An annual tally of 20,000 missed bin collections in Courier Country has been branded a disgrace.
Taxpayer Scotland hit out at the results of the Courier investigation and called for councils to be hit in the pocket.
The figures were released following a freedom of information request but the overall figure could be even higher.
Taxpayer Scotland director Eben Wilson said: “Council tax payers consider bin collection as a core service from every council. The idea that we are paying hard-earned cash for no service is disgraceful.
“Surely every council must know that the public health and keeping our waste managed properly is an essential service. Councils should be forced to pay fines in recompense to householders if they fail to deliver what we are paying for.
“These figures really tell us that some councils are just not up to the mark for providing essential services.”
Mr Wilson said councils are still spending too much money unnecessarily without proper attention on productivity.
In Angus there were 2,405 missed collections from 54,000 homes in 2013-14 compared to 2,632 the previous year.
In Fife there were 15,264 missed bin collections in 2012 and 11,019 last year from more than 170,000 homes.
In Perth and Kinross the figure was 821 in 2013-14 which was up from 698 the previous year.
The figures include general rubbish, recyclates and food waste from up to 68,500 households.
In Clackmannanshire there were 611 missed bin collections in 2012 from 23,787 properties. The figure went up to 1,332 last year from 24,021 homes and included all types of household waste collection.
In Falkirk there were 8,100 missed bin collections from 71,525 properties in 2012 and 4,745 last year.
There were 2,164 in Stirling in 2012 from 39,650 properties which dropped to 1,268 from 39,781 homes in 2013.
Dundee City Council figures were not included as it was the only local authority to ask for a fee for disclosure.
North East Scotland MSP Alex Johnstone said: “For local councils to miss allocated bin collections once is careless, to miss it 40,000 times over two years is quite frankly disgraceful.”
Pat Callaghan, Fife Council executive spokesperson for environment and transport said about 13 million domestic bin collections are carried out yearly.
He said: “Given the number of collections we do, the figure reported shows we have a success rate of 99.9%. To label that level of performance as being ‘disgraceful’ is unrealistic and to suggest that it is ‘carelessness’ is frankly unfair.”
A spokesman for Perth and Kinross Council said they uplift up to five million household bins per annum.
She said: “Missed bins in 2013-14 accounted for 0.02% of the total potential number of uplifts and included missed bins due to roadworks, fallen trees, access issues due to parked vehicles and adverse weather conditions.”
A spokeswoman for Angus Council said: “During this period we made over 6.47 million bin collections to Angus households. This equates to 99.96% of all bins being collected on schedule.”
A Clackmannanshire Council spokesman said: “These figures refer to a total number of bin collections in Clackmannanshire of two million in 2012 and over four million last year.”
A Falkirk Council spokesperson said: “We make around nine million collections each year. In 2013-14 we missed on average 91 bins a week out of over 180,000 planned collections and we will continue to improve the service to our local residents.”