's list of dates and bin names for an address in memory, filed under a scrambled code rather than the address, until fewer than eight weeks of dates are left or the server restarts. For Southampton our server opens the council's own page in a browser, as you would, types in your postcode and the address you picked, and reads the dates. Nothing is kept.

Halton's bin day lookup (webapp.halton.gov.uk) has a "prove you're not a robot" check, Google's reCAPTCHA, before its Search button. Our server opens the council's own page in a browser, as you would, types in your house number or name and your postcode, and picks the address you chose. To get past the check, our server asks CapSolver, a company that solves these checks, for a pass for Halton's public reCAPTCHA site key. CapSolver sees only that site key and the page's address, never your address, house number or postcode. This takes a while, so the first lookup for an address may take more than a minute.

So Halton isn't asked again every day, our server keeps that address's bin dates, and nothing else. It asks the council again when fewer than three weeks of dates remain for any of its bins. The dates are filed under a scrambled code made from the council's ID for the address with a secret key, not under your address, postcode or house number, so they can't be read back as an address. They stay until newer dates for that address replace them, or we clear them.

Canterbury's bin dates come from a service on Amazon Web Services (amazonaws.com) that the script on the council's own bin collection dates page calls. Our server asks it for you, with the address's ID, and nothing is kept. Chesterfield's lookup is on the council's own My Chesterfield site (myaccount.chesterfield.gov.uk), which leaves one security certificate out, so our server supplies it.

The council sees the request come from our server, not your phone. Each request also carries our contact address, [email protected], so the council can see who is asking.

Our server

Companies that run council lookups

Some councils run their bin lookup on a supplier's website rather than their own. For Blaenau Gwent, Epsom and Ewell, Hyndburn, Newport, Somerset, Test Valley, Torfaen and Winchester that is iTouchVision; for Harborough and West Devon it is FCC Environment; for Pendle it is Opus4; for Lancaster, Mid and East Antrim, Norwich, Surrey Heath, Waverley and Woking it is Whitespace Work Software. The postcode and the address you picked go to that company, as they would if you used the council's own page, and the company's own privacy notice covers what it does with them. For the iTouchVision councils, Harborough and West Devon, the request goes through our server first, as above. For Pendle your phone asks Opus4 directly, and for the Whitespace councils your phone asks Whitespace's portal directly.

