Brush, limbs and yard waste: what Waco collects at the curb

By Waco Junk Removal Guide · Published and fact-checked October 18, 2026 · Independent local guide

Four separate routes, and only one needs no phone call

Yard material in this city moves on four published routes, and residents mix them up because three of them are free. Two run on your regular collection day and two have to be booked, and the City prints a different limit for each. Reading them in one place saves the trip where a crew drives past a pile it was never allowed to lift.

The Residential Services page, retrieved October 18, 2026, is the source for all four. It puts grass, small sticks and leaves in the gray cart with the weekly trash, and keeps the bagged leaves and the brush pile on a booked schedule.

Curbside routes for yard material published on the City of Waco Residential Services page, retrieved October 18, 2026.

Route	What the City says goes in it	How often
Gray cart	Bagged and tied household trash plus unbagged yard waste: grass, small sticks, leaves	Weekly, on your designated day
Green cart	Mixed trash and yard waste, at no additional charge until October 1, 2027	Weekly collection
Paper leaf bags	Leaves only, with no other trash in the bags	Scheduled, up to twice a month
Brush pile at the curb	Limbs under 3 inches, no stumps, one pile at a time	Scheduled, up to twice a month

Note what the green cart is: a program with an end date rather than a permanent yard-waste service. The City says a household that has one may put mixed trash and yard waste in it for weekly collection at no additional charge until October 1, 2027, and that a resident who wants rid of it earlier can book a pickup through the online form or hand it in at Cobbs Recycling Center with a current utility bill so the account is adjusted.

The brush pile rules a crew checks before lifting

The brush guidelines are short, specific, and the reason most piles are skipped. They are printed on the Residential Services page read for this guide on October 18, 2026, and each one exists to keep a pile liftable and the rest of the curb clear.

Brush Pile Guidelines as printed on the City of Waco Residential Services page, retrieved October 18, 2026.

Published rule	What it says
Pile size	Brush pile size is limited to 4'x4'x4'
Limb thickness	No limbs larger than 3" in diameter will be collected
Stumps	Stumps will not be collected
Piles per visit	One brush pile will be picked up at a time
Tying	Do not tie your brush pile
Water meter	Do not cover your water meter with the brush pile
Distance from a bulky pile	A minimum of 2 ft between the bulk pile and the brush pile
Frequency and cost	Up to two times per month at no additional cost

Two of those rules get broken by people trying to be helpful. Tying the pile sounds tidy and the City asks you not to do it. Stacking brush over the water meter hides a fitting somebody else has to reach, and it is listed as its own instruction rather than a suggestion.

The limb diameter is the rule that quietly reclassifies a job. Three inches is roughly a wrist, so a hedge, a crape myrtle trimming or a storm's small debris passes, while the trunk wood from any real tree work does not. A tree you had taken down leaves a pile that looks like brush and is not collectable brush.

Leaf bags: paper, twenty, and nothing else inside

Leaves get their own allowance on top of the cart. The City will take up to twenty bags at a time, and it asks for paper bags with no other trash mixed in, which is how a bag of leaves with a broken flowerpot in it ends up left behind.

The same page says plainly that the resident buys the bags, and names Lowe's, Home Depot and Wal-Mart as places that stock paper yard waste bags. Bag twenty-one waits for the next booked pickup, and the booking line for both leaves and brush is two scheduled visits a month at no additional cost.

To book either one, the City points to its online form or the Solid Waste number, (254) 299-2489. The same number, or the Report a Missed Collection form, is what the page tells you to use when a pile that met the guidelines was not taken.

What the gray cart will not hold, and the $20 lines

Loose yard waste is welcome in the gray cart, which is unusual and worth using. The condition is the lid: the City states that all waste must fit in the cart with the lid completely closed, and that bags and other items left outside it will not be picked up.

A short refusal list applies inside the cart too. Hot ashes, dirt, rocks, concrete, chemicals and batteries are named as unacceptable items, which rules out the half-bucket of gravel and the broken paving that often ride along with a garden clearance.

