The Rubbish App — Privacy Policy

Effective date: 10 September 2026 Applies to: The Rubbish App & its collection-reminder service Version: 1.0

At a glance

The Rubbish App stores the postcode and address you give it, purely to work out which council collects your bins and when.
There's no account, no password, and we don't sell or share your data with advertisers.
Your postcode gets sent to your local council's own website — the same site you'd check yourself — to fetch real collection dates.
You can delete your saved address from the app at any time, and ask us to delete anything we hold about you.

1. Who we are

The Rubbish App is provided by Stuart Derricott (“we”, “us”), acting as the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. You can reach us at support@therubbishapp.co.uk.

The Rubbish App is a small, independently-run app — there's no company behind it beyond that.

2. What this policy covers

This policy covers The Rubbish App's iPhone app and the reminder/collection-lookup service behind it. It doesn't cover the council websites The Rubbish App fetches data from, or any linked services (like Apple's own systems) — those have their own privacy policies, which we'd encourage you to check.

3. What we collect

Data	Why we have it
Postcode and the specific address you select (e.g. house number/name)	To identify your council and fetch your actual bin collection dates
Your chosen reminder time	To send the evening-before alert at the time you asked for
A device push token, if you enable notifications	So Apple's push service knows which device to deliver your reminder to
Basic server logs (IP address, request time)	Kept briefly for security and to debug faults — not linked to your address beyond what's operationally necessary

We don't collect your name, email, payment details, or precise location (GPS) — The Rubbish App only ever needs the postcode/address you type in yourself. We don't use advertising or analytics trackers of any kind.

4. Why we process it, and our legal basis

Providing the service you asked for — Article 6(1)(b)

Looking up and storing your address is necessary to do the one thing the app is for: telling you when your bins are collected.

Push notifications — Article 6(1)(a), consent

We only register your device for push alerts if you turn reminders on. You can withdraw this at any time by turning them off in Settings or in iOS notification settings.

5. Who we share it with

We don't sell your data, and we don't share it with advertisers or data brokers. A few services necessarily see part of it in order for The Rubbish App to work:

Who	What they see	Why
Your local council's own website	Your postcode/address	They're the actual source of the collection dates — the same lookup you'd do yourself in a browser
postcodes.io & OpenStreetMap Nominatim	Your postcode	Free, public services used to work out which council area you're in
Apple (APNs)	A device push token, not your address	Required to deliver the reminder notification to your phone
Apple (App Store billing)	Your subscription payment	Apple handles all payment for the subscription through your Apple ID — we never receive or store your card details, only whether you have an active subscription
DigitalOcean	Everything we store	They host the server on our behalf, as a data processor under contract, not for their own use

6. International transfers

Our hosting is currently based in the UK (DigitalOcean's London data centre). If that ever changes to a country outside the UK/EEA, we'll only do so with appropriate safeguards in place (such as Standard Contractual Clauses), and we'll update this policy to say so.

7. How long we keep it

We keep your saved address and reminder settings for as long as you have the app set up. If The Rubbish App hasn't fetched your bin dates in 12 months, we treat that as inactive and delete the stored address automatically. Server logs are kept for a short rolling window (typically no more than 30 days) purely for security and fault-finding, then deleted.

You don't have to wait for any of that — you can remove your saved address from the app's Settings at any time, which deletes it from our server too.

8. Security

We use reasonable technical measures (encryption in transit, restricted access to the server) to protect what we store. No method of transmission or storage is ever 100% secure, but The Rubbish App is deliberately built to hold as little about you as possible in the first place — there's no account or password to compromise.

9. Your rights

Under UK GDPR and (where it applies) EU GDPR, you have the right to:

Access the personal data we hold about you
Correct it if it's inaccurate
Delete it (also doable directly in the app's Settings)
Restrict or object to how we process it
Receive a copy in a portable format
Withdraw consent for push notifications at any time
Complain to the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) if you think we've mishandled your data

To exercise any of these, contact us using the details in section 14.

10. Children

The Rubbish App isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we'll remove it.

11. Cookies & local storage

The Rubbish App doesn't use advertising or analytics cookies. The app stores your saved address on your device (via browser local storage) purely so it can show your bin dates without asking you to look it up again — this stays on your device and isn't a tracking mechanism.

12. Automated decisions

We don't use your data to make any automated decision that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you. The only "automation" involved is fetching and displaying publicly available bin collection dates.

13. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change to how we handle your data, we'll update the effective date above and, where the change is significant, let you know in the app.

14. Contact us

Questions, requests, or concerns about your data: support@therubbishapp.co.uk.