Bulk Trash Pickup in Austin: How On-Demand Collection Works (2026)

Austin doesn't have a bulk trash week anymore. Since January 2025, City of Austin curbside customers book their own bulk pickup, up to three times a year, through the Austin Recycles app, online or by calling 3-1-1. You put your items at the curb by 5:30 a.m. on the appointment day, sorted into three piles. Furniture, mattresses, appliances, carpet and up to eight tires are fine. Brush is a separate booking, and construction debris, glass, tile and hazardous materials don't go out with bulk at all.

This guide covers who gets the service, how to book, what the city takes and won't, how to set it out, and what to do once your three appointments are used up. It's for homes on City of Austin trash service. If you live in Round Rock, Pflugerville, Cedar Park or another nearby city, your city or its hauler runs its own program.

Quick answer: Austin Resource Recovery picks up bulk items only by appointment. Single-family homes and buildings up to fourplexes can book up to three bulk collections a year through the Austin Recycles app, the My Schedule page at austintexas.gov or Austin 3-1-1 (512-974-2000). Brush, household hazardous waste and clothing each have their own three appointments a year. Set items out by 5:30 a.m. on your date, in three piles: metal and rigid plastic, everything else, and tires. Nothing is picked up without an appointment (City of Austin Resource Recovery, checked November 2026).

This post is part of our guide to how to get rid of junk in Texas, which compares every option, from donation and city pickup to drop-off sites and paid removal, across the big Texas cities.

How Austin bulk trash pickup works

Austin Resource Recovery, the city's trash and recycling department, runs bulk pickup as one of four on-demand collections:

• Bulk: items too large for your trash cart, like furniture, mattresses and appliances.
• Brush: large branches and tree limbs too big for your green compost cart.
• Household hazardous waste: paint, chemicals, batteries and similar products.
• Clothing and textiles: clothes, shoes, linens and curtains, for reuse or recycling.

Each one is booked separately, and each has its own limit of three collections per calendar year.

What changed in 2025

Until the end of 2024, Austin collected bulk items twice a year on a fixed schedule by neighborhood, and a truck with a claw came down every street in the same week. KUT reported in December 2024 that from January 2025, residents would have to schedule pickups instead. The city says the switch means you no longer wait six months between collections and can pick a date that fits when you actually have things to get rid of.

If you remember piles lining whole streets on bulk week, that's why you don't see it anymore. Every pile you see now belongs to someone with an appointment.

Who gets it

On-demand bulk pickup is for Austin Resource Recovery residential customers: single-family homes and buildings up to fourplexes in Austin, plus homes in certain Limited Districts. The city says items left in front of a business aren't collected.

Apartment complexes with five or more units usually have private trash service, so if you rent in a complex, ask the office how bulk items are handled there. If your trash cart isn't from the City of Austin, you're likely outside the program.

How to book a bulk pickup in Austin

You have three ways to book:

1. The Austin Recycles app. It also sends reminders and service alerts.
2. Online, through the My Schedule page on austintexas.gov.
3. Austin 3-1-1, by phone at 3-1-1 or 512-974-2000.

The booking system asks you to select every item you plan to set out. That's how the city sends the right truck and routes the material to the right place, so list everything, including tires and appliances. If an item isn't on the list, it isn't accepted through bulk pickup.

After booking, you get an email confirmation, and later an email reminder before your date.

Changing or canceling

Appointments can't be changed once they're booked. If the date no longer works, cancel and book a new one. You have to cancel the same way you booked: an app booking is canceled in the app, a My Schedule booking on that page. The confirmation email also has a cancel link. Call 3-1-1 if you have trouble.

How much it costs

The on-demand page lists no extra charge for your bulk appointments, and the city's brush page says brush collection is provided at no extra cost to residential customers. Both are part of your Austin Resource Recovery service, which is billed on your City of Austin utility bill.

When to set out bulk items

Put everything at the curb by 5:30 a.m. on your appointment date. The city gives a deadline, not an earliest time, so the evening before is the usual choice. Don't leave a pile out for days ahead of your date.

Crews may come at different times of day, and different trucks may take different piles. If anything is still there after 4 p.m. on your collection day, call 3-1-1 or email Austin Resource Recovery after 4 p.m. that day and within two business days. The city says it will come back for the missed items as soon as possible.

Austin's on-demand collections at a glance

Source: City of Austin Resource Recovery, on-demand collection page (checked November 2026). Each service allows up to three appointments per calendar year.

What Austin bulk pickup takes

The city's list of accepted bulk items:

• appliances, with the doors removed
• furniture
• household carpet
• doors
• lawn mowers, with the gas and oil drained
• nail-free lumber
• pallets
• passenger car tires, rims removed, up to 8 tires per household
• railroad ties, cut in half
• rolled fencing

The city's set-out rules also name electronics and rigid plastics as part of the metal pile, so TVs and similar items go out with bulk too. Mattresses and box springs aren't on the short list above, but the city's What Do I Do With tool lists bulk collection as the best option for them.