The money side of those rules sits on the Utility Rates page, retrieved October 18, 2026, where a set of $20.00 charges is attached to the same behaviors. The Residential Services page adds that a household assessed a penalty receives a warning letter with educational information.

Cart penalties and the extra-container charge in the Solid Waste schedule on the City of Waco Utility Rates page, retrieved October 18, 2026.

Published charge	Amount
Fee for Carts left at curb	$20.00 per occurrence
Fee for Overfilled or Waste out of cart	$20.00 per occurrence
Fee for Unbagged Trash	$20.00 per occurrence
Fee for Use of Non-City Provided Cart	$20.00 per occurrence
Missed or Special Pickup for Carts	$20.00 per occurrence
Extra Container, garbage, recycle or yard, up to 95 gallons	$11.17 per month

If the yard genuinely produces more than one cart a week, the schedule above offers the honest fix: an extra 95-gallon container for garbage, recycling or yard waste at $11.17 a month, against a base residential pickup charge of $22.34 a month.

The fall calendar changed your pickup day

Dates matter here as much as sizes, and the City reissued the schedule this fall. Its Curbside Pickup Schedule page and the Fall 2026 curbside calendar, both read on October 18, 2026, carry two instructions in capital letters: pickup changes take effect October 5, and the previously sent 2026 calendar should be discarded.

So a brush booking made against a route day you learned in the spring may now be a day out. The calendar page lets you enter an address for your own collection days, and the City also offers a reminder app for trash, recycling and yard waste days.

The holiday rule on that calendar is a single sentence worth memorizing: pickups scheduled on or after a holiday slide one day forward. The printed schedule then spells out which days the gates stay open and which lose collection entirely.

The Solid Waste Holiday Schedule printed on the City of Waco Fall 2026 curbside calendar, retrieved October 18, 2026.

Holiday	Date	Landfill and transfer station	What happens at the curb
Veteran's Day	Wednesday, November 11	Open	Wednesday's pickup moves to Thursday, November 12; Thursday's to Friday, November 13
Thanksgiving Day	Thursday, November 26	Closed	Thursday's pickup moves to Friday, November 27
Christmas Eve	Thursday, December 24	Open	Pickup as usual
Christmas Day	Friday, December 25	Closed	No trash or recycling pickup
New Year's Day	Friday, January 1	Closed	No trash or recycling pickup

Read the third column before a holiday-week drive. On Veteran's Day and Christmas Eve the City offices close while the landfill and the transfer station stay open, so a self-haul trip is still possible on a day when no truck comes down your street.

Where an oversized yard load actually goes

Once a pile breaks a limit, the question stops being collection and becomes destination. Three City sites publish what they take, and the one nearest town is the one that refuses yard material outright.

Where a self-hauled yard load may go, from the City of Waco Landfill & Transfer Station, Cobbs Recycling Center and Utility Rates pages, retrieved October 18, 2026.

Destination	Does it take brush?	Published charge
City landfill, 4730 TK Parkway, Axtell, 76624	Yes. Brush is named under municipal solid waste	$52.00/ton for McLennan County residents, $75.00/ton for others, with a $20 minimum fee
City transfer station, 6171 S. University Parks Dr., 76706	No. Brush and yard waste are not accepted	Not applicable
Cobbs Recycling Center, self-service bulky and brush bays	Yes, inside the resident allowance	Four trips a year at no charge, up to 8 cubic yards a visit
Scheduled curbside brush pickup	Yes, within the published limits	No additional cost, up to twice a month

The Landfill & Transfer Station page, retrieved October 18, 2026, states that brush, yard waste and concrete are not accepted at the transfer station, and lists brush under the municipal solid waste the landfill does take. The same page sets the resident allowance at up to 2,000 pounds four times a year with a Waco utility bill showing residential trash service.

At Cobbs Recycling Center the yard route is self-service. That page, read on October 18, 2026 as well, allows four trips of bulky and brush waste not exceeding eight cubic yards a visit, describes a visit as roughly a full-sized pickup truck load, notes that state law requires loose loads to be tarped, and closes the bulky and brush bays at 4:45 p.m. so staff can sweep before the site shuts at 5 p.m.

