Spokane Home Cleanup: Yard Debris, Bulky Waste, and Reuse Options
Two things decide where a load of leaves, a dead refrigerator or a can of old paint can go in the Spokane area: which collection arrangement your address sits in, and what the material is. A Spokane mailing address covers three collection systems and four self-haul sites with different owners and different rules.
Start with the arrangement, because it decides who answers your question. Inside the City of Spokane, weekly garbage collection is not optional — the City states that it “is required for all occupied residences”, and City trucks collect it. Inside the City of Spokane Valley, residential curbside collection is optional, and the City contracts the collection and the self-haul disposal to two different firms. In unincorporated Spokane County, a designated hauler serves each area, and the county’s own answer to “which one is mine?” is a hotline and a map rather than a street list.
Then decide the material. Yard debris becomes compost, appliances are charged as waste, appliances containing refrigerant carry their own handling charge, household chemicals leave by a dedicated drop-off, and batteries must not be in a cart at all: the county’s battery page records fires on the tipping floors at the Valley transfer station and the Waste to Energy facility, and in collection trucks, attributed to lithium batteries thrown into the waste stream.
This page is for the owner of a house they live in, clearing out after a storm, a move or a garage clean. Two boundaries change the answer: whether the address is inside Spokane, inside Spokane Valley or in unincorporated county, and whether the material is one of the streams with its own destination.
Quick route
| Your situation | Ask first | Have ready |
|---|---|---|
| The collection arrangement for the address is unclear | The jurisdiction guide, then the City, the Valley’s solid waste division or the county hotline | Address and parcel number |
| Yard debris, and a green cart | The City’s food and yard waste service (city) or your hauler (Valley and county) | Whether the debris meets the clean-green list |
| More than a cartful, or furniture, or an appliance | Your jurisdiction’s bulky-item route, before the truck is loaded | Weight, size, and whether the appliance holds refrigerant |
| Paint, chemicals, batteries or bulbs | The household hazardous waste drop-off, not the cart | A container of five gallons or less, sealed and labelled |
| A television, computer or monitor | E-Cycle Washington first | Whether the item is covered, or a peripheral the program excludes |
Which arrangement covers your address
City of Spokane. Collection is municipal, from colour-coded carts on a weekly round, on the same day as recycling and the optional green cart. Bundled material set beside the cart, no longer than four feet, is taken for an additional charge. Bulky items are collected by arrangement on your collection day; the City also rents its own temporary dumpsters in four sizes, for two days to six months. One rule matters before shopping around: within the City of Spokane, the use of temporary dumpsters from companies other than the City’s own solid waste collection is prohibited. The line is 311 inside city limits, or 509.755.2489 outside them.
City of Spokane Valley. Residential curbside collection is optional here, provided under an agreement between the City and its collection contractor, and the City routes service questions, rates and collection days to that contractor. Self-haul transfer, transport and disposal run under a separate contract with a different firm. The City’s solid waste division, on 509-720-5000, is the place to ask what each contract covers.
Unincorporated Spokane County. Designated haulers serve specific areas, and the county tells the reader to ask the hauling company, which sets the collection day, the services and the cost. It publishes two ways to establish which company that is: its recycling hotline on 509-477-6800, and a hauler jurisdiction map.
The self-haul sites, and the two Valley names that are not the same place
Four sites take self-hauled household material here, and two carry “Valley” in the name a few miles apart.
- Waste to Energy Recycling & Disposal Site, 2900 S. Geiger Blvd, run by the City of Spokane.
- North County Recycling & Transfer Station, 22123 N. Elk-Chattaroy Road, Colbert, and Valley Recycling & Transfer Station, 3941 N. Sullivan Road, Spokane Valley — the two the county runs.
- Spokane Valley University Transfer Station, 2405 N. University Road — the City of Spokane Valley’s contracted facility, and the one its recycling and hazardous waste pages direct Valley readers to.
