100 people never miss bin day
By The BinMinder team
Sometime this week a quiet milestone slipped past: more than 100 people now rely on BinMinder to tell them when to put the bins out. 98 of them have an active reminder running right now. It's a small number in the grand scheme of things — but every one of them is a household that won't be chasing the lorry down the street in their slippers again.
Where we started
BinMinder began at the start of 2026 with an almost embarrassingly simple idea: your council already publishes your bin collection schedule — it's just buried behind a clunky lookup you'll never think to check on a Tuesday night. So we built a service that does the checking for you and sends a friendly nudge the evening before each collection. That's it. No app to install, no faff.
How the first 100 signed up
People pick the channel that suits them. Right now the split across our subscribers looks like this:
- Email — comfortably the most popular, and free forever.
- Web push — a browser notification, no inbox required.
- SMS & WhatsApp — for people who want it on their lock screen.
Under the hood, we now read collection data for 360+ UK councils. Keeping those working is a constant battle — councils quietly re-platform their websites, move their APIs, and add bot protection — so a big part of the job is simply keeping the pipes clear so the reminders keep flowing.
What we learned
Two things stand out. First, reliability is the whole product. A reminder that's late or wrong is worse than no reminder at all, so most of our effort goes into making sure the schedule behind every notification is correct. Second, people really do want the boring, useful thing done well — the nicest feedback we get is no feedback, because it just works.
What's next
More councils, tighter reminders, and a few quality-of-life touches for the people already using it. If your council isn't covered yet, tell us — every request helps us prioritise. And if BinMinder has saved you a missed collection, the best thing you can do is mention it to a neighbour.
Here's to the next 100.