Burning it is a narrower exception than people think

The usual rural answer to a brush pile is a match, and the state rule does not reach as far as the habit does. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality publication Answers to Some Burning Questions, retrieved October 18, 2026, opens by saying the agency prohibits outdoor burning anywhere in the state and then allows exceptions where burning poses no health threat or nuisance.

The exception that covers a yard pile is a waste-disposal fire, and the publication ties it to places where your local government does not provide trash pickup services, with brush from on-site land clearing allowed under certain conditions. A household already paying a monthly curbside charge is on the wrong side of that condition.

Before any burn the agency tells you to call local officials, your code enforcement office, the fire department, law enforcement or the local environmental health department, to confirm no ordinance forbids it and no burn ban is in force. Its own list of alternatives is short and practical: recycling, composting, mulching, and disposal in local landfills.

The never-burn list is absolute: electrical insulation, tires, treated lumber such as construction or demolition waste, heavy oils or asphaltic materials such as roofing shingles, and potentially explosive materials or chemicals. Treated lumber matters for yard work, because fence pickets and deck boards are not brush.

Tree work, fence work and the paid routes

When the wood is too thick, the pile too big or the stump still in the ground, two paid City options stand between the curb and a contractor. The Utility Rates schedule prices a Large Bulky Waste Service by volume, at $50.00 a service up to 7 cubic yards, $90.00 for 8 to 15 cubic yards and $165.00 for 16 to 30 cubic yards.

For a clearance that fills a container, the same schedule lists an open-top roll off at $315.00 a service for 10 or 13 cubic yards, $368.00 for 20, $420.00 for 30 and $473.00 for 40, with a tonnage fee of $63.00 a ton on top for every size. Those are City figures, and a private roll-off company prices its own way.

None of the public routes pays anyone to cut, drag or lift. Our yard waste planning notes cover describing a pile honestly, and the comparison of City pickup and private removal works through the point where the free service stops being the cheaper morning.

Three yard loads, three different answers

1. A hedge trimming and six bags of leaves: entirely curbside. Book one of your two monthly pickups, keep the pile under 4'x4'x4', use paper bags and leave it untied.
2. A felled pecan cut into eight-inch rounds: no curbside route takes it, because the limb limit is 3 inches. The landfill in Axtell does, at the municipal solid waste rate, and the trip may fall inside the four free resident drops.
3. A stump plus a pile of old fence pickets: two different problems. Stumps are excluded from collection, and treated lumber is on the state's never-burn list, so both need a destination rather than a schedule.

When the cheaper route is a hauler

A free collection is only free when the pile already complies and somebody at home is willing to drag the limbs out to the curb. Price the morning properly: the cutting, the dragging, a trailer, the fuel to Axtell, the weight you cannot guess and the risk of a refused load.

This site is an independent local referral service, not the City and not a removal contractor. Describe the yard load on the quote form and a local pro gets back to you to confirm scope, access and price, and the pricing guide keeps the City's published charges and private planning ranges in separate tables.

Official sources

• City of Waco, Residential Services: the gray and green cart rules, brush pile guidelines, bagged leaf guidelines, unacceptable items and the booking number.
• City of Waco, Utility Rates, Solid Waste schedule: the $20.00 cart penalties, the extra container charge, bulky volume bands, roll-off pricing and the landfill tipping fees.
• City of Waco, Landfill & Transfer Station: brush accepted at the landfill, refused at the transfer station, per-ton rates and the resident allowance.
• City of Waco, Cobbs Recycling Center: the four bulky and brush trips, the eight cubic yard visit, the tarp requirement and the 4:45 p.m. bay closing.
• City of Waco, Curbside Pickup Schedule and the Fall 2026 curbside calendar: the October 5 change, the holiday slide and the holiday gate closures.
• Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, GI-415, Answers to Some Burning Questions: the statewide prohibition, the waste-disposal fire exception, the never-burn list and the alternatives.

Sources checked October 18, 2026, including the City's reissued fall curbside calendar. Limits, dates and rates change; confirm with the City before booking or driving.