Methodology: Sources, Checks and Update Calendar

Official sources only

We use the city’s own pages (public works, solid waste or sanitation), the county where it runs landfills or hazardous waste sites, and the private hauler only where the city contracts it. Facebook groups, Reddit, local news and apps are never sources; they only help us find the official notice. Schedules that live only inside an app (ReCollect, Recycle Coach and similar) are not scraped: we link to the city’s app or lookup and take the citywide rules from the city’s pages. The 264 city pages cite 3391 official pages in total.

Two separate checks

1. Extract. A research pass finds the city’s official pages, saves a copy of each, and fills every field of the city record, quoting the sentence behind each value.
2. Verify. A second, separate pass reopens every source live and confirms every value against it. Mismatches are corrected or removed, and the verification report records what changed.
3. Publish. A city page is built only when its verification report says it is complete and publishable, and the record confirms who collects, the holiday rule and the bulk trash rules. Cities that are not there yet are listed on their state page as being added, without a link.

When the city does not say

A field the city does not publish stays empty and the page says “Not published by the city”, with a link to the city’s page. We never infer a city’s holiday schedule from another city, from a hauler’s national policy or from the federal calendar. Federal holiday dates come from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; whether trash is collected on them comes only from the city.

Dates that change by themselves

“Next holiday”, “this week”, the holiday checker and the calendar download are computed in your browser from the city’s published dates, so they stay right between updates. Pages without JavaScript show the full dated tables.

Update calendar

• Weekly: every source page is fetched and compared with the saved copy; a change or a dead link opens a review for that city.
• 7–10 days before each holiday: each city’s holiday notice is checked and the holiday page tables are updated.
• December–January: next year’s holiday list for every city, Christmas tree pickup dates.
• March–April: spring cleanups and the start of yard waste season. September–October: leaf collection, fall cleanups, Thanksgiving and Christmas notices.
• When a city changes hauler: the whole city record is researched again.
• No city goes more than 6 months without a full re-check. Every section shows its own last-checked date.

Reports from readers

Every page has a report a change link. Reports join the same review queue as the weekly checks, and two reports about the same city move it to the top. A correction is published only after it is confirmed on the official page.