City guide · Hawaii

Honolulu Trash Pickup Schedule

The Honolulu trash pickup schedule is built around three carts and one of the shortest holiday lists in the United States. Environmental Services refuse crews observe only two holidays all year, so collection runs as normal on the rest.

The part worth understanding properly is the alternating rhythm. Your refuse cart goes weekly, but your other two carts take turns, so the cart you roll out on your recycling day changes from one week to the next.

How the three-cart system works

About 160,000 single-family homes on Oahu are in the three-cart automated curbside program. Each property has a gray cart for refuse, a blue cart for mixed recyclables and a green cart for green waste.

Not every home is on carts. Roughly 20,000 homes sit on manual, refuse-only routes in neighborhood pockets the automated truck physically cannot reach, usually because of narrow or steep access.

Those manual routes do not currently have curbside recycling. The city has said a semi-automated system is planned for them, with more information to come.

The three collection schedules

Rather than assigning one day per household, Honolulu runs paired days. Every address falls on one of three pairings.

One day of your pair takes the gray cart. The other is your recycling day, and that is where the alternation happens: the blue and green carts take turns week by week, so each is collected every other week.

There is one further wrinkle worth checking rather than assuming. In some areas recycling comes first in the week and refuse second, while in others it is the reverse, so confirm which of your two days is which.

Food waste and G.R.O.W.

Honolulu's green cart has recently become considerably more useful. Under the G.R.O.W. program, short for Green Recycling Organic Waste, the city began accepting food waste in the green cart on April 1, 2026 in selected areas.

That rollout was set to go islandwide on October 1, 2026, which brings kitchen scraps into a cart that previously took only yard material.

This genuinely changes what belongs where. Meat, seafood, bones, dairy, bread, pasta, rice, eggshells, nutshells, leftovers and loose coffee grounds all move out of the gray cart and into the green one.

Find your exact pickup day

The city's collection schedule lookup returns your day pair plus a monthly calendar showing which of the blue and green carts is due each week.

Look up your schedule on honolulu.gov →

The monthly calendar matters more here than in most cities. With two carts alternating, a simple day-of-week reminder will not tell you which one to roll out.

Cart placement rules

• Carts at the curb by 6 a.m. on collection day
• Not before 6 p.m. the evening before
• Set the cart with its handle facing away from the street
• Leave at least five feet of clearance from fences, lampposts, hydrants, mailboxes and parked cars
• Do not block access to the cart or park in front of it
• Do not overfill - the lid must close
• Do not leave containers at the curb on non-collection days

Households still on manual collection have their own limits: each container should hold no more than 75 pounds and be 35 gallons or smaller, and lids must not be tied or fastened down.

Honolulu Trash Holiday Schedule

This is where Honolulu stands out. Environmental Services refuse crews observe only two holidays all year: New Year's Day and Christmas Day. Every other holiday, state or federal, is a normal working day for collection.

What happens when your day lands on one of those two differs by cart, and the difference matters:

• Gray cart: leave it at the curb, because a missed refuse collection will be made up
• Blue and green carts: bring them back in, because missed recycling is not made up and simply waits for your next scheduled day

Note that Hawaii's own state holidays, including Prince Kuhio Day, Kamehameha Day and Statehood Day, do not interrupt collection either. If your Saturday route falls on a holiday weekend, crews still run.

What goes in each cart

The city also bars several things from every cart: liquids, concrete, construction debris, soil and rocks, loose lightweight material that is not bagged, unwrapped sharp glass or metal, and motor oil that has not been absorbed first.

Requesting extra carts

Honolulu is unusually generous here. A household may hold up to five carts in total, the basic three plus two more of any color, and extra carts are free and meant for long-term use rather than a temporary loan.

Green carts are the exception, because they are tied to how much yard a property actually has. A second green cart requires a lot of at least 10,000 square feet and a third requires 15,000 square feet.

In certain high-rainfall areas those thresholds drop to 8,000 and 12,000 square feet, recognizing that wetter neighborhoods simply grow more green waste. The standard blue cart is 64 gallons and can be swapped for a 94-gallon cart.

One timing note: additional cart requests are paused from October 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027, resuming February 1, 2027.

Bulky item appointments

Bulky collection runs on an appointment system rather than a fixed monthly curb day. Appointments are booked at opala.org or by calling ENV on 768-3200.

Residents may book once a month for up to five bulky items and two major appliances. Those are separate bookings, so a sofa run and a refrigerator run need two appointments.

Items go out no earlier than 6 p.m. the night before the scheduled date. Coverage of the appointment system has shifted over time between the metro area and the whole island, so confirm your area's current process on opala.org before putting anything out.

Apartments & multifamily buildings

The three-cart program described here serves single-family homes. Apartment and condominium buildings are generally served by shared containers arranged through the property.

Renters in those buildings have no carts of their own and no place in the collection lookup. Whether recycling and green waste separation exist is decided by the building.

Frequently asked questions

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