The county states that its two stations and the City’s Waste to Energy facility are open 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Sunday, and close on six holidays: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Waits lengthen at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., when the tipping floor is cleared. One caution: the City’s disposal-locations page prints a seasonal table of the two county stations with shorter winter hours, which does not match the county’s year-round statement — check the county page on the day. Every load must be covered or secured against spillage, and the City states that a fee may be charged when it is not.
Yard debris: what “clean green” means
The two county stations and the City’s facility take yard debris at a separate, lower rate than garbage, so the accepted list matters: a load that does not meet it is charged as trash. The accepted items are food and food-soiled paper, leaves, grass clippings, bark, weeds, twigs, pine needles, pine cones, limbs no more than six feet long and three inches in diameter, and sod no more than three inches thick, with rocks and soil shaken off. Rocks, dirt, animal feces and limbs outside those dimensions are excluded.
One inconsistency belongs in your question to the attendant: the same City list states that food is accepted and that kitchen scraps are not. City addresses with the optional green cart have the clearer answer, because that cart takes food scraps including meat and dairy, food-soiled paper and the same yard debris, collecting weekly from March to November and monthly in the first full week of January, February and December. Outside those weekly periods the cart has to be stored away, the trucks will not empty it, and a cart emptied anyway is billed as garbage.
Two routing rules save a second trip. Streams mixed in one load are charged as garbage unless they are separated, and a load carrying both yard waste and garbage that you want charged at both rates has to go through the line twice.
Bulky items, containers and appliances
At the county stations the acceptable list is broader than “garbage”: household waste, residential appliances charged at the waste rate, construction and demolition debris, tree trunks split so they can be handled, mattresses, canopies, camper shells with the appliances removed, drums with the ends removed and flattened, and tires — up to five per visit, with any tire over 36 inches in diameter cut into two-foot pieces. Animal carcasses under 35 pounds are taken at the stations, and heavier ones at the City’s facility by appointment.
Appliances are not one category. The county charges a special handling fee for each appliance containing refrigerant — refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners and water coolers — on top of the waste rate, and does not accept RV refrigerators at its transfer stations. The City’s own list differs in one detail that matters in an older house: refrigerators containing ammonia are not accepted at the transfer stations, but are accepted at the Waste to Energy facility at the regular waste rate. Commercial-sized refrigerators and freezers are not accepted. Each charge is on the authorities’ rate notices, not on this page.
A container standing in the street while it fills is a different question from what goes in it. Who permits a container or a storage unit in the public way, and for how long, is the subject of the exterior-service pillar.
What must not go in a cart or a load
Household hazardous waste is the stream with the most rules, and the county has tightened them. Drop-off is free for residential material, and the county states the limits plainly: five gallons per individual material type per day, fifteen gallons combined per day, no commercially generated material, no unidentified material, and no damaged or leaking containers. Staff no longer pour flammable material, so containers are not returned. The City adds that the material must be in leak-proof containers of five gallons or less, in the original labelled container wherever possible, and that the hazardous waste area is for residents, not businesses.
Four materials go wrong most often.
- Batteries. Every battery is directed to the hazardous waste area, at no cost to City or county residents; single-use alkaline batteries are the exception the county states may go in the regular waste.
- Mercury-containing lights. The City states that fluorescent tubes, compact fluorescents and other mercury lamps must never go in the garbage or recycling carts, that up to fifteen may be accumulated at a time and taken to the hazardous waste area free, and that the statewide LightRecycle program lists further collection sites.
- Sharps. The City states that needles, syringes and lancets must arrive in a puncture-resistant container labelled “Sharps”, never in a cart and never flushed.
- Medicines. The City routes unused medication to the statewide take-back program’s mail-back or drop-off options. The Valley’s hazardous waste page excludes medication from its drop-off and sends it to the Spokane Valley police precinct’s take-back point instead.