The city says this isn't a complete list. To check a specific item, search it in the Austin Recycles app or the What Do I Do With tool on austintexas.gov.

What Austin won't pick up with bulk

Source: City of Austin Resource Recovery, on-demand collection, Recycle and Reuse Center and residential trash pages (checked November 2026).

The construction rule is the one that trips people up. A torn-out kitchen, old drywall, tile from a bathroom remodel or carpet pulled up by a flooring crew counts as construction and remodeling debris, even when it comes from a house. If you're doing the work yourself, a roll-off dumpster or a junk removal crew is the usual answer.

How to set out bulk items in Austin

Austin's set-out rules are specific, and the three-pile rule is the one most people miss.

Separate everything into three piles:

1. Metal items and rigid plastics: appliances (doors off), electronics, metal furniture, hard plastic.
2. Non-metal items: carpet, nail-free lumber, wood and upholstered furniture.
3. Passenger car tires: rims removed, eight at most.

The city recycles the appliances, electronics, metal and rigid plastics it collects through bulk pickup, and says the recycling revenue helps keep customer fees down. Sorting the piles is what makes that possible.

Then check where the piles sit:

• at the curb in front of your house
• at least 5 feet from your carts, mailbox, fences or walls, water meter, phone and electrical boxes, fire hydrants and parked cars
• not under low tree limbs or power lines
• not in an alley, in front of a vacant lot, or in front of a business, where items won't be collected

Don't bag or box anything. Bags are treated as extra trash and can bring an extra trash fee. That's true even for small items: if it fits in a bag, it belongs in your trash cart, not the bulk pile.

Before you set out

• Take the doors off refrigerators, freezers and other appliances. It's a city rule, and it keeps children and animals from getting trapped.
• Drain gas and oil from lawn mowers.
• Pull nails from lumber, and cut railroad ties in half.
• Take tires off their rims. Mounted tires aren't collected.
• Wrap a mattress with bed bugs in plastic and label it, so no one takes it home.

Brush collection: the rules for limbs and branches

Brush has its own on-demand booking, so a storm cleanup doesn't use up a bulk appointment. The rules:

• Branches and limbs between 5 and 15 feet long. Cut anything longer.
• Tree trunks over 8 inches across cut to 3 feet or less.
• Stack it loosely in one row along the curb, no more than 15 feet across and 4 feet high, with the cut ends facing the street.
• Keep it off the sidewalk and out of the street, with the same 5-foot clearances as bulk.
• At the curb by 5:30 a.m. on your date.

Brush collection also covers homes in certain Emergency Services Districts, not only city curbside customers. The city points out that clearing brush helps reduce wildfire risk.

Smaller branches go in the green cart

Branches under 5 feet long and no thicker than 3 inches aren't brush collection. They go out with weekly curbside composting: in the green cart, plus up to 15 items beside it, such as lawn and leaf bags or small bundles. The city's yard trimmings page asks for bundles no heavier than 30 pounds.

Oak wilt

Austin is prone to oak wilt, a fungal disease that can kill oak trees. The city asks residents to prune oaks only between July and January, paint pruning cuts right away, and clean tools between trees. Worth knowing before you book a brush pickup after trimming.

Household hazardous waste and clothing pickup

These two work differently from bulk and brush, because nothing goes to the curb.

Household hazardous waste. The city takes aerosol cans, automotive fluids and oil filters, car and household batteries (lithium-ion only from laptops and smaller devices), cleaning products, cooking oil and grease, fluorescent bulbs, mercury, paint and thinners, pesticides and herbicides, pool chemicals, and propane cylinders up to 1 pound. Put sealed, labeled containers in a box or tub somewhere crews can reach, out of rain and sun and away from heat. Don't set it at the curb. No container over 5 gallons, and 30 gallons total per pickup.

Clothing and textiles. Up to two closed 13-gallon bags of clothes, shoes, coats, blankets, curtains and clean linens, left by the front door, on the porch or in front of the garage. Bags at the curb or next to a cart may be collected as trash. Pillows, socks and underwear, rugs and furniture aren't accepted.

Austin drop-off sites

If your three appointments are used up, or you'd rather haul it yourself, the city runs two drop-off sites.

Sources: City of Austin Resource Recovery, Recycle and Reuse Center and Yard Trimmings and Large Brush Drop Off pages (checked November 2026).

Recycle and Reuse Center

The center is by appointment only. Book through the Austin Recycles app or online. It's free for Austin and Travis County residents except for tires, which cost $6 each. Fees apply if you live outside the county, and businesses can't drop off hazardous waste.

