Austin Resource Recovery, the city department that runs curbside trash and recycling, collects bulk items by appointment only. Each address on ARR service gets three collections a year in four separately counted categories: bulk, brush, household hazardous waste, and clothing and textiles. A brush appointment does not spend a bulk one, and anything set at the curb without a confirmed reservation stays there.
The city refuses construction and remodeling debris, household trash, cardboard boxes, tile, and sheet glass, and it does not serve properties with five or more units or addresses outside Austin city limits. Those limits are where most cleanout and renovation projects run out of options.
How Austin Bulk Trash Pickup Works Now
Appointments go through the Austin Recycles app, austintexas.gov/myschedule, or Austin 3-1-1 at (512) 974-2000. The city's scheduler asks you to list the specific items you plan to set out, which determines what trucks get routed to your address, and it sends an email confirmation along with a reminder before the date.
Austin Resource Recovery requires items at the curb by 5:30 a.m. on the appointment day, separated into three piles: metal items and rigid plastics, non-metal items like carpet and lumber, and passenger car tires.
Placement matters as much as sorting. Everything has to stay five feet clear of your carts, mailbox, fences, water meter, utility connection boxes, fire hydrants, and parked cars, with nothing under low-hanging limbs or power lines. Crews will not collect items placed in an alley, in front of a vacant lot, or in front of a business.
Nothing can go out in bags or boxes. The city treats bagged material as extra trash, which can add fees to your utility bill.
Different trucks handle different piles and run at different times through the day. If items are still at the curb after 4 p.m., Austin Resource Recovery asks that you report it through 3-1-1 that same afternoon and within two business days of the appointment.
Eligibility runs by property type. City collection covers single-family homes through fourplexes on ARR curbside service. Properties with five or more units use a private hauler and cannot schedule it.
What the City Accepts for Bulk Collection
Austin Resource Recovery limits bulk collection to household items too large for your trash cart. The city's accepted list covers:
- Furniture
- Appliances with the doors removed
- Household carpet
- Doors
- Lawn mowers with the gas and oil drained
- Nail-free lumber
- Pallets
- Passenger car tires with rims removed, limited to eight per household
- Railroad ties cut in half
- Rolled fencing
Furniture is the exception on recycling. The city has no reuse or recycling path for furniture collected at the curb, so a couch picked up on bulk day goes to the landfill. Austin Resource Recovery does recycle the appliances, electronics, metals, and rigid plastics it collects, and that revenue helps hold customer fees down.
The city received a $4 million EPA grant to build a reuse warehouse that will divert furniture to regional nonprofits. Until it opens, rehoming a usable couch through a neighbor or a thrift store keeps it out of the ground.
What the City Will Not Collect
The refusal list is longer than the accepted list, and several entries catch people mid-project:
- Construction and remodeling debris
- Sheet glass
- Tile, whole or broken
- Carpet pulled during construction or demolition
- Cardboard boxes
- Household trash
- Mirrors
- Brush, which is a separate service
- Hazardous materials, which are a separate service
- Automotive chassis and bodies, boats, motorcycles, and trailers
- Tires still mounted on rims
The construction and remodeling exclusion is the one that matters most. If you pulled tile out of a bathroom, tore down drywall, replaced a roof, or ripped up flooring, none of it qualifies for bulk collection. The same carpet that gets picked up when it comes out of a lived-in room gets refused when it comes out of a demo. Renovation debris is the most common reason an Austin homeowner books a container, because the city program has no route for it at all.
Household trash sits on that list too, which matters during a cleanout. A garage full of accumulated boxes, bags, and general junk is not bulk. It is trash, and it exceeds what a weekly cart holds.
Austin Brush Pickup Has Separate Rules
Brush is its own service with its own three appointments a year, and the dimensions are specific. Branches and limbs should be between 5 and 15 feet long, and anything longer has to be cut down. Tree trunks thicker than 8 inches across need to be 3 feet long or shorter.
Stacking has rules too. Lay the brush loosely in one row along the curb, no more than 15 feet across and no higher than 4 feet, with the cut ends facing the street.
Small branches, meaning under 5 feet long and thinner than 3 inches, do not count as brush. They belong in your green composting cart. Crews take the cart contents plus up to 15 items set beside it, including lawn and leaf bags and small branch piles.
Once you use your three brush appointments, Austin and Travis County residents can haul brush to the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant.
One seasonal note for Central Texas: prune oaks only between July and January, when the fungal spores that spread oak wilt are least active, and paint every cut immediately.
If You Live Outside Austin City Limits
Every rule above applies to addresses inside Austin city limits on ARR curbside service. Nothing in it applies to Round Rock, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Georgetown, Buda, Leander, Hutto, or the rest of the metro. Each city runs its own program through its own contractor, and the allotments are not comparable.
Round Rock moved off its annual Spring Cleanup event in January 2025 and now gives in-city residents one free bulk pickup per year, scheduled by phone, with items at the curb by 7 a.m.
Cedar Park and Pflugerville take a different approach entirely, allowing a set number of bulk items alongside your regular weekly trash rather than reserving separate appointments. Cedar Park charges a disposal fee for appliances that contained refrigerant and requires a technician's tag certifying removal.
Municipal utility districts are the detail that catches people. If your water bill comes from a MUD rather than the city, you are usually outside the city's residential collection program regardless of your mailing address, and any cleanup events run through the MUD instead. Check the bill before you assume a city pickup is available.
Confirm current rules with your own city before you set anything out. Programs in this area changed recently and several are still being adjusted.
Where the Three Collection Limit Runs Out
Three appointments a year suits a household that clears a room now and then. Several common Austin situations fall outside it:
- A whole-house cleanout before a sale, or after a death in the family, which produces more volume than a curb pile holds and runs on a closing date rather than an appointment slot
- A remodel of any size, since the debris is excluded outright
- Apartment and condo properties with five or more units, which have no access to the program
- A rental turnover, where the contents mix household trash, furniture, and often flooring or fixtures across three categories the city treats differently
- A move-out on a deadline, which cannot wait for whatever appointment date is available
That last case is the most common one we hear, and same-day roll off delivery removes the scheduling problem entirely.
Renting a Roll Off Instead
A container in the driveway removes the sorting rules and the calendar. No three-pile separation, no 5:30 a.m. deadline, and no list of items the truck will refuse.
Our 10-yard starts at $369 plus tax and includes delivery, pickup, disposal, 1.5 tons, and a 7-day rental. It fits a standard driveway and handles a garage cleanout or single-room remodel. Whole-house projects and roofing jobs usually take the 20-yard at $469 with 2 tons, though tile and concrete call for the 10-yard roll off dumpster regardless, since weight fills a container before volume does.
Nearly everything the city refuses can go in. Our own exclusions are asbestos, chemicals and solvents, wet paint and oils, tires, batteries and electronics, appliances containing refrigerant, and medical waste. The city's household hazardous waste collection takes most of those at no charge.
We deliver across Austin and 14 surrounding cities, so the rules stay the same whether your address falls under ARR, a Williamson County contractor, or a MUD. Residential dumpster rental in Austin usually goes out the same day when you call before noon, and drivers put boards down on every drop.
Call or text (512) 688-7000 and tell us what the project is. We will size it and give you an all-in number before anything moves.
