Solid Waste Services

Every Other Week Residential Recycling Collection

The City operates curbside recycling collection on an every other week schedule. Customers can use our Recycle Map tool to determine when recycling collection will happen at their address.

Residential customers underwent a change in curbside pickup of recyclables in May 2021. That's when the City of Spokane's Solid Waste Collections Department switched from every week to every other week collection of recycling. This change manages escalating costs for the recycling program without charging customers more.

Some customers may need more room for recycling. Larger 90-gallon carts are available on request by calling 3-1-1, but customers should wait to see before ordering one.

The change to every other week residential recycling was approved by the Mayor and City Council in the fall of 2020 during work to update the City's utility rates. Between 2013, the first full year of single-stream recycling in the big blue carts, and 2020, the cost to manage recyclables increased from $14,000 to $1.4 million. That's 100 times more!

Those increased costs are the result of:

• A dramatic drop in the prices received for selling recyclables. Those commodity prices were greatly influenced by China's decision to no longer purchase most recyclables from the U.S. because of high contamination rates.
• More garbage in the recycling carts, causing the costs to process material to rise.

We encourage residents to think about "Recycling Right." Here are a few easy steps to consider:

• Only put in items that are empty, clean and dry.
• Make sure items are loose in the cart.
• Don't guess about what goes in the cart. If it isn’t on the list, don’t put it in the cart.

Additional information:

• Recycling Calendar (PDF 2.3 MB)