Some more councils run their lookup on a website that isn't a council address, and your phone asks that website directly. East Cambridgeshire, East Hertfordshire, Elmbridge, Epping Forest, Gloucester, Na h-Eileanan Siar, North Warwickshire, Perth and Kinross, Plymouth, Rochdale, Spelthorne, Stevenage, Torridge, Tower Hamlets and Watford use Granicus's AchieveForms service (achieveservice.com). Crawley uses the same AchieveForms service, but at the council's own address (my.crawley.gov.uk). Bassetlaw, Caerphilly, East Ayrshire, Middlesbrough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham, Redcar and Cleveland and Stirling use Recollect (api.eu.recollect.net). Basildon, Bedford, Cambridge City, Cheltenham, Colchester, Fermanagh and Omagh, Hackney, Knowsley, Leicester, Lisburn and Castlereagh, Scottish Borders, South Cambridgeshire and Torbay use a website run by a supplier or hosting service the council works with. As with the companies above, the postcode and the address you picked go to that website as they would if you used the council's own page, and its own privacy notice covers what it does with them. Doncaster's lookup is on doncaster-wasterecycling.oncreate.app, a website run by a supplier or hosting service the council works with, not a gov.uk address, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Cardiff's council page embeds a lookup form that runs on Microsoft Azure (azurewebsites.net), and your phone asks that website directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Maldon's lookup is the council's own map service on Esri's ArcGIS Online (arcgis.com), and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Rugby's lookup is a waste collections service run by the council's supplier on cloud9technologies.com, not a gov.uk address, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Southend-on-Sea's is the same kind of service on the same host, embedded in the council's own collection days page, and your phone asks it directly in the same way. West Northamptonshire's lookup is a service on api.westnorthants.digital, not a gov.uk address: the script on the council's own bin collection day page calls it, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, as that page does. Falkirk is different: your postcode goes to the council's own website, which then passes your phone on to storage the council uses on Microsoft Azure (blob.core.windows.net) for your collection dates, and only the address's ID, in the link, reaches that storage. Dundee City is similar: your postcode goes to the council's own website for the address list, then your phone asks the Dundee MyBins app's website (dundee-mybins.co.uk), which a supplier runs in partnership with the council, for your collection dates. Only the address's ID reaches that website, and its own privacy notice covers what it does with it. Fylde's lookup is a Bartec Collective View page (collectiveview.bartec-systems.com, run by the council's supplier) embedded on the council's own website: your phone first fetches that page on new.fylde.gov.uk, which carries no address, for the lookup's key, then asks collectiveview.bartec-systems.com directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Hertsmere's lookup is on hertsmere-services.onmats.com and Sevenoaks's on sevenoaks-dc-host01.oncreate.app, websites run by a supplier or hosting service the council works with, not gov.uk addresses, and your phone asks them directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Mid Ulster's lookup is on midulsterbincalendar.azurewebsites.net, a website on Microsoft Azure, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Ards and North Down's Bins and recycling page, on the council's own website (ardsandnorthdown.gov.uk), embeds a bin calendar that runs on ardsandnorthdownbincalendar.azurewebsites.net, a website on Microsoft Azure. Your phone asks that website directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, as the council's page does. Fife and Manchester run their lookups on Verint's cloud service (fife.form.uk.empro.verintcloudservices.com and manchester.form.uk.empro.verintcloudservices.com), and your phone asks that service directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Bolton runs its lookup on Verint's cloud service too (bolton.form.uk.empro.verintcloudservices.com), and your phone asks that service directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole's lookup runs on two websites that aren't council addresses: the council's gazetteer on Azure API Management (azure-api.net) and its collection service on Microsoft Power Platform (powerplatform.com). The script on the council's own Check your bin day portal calls both, and your phone asks them directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, as that portal does. Rotherham's lookup is the API of the Rotherham Bins App, which the council's own Bin collections page links to, on bins.azurewebsites.net, a website on Microsoft Azure, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Eastbourne and Lewes share one lookup: the councils' own When is my bin collection day? page hands off to their waste site, Environment First (environmentfirst.co.uk), which is not a gov.uk address, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked. Cannock Chase's lookup is the Bin Collection Dates lookup on ccdc.opendata.onl, a website run by a supplier the council works with, not a gov.uk address: the council's own Waste and Recycling Status page links to it, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, as that page does. Bridgend's lookup is the Resident Service Portal on bridgendportal.azurewebsites.net, a website run by a supplier the council works with, not a gov.uk address: the council's Refuse and Recycling collections pages link to it, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, as those pages do. West Lindsey's lookup is a map service on wlnk.statmap.co.uk, a website run by a supplier the council works with, not a gov.uk address: the council's own Find your bin collection day page loads it, and your phone asks it directly, with the postcode and the address you picked, as that page does. Fife's and Manchester's lookups are Verint eForms services (fife.form.uk.empro.verintcloudservices.com and manchester.form.uk.empro.verintcloudservices.com), the form each council's own bin page leads to. Verint is the council's supplier, and these are not gov.uk addresses. Your phone asks the service directly: first for an access token, then with the postcode, then with the ID of the address you picked. Verint's own privacy notice covers what it does with them. Mid Ulster's and Ards and North Down's lookups are each council's own bin calendar widget, hosted on Microsoft Azure (midulsterbincalendar.azurewebsites.net and ardsandnorthdownbincalendar.azurewebsites.net), not gov.uk addresses. Your phone asks the widget's service directly, with the postcode and then the ID of the address you picked.

The app downloads the list of councils we cover, and the instructions for reading your council's website, from our server at api.isitbinday.app. The request says which council. It doesn't include your postcode, your address or your bin dates. The only exception is the thirty-six councils we ask for you, above.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare connects our server and this website to the internet. Like any network, it handles the IP address each request comes from, and it keeps its own logs under Cloudflare's privacy policy. For the thirty-six councils we ask for you, the details your phone sends pass through Cloudflare on their way to our server.

Expo, for app updates

When you open the app it checks Expo's update service for fixes. That check includes the app's version, your phone's platform and a random ID made for this install. Expo handles it under Expo's privacy policy.

Google Play and RevenueCat, for Bin Day Plus

Bin Day Plus is a one-off purchase. If you buy it, Google Play takes the payment, so we never see your card or bank details.

The app uses RevenueCat to check whether Plus is unlocked. Once purchases are switched on, the app checks with RevenueCat when it opens. RevenueCat keeps an anonymous ID for each install and a record of any purchase made with it, under RevenueCat's privacy policy. It isn't linked to your name, email address or home address.

Sharing with your household

"Share with your household" makes a link and a QR code carrying your council, your address's council ID and the address itself. That's how another phone can set itself up without an account. It also means anyone who has the link can see your address.

The link carries your address - share it with people you live with.

The address sits after the "#" in the link, which browsers don't send to websites. If someone opens the link in a browser, our site doesn't receive your address.

Alerts

Bin night alerts are scheduled by the app on your phone. There's no push notification server, so we don't send them and don't know when they go off.

