Is It Garbage or Recycling This Week?

green bin goes out every week. garbage and recycling take turns — one week garbage, the next week recycling. enter your postal code to see which one is next.

The Short Answer

In Toronto, curbside collection runs on a two-week cycle:

Every week:

  🟢 Green Bin (organics)

Every other week (they alternate):

  🗑️  Garbage ....... one week
  ♻️  Recycling ..... the next week

So on any given collection day you always put out your green bin, plus either garbage or recycling — rarely both. Which one depends on where you are in the two-week cycle, and that's set by your collection zone.

A Typical Two-Week Cycle

  week 1:  🟢 Green Bin  +  🗑️  Garbage
  week 2:  🟢 Green Bin  +  ♻️  Recycling
  week 3:  🟢 Green Bin  +  🗑️  Garbage
  week 4:  🟢 Green Bin  +  ♻️  Recycling

Holidays and yard-waste season can shift or add to this, so the postal-code lookup above is the reliable way to see your actual next pickup.

How to Tell Which Week You're On

  1. remember what you put out last collection day
     → if it was garbage, this week is recycling (and vice versa)
  2. or just enter your postal code above for the exact answer
  3. or let us text you the night before, every time

Why It's Easy to Lose Track

A two-week rhythm is genuinely hard to hold in your head — miss one week and the pattern flips on you. Long weekends push everything a day later, which throws the count off again. That's exactly the gap this service fills: a free text the night before each collection day telling you which bins to put out.