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Date Published: 26/03/2026

Mazarrón residents left waiting as hundreds of new bins sit unused for months

Hundreds of new brown bins have been abandoned in Mazarrón as the council struggles to launch the long-promised service

Hundreds of brand new brown waste bins have been sitting idle in Mazarrón for months, simply because there are no rubbish trucks available to empty them.

Around 200 of the containers, designed for food and garden waste, have been parked in an open field for nearly eight months, despite costing close to €200,000. The bins were funded through an EU grant and are supposed to be part of a major push to improve recycling and reduce landfill waste across Spain.

The problem is that the council has not been able to secure the specialised vehicle needed to collect the contents. A contract worth €182,000 was put out to tender, but not a single company came forward.

According to the local Environment Councillor, demand for these trucks has surged across the country, leaving smaller towns like Mazarrón struggling to get hold of one.

For now, the bins remain stacked behind fencing near the road to the Alamillo area, exposed to the elements and going nowhere fast.

When the service finally launches, the plan is to place the new containers in busy areas first, including the centres of Mazarrón and Puerto de Mazarrón, popular bar and restaurant zones and the Camposol urbanisation. Larger bins have also been set aside for businesses such as cafes and shops.

The delay is not unique to Mazarrón. The rollout of these so-called fifth containers has been slow across the Region of Murcia, with targets repeatedly pushed back. What was once expected to be in place by 2022 is now looking more like the end of 2026, and even that isn’t guaranteed.

Street cleaning and rubbish collection are already a sore point in the coastal town, with plenty of complaints from both residents and visitors. Many say the streets are often left dirty, pointing to ageing bins, missing lids and ongoing issues with some underground containers that are not working as they should.

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