Why we handle this information (lawful bases)

Under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR), we need a lawful basis for each thing we do with personal information:

• Running our server and this website, and keeping them secure (the requests Cloudflare and our server handle): our legitimate interests in providing a working, secure service.
• Asking one of the thirty-six councils above for your bin dates (the details your phone sends our server for these councils): our legitimate interests in getting you the bin dates you asked for, when the council's website won't answer your phone, or needs a key we keep on our server.
• App updates (the Expo check): our legitimate interests in getting fixes to you quickly.
• Bin Day Plus (Google Play and RevenueCat): to provide what you bought, under our contract with you.
• Emails you send us: our legitimate interests in answering you.

Your saved addresses, bin dates and location readings stay on your phone. We don't receive them, except the details passed on to the thirty-six councils we ask for you, which we don't keep, and Halton's bin dates, kept as described above.

Who receives information

• Your council: your postcode and chosen address, to look up your bin dates. Directly from your phone for most councils; through our server for the thirty-six councils above. Pendle's lookup runs on Opus4's site, the Whitespace councils' on Whitespace's portal, and some others on a supplier's website (see above).
• CapSolver: Halton's public reCAPTCHA site key and the address of the council's lookup page, to get past the council's check. Nothing about you.
• Cloudflare: IP addresses and request details, for hosting and connecting our server and this website. For those thirty-six councils, that includes the details your phone sends our server.
• Expo: app version, platform and a random install ID, for app updates.
• RevenueCat: an anonymous install ID and purchase records, for Bin Day Plus.
• Google Play: your purchase and payment, if you buy Bin Day Plus. Google handles this under its own terms.

Cloudflare, Expo and RevenueCat are based in the US, so information they handle may be processed outside the UK.

• Cloudflare takes part in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension. If that ever lapsed, its data processing addendum falls back to the EU standard contractual clauses with the UK Information Commissioner's Addendum.
• Expo takes part in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension (Expo's privacy policy).
• RevenueCat uses the EU standard contractual clauses with the UK Information Commissioner's International Data Transfer Addendum (RevenueCat's data processing addendum).

How long it's kept

• On your phone: until you remove the address or uninstall the app.
• Lookups for the thirty-six councils we ask for you: not kept. Our server passes them on and forgets them. The exceptions are Halton's bin dates (dates only, never the address), kept and refreshed every three weeks or so, as above, and Preston's lists of dates and bin names (never the address), kept in memory until fewer than eight weeks of dates are left or the server restarts.
• Our server's logs: each request's time, what was asked for (for example which council) and the result. They never include your postcode, house number or address. Requests reach our server through Cloudflare, so these logs don't record your IP address. They're capped in size, so older entries are overwritten as new ones arrive, and they're cleared whenever the server is updated. There's no fixed time period.
• Cloudflare, Expo and RevenueCat: for as long as their own policies say. We don't set these periods.
• Emails to us: as long as we need them to deal with what you asked.

What we don't do

• No accounts or logins.
• No ads, and no advertising or analytics tools in the app.
• We don't sell information about you.

This website

isitbinday.app sets no cookies and has no analytics tools in its pages. Its fonts are stored on the site itself. Cloudflare hosts it, and handles your IP address to deliver the page. The list of councils on the home page comes from our own server.

Council websites

Links such as "Report a missed bin" open your council's own pages. Anything you enter there goes to the council, under its privacy notice.

For a few councils, those links go to a website run by a supplier the council uses, or by councils working together, rather than a council address: Argyll and Bute (custhelp.com), Blaenau Gwent and Wyre Forest (itouchvision.com), Brent and North Ayrshire (hwrc.bookinglab.co.uk), Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire (greatercambridgewaste.org, their shared waste service), East Dunbartonshire and Tewkesbury (oncreate.app), Hackney (egovhub.net), Inverclyde (verintcloudservices.com), North Warwickshire (achieveservice.com), Torbay (servicebuilder.co.uk), Tower Hamlets (achieveservice.com), Uttlesford (loveessex.org, the Essex Waste Partnership of the county's councils) and West Devon (fccenvironment.co.uk). The app sends nothing to those websites itself. The page only opens if you tap the link, and anything you enter there goes to the council or its supplier, under their privacy notice.

Your rights

You have the right to ask for a copy of personal information we hold about you, and to ask us to correct it, delete it, limit how we use it, or stop using it. Email [email protected].

Most of the app's information is on your phone, and you can delete it there yourself. For a request about a Bin Day Plus purchase, include your Google Play order number so we can find it with RevenueCat. We don't have your name or email address to look it up by.

If you're unhappy with how we handle your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Changes

If this page changes, we'll update the date at the top.