It takes household hazardous waste, electronics and appliances (TVs, computers, microwaves, stoves, washers, dryers, water heaters, air conditioners, exercise equipment, lawn mowers), scrap metal, lawn furniture, playground equipment and many recyclables. It doesn't take furniture, mattresses, toilets or regular trash. It also has a free Reuse Store and free mulch you load yourself.

Hornsby Bend for brush

Since October 1, 2026, dropping off yard trimmings and brush at Austin Water's Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant costs $9.80 per cubic yard, up to 6 cubic yards a day. It's open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Saturday, with no appointment. Bring a government photo ID. Payment is by card or contactless only, no cash. Limbs, branches, shrubs and leaves are accepted; treated or painted lumber, particle board, construction material and trash are not. The material is composted into Dillo Dirt.

Mattresses and furniture after your three pickups

Neither city drop-off site takes furniture or mattresses. The city's What Do I Do With tool says mattresses can go to local landfills for a fee. Usable furniture is better donated: the city's Austin Reuse Directory lists places that take donations, and some offer home pickup.

The city also says there's currently no recycling or reuse option for furniture collected at the curb, so it goes to the landfill. It's working on a furniture reuse warehouse, funded by a $4 million EPA grant, to redistribute furniture to nonprofits. Until that opens, donating first keeps more of it in use.

After a storm

Central Texas gets ice storms, hail and spring windstorms that bring down a lot of limbs at once. Book a brush pickup for storm debris rather than a bulk one, since bulk won't take brush. After a major storm, check the Austin Recycles app and the city's site before you stack anything, because storm cleanups can run on different rules from normal on-demand service. Photograph damage for your insurance claim before limbs and ruined furniture go to the curb.

When paid junk removal makes more sense

City pickup is the cheapest way to clear big items in Austin, since it's part of your trash service. But the appointment system doesn't fit every job. Paying a junk removal company usually makes sense when:

• You can't move it to the curb. The city only takes what's at the curb. A crew carries it out of an upstairs room, attic or garage.
• You've used your three appointments, or you need it gone before the next open date.
• The city won't take it. Remodeling debris, tile, mirrors, glass and mounted tires are all off the list, while most junk removal companies take them, some for an extra fee.
• It's a big cleanout. An estate or whole-house job means a lot of sorting into three piles, and a crew does that loading for you.
• You rent, or live in a complex. If you're not an Austin Resource Recovery customer, the city's service isn't open to you.

Junk removal companies price by how much of their truck your load fills. Contractor reports collected by ProMatcher put the average half-truck load in Austin at about $354, with most between $279 and $429 (checked October 2026; most reports date from 2023). Statewide, Junk Cost Calculator's Texas page puts a minimum pickup at about $97 to $170 and a full truck at $534 to $970 (checked November 2026). Our guide to junk removal cost in Texas breaks it down by load size. These are typical ranges, not quotes.

For a remodel where you'll do the loading yourself, a roll-off dumpster is often cheaper than paying a crew.

Finding junk removal or a dumpster in Austin

To compare companies that serve the city, see our listings for junk removal in Austin and dumpster rental in Austin. You can call a company directly or send one free quote request. Tell them what's going, where it is in the house, and whether anything is on the city's not-accepted list, so the price you're quoted is close to the final one.

Living in North Texas instead? Our guide to bulk trash pickup in Dallas covers that city's monthly schedule, which works very differently.

Sources

City rules in this guide come from the City of Austin's own pages, checked November 12, 2026. Rules and fees can change, so check the city's site, the Austin Recycles app or 3-1-1 before you book or drive.

• City of Austin Resource Recovery, On-demand Bulk, Brush, Household Hazardous Waste, and Clothing and Textiles Collection. Eligibility, three appointments a year per service, booking and canceling, 5:30 a.m. deadline, accepted and not-accepted items, three-pile and placement rules, brush, HHW and clothing rules, missed pickups, furniture reuse warehouse.
• City of Austin Resource Recovery, Recycle and Reuse Center. Appointments, free use for Austin and Travis County residents, $6 tire fee, accepted and not-accepted items, address.
• City of Austin Resource Recovery, Yard Trimmings and Large Brush Drop Off. Hornsby Bend address, hours, $9.80 per cubic yard fee and 6 cubic yard daily limit from October 1, 2026, small-branch bundles.
• City of Austin Resource Recovery, Residential Curbside Trash Collection page (extra bags beside the cart), and the What Do I Do With tool (mattresses and refrigerators), on austintexas.gov.
• KUT, "Starting in 2025, you'll have to schedule your bulk pickup in Austin" (December 19, 2024). The switch from twice-yearly scheduled collection to on-demand appointments in January 2025.
• ProMatcher, Austin junk removal cost report, and Junk Cost Calculator, Junk removal cost in Texas. Junk removal prices (as cited in our junk removal cost guide).