Student landlords facing the big end of term clear out can deflect complaints from neighbours by helping tenants sort out their rubbish.
End of term rubbish generates more complaints than almost any other student issue - including noise and parties.
Bristol City Council has seen calls from irate neighbours soar by 200 a week recently as students vacate their homes.
The city has around 50,000 students, with 40,000 or more living in private rented shared houses.
Councillor Gary Hopkins said: “Clearing up the rubbish requires a fair amount of resource.
"When they leave, the vast majority unfortunately just want to dump the stuff and go and don't give a huge amount of thought about how it can easily be dealt with."
Much of the waste in Bristol is painstakingly sorted by hand as general collections cannot handle electronic gadgets, furniture and other large items or hazardous waste that is collected in special vehicles.
Manny Pisani, chairman of the Westcountry Landlords Association, said some students are just lazy or can’t be bothered to take their belongings with them.
"There is, or should be, a facility for councils to collect items of large bulky items of waste from the residents. Sometimes it isn't actually rubbish because there are appliances, like microwaves or toasters that might work."
York has a similar problem with soaring numbers of complaints from residents in student neighbourhoods.
The city council has deployed special street cleaning teams to clear up after students. The largest item dumped in the street was a fridge freezer.
Many universities have clean-up campaigns aimed at minimising rubbish dumping in streets - like Oxford Brookes University.
Other university cities with high numbers of complaints about student rubbish dumping include Cardiff and Leeds.