Two exclusions decide the rest. Explosives and ammunition are not a facility question at all — the City directs them to law enforcement — and the City’s list of what its hazardous waste area will not take names computers and televisions, which is where the next section begins.
Electronics: one free state program, and what it leaves out
Washington runs a free electronics recycling program for residents, E-Cycle Washington, and it comes before any retailer or service. Televisions, computers, laptops, monitors, tablets, e-readers and portable DVD players are covered, and the program advises calling ahead because some collection sites refuse badly damaged items. It is as useful for what it excludes: computer peripherals such as keyboards, mice and printers are not part of it, and the state directs them to participating retailers while the City’s recycling page groups them, with toner cartridges and mobile phones, under a Special Items list of local drop-off points. Where an item appears in neither list, the state’s 1-800-RECYCLE hotline and its online database are the routing tool.
Reuse, and the directory that routes what is left
Reuse comes before disposal on all three of these routes. The county’s recycling page hosts donation bins for clothing and books at all three regional disposal sites. The Valley’s hazardous waste area runs a reuse cart for leftover paint, pesticides and fertilizers: material another household can use is placed on a designated cart, and readers taking from it are asked to speak to the attendant first.
For anything not named on a page in this cluster, the routing tool is the Spokane Waste and Recycling Directory, a searchable index of collection and disposal providers covering Spokane and Kootenai counties, with separate searches for waste and for recyclables. Read it with the limit it publishes itself: providers are listed for information only, and its sponsors do not endorse any of them unless they are marked EnviroCertified. Clearing out a whole house is a larger piece of work: donation pickups, their condition limits and their scheduling are a subject of their own.
Where this stops
Fire debris is not ordinary debris. The county directs the reader to Spokane Clean Air for guidelines, recommends consulting the home insurer or a certified cleanup contractor before any cleanup starts, and warns that ash and fire debris may contain asbestos-containing material or heavy metals. Demolition building materials need an asbestos survey and laboratory results before a station will take them; burned but recognizable outdoor items such as vegetation and metal tools do not. Demolition also runs through the county building department’s permit counter. Nothing here is an instruction for handling that material safely.
Two names that sound like disposal sites are not. Spokane County’s “cleanup sites” are four contaminated properties — three closed landfills and a raceway park — closed to the public and no longer accepting waste. The City’s two landfills are closed to the public as well.
And the general rule: rates, hours, limits and telephone numbers all change. What the sites charge per load is set out with the disposal rates this publication already records at the cost page. Everything else here was read on 5 October 2026; re-ask the authority that published it.
A routing sheet for one cleanup
Fill the left column before the bags are filled.
| The material | Where it goes | The rule that decides |
|---|---|---|
| Leaves, grass, branches, pine needles | Yard debris at a self-haul site, or the city green cart | Size and contamination limits; a mixed load is charged as garbage |
| Furniture, mattresses, a cartful over | Bulky collection by arrangement, or a self-haul site | Whether the item is on the station’s acceptable list |
| Refrigerator, freezer, air conditioner | Self-haul, with the appliance declared | Refrigerant and ammonia handling differ by appliance and by site |
| Paint, chemicals, batteries, bulbs, sharps | Household hazardous waste drop-off | Container size, the daily combined limit, sealed labels, separate handling |
| Television, computer, monitor, or its peripherals | E-Cycle Washington, then a listed Special Items drop-off | Whether the item is inside the state program or outside it |
| Ash, burned material, demolition debris | Not a self-haul load until it is tested | Asbestos survey, then the demolition permit |
Next step
One action, before the first bag is filled: write the address’s collection arrangement at the top of the sheet, then the hauler’s or the division’s telephone number beside it. Everything else on this page keys off that line, because it decides who answers the rest. Settle it with the jurisdiction guide if you are unsure whether the address is in Spokane, in Spokane Valley or in unincorporated county, and keep the project resource router as the index to the counters and records behind each answer.
Report an error or a change you have spotted: use our contact page.