Trash and recycling pickup in Franklin

01The short version

Inside Franklin's city limits, the city picks up household trash once a week, on one of four days from Monday to Thursday. The day depends on which of four sanitation districts the address sits in, and it covers more than the trash cart. The blue recycling bin, for a house that has one, the brush pile and brown paper bags of yard waste all go out the same morning, by 7 a.m.

Everything else has a rule of its own. Loose leaves are vacuumed from the curb by the Streets Department, not by Sanitation, in two zones that alternate weeks from October into January. A sofa, a mattress or a refrigerator goes out only after a phone call. Glass is never collected at the curb; it goes to one of five drop-off sites. Paint, car batteries, oil and old electronics go to the city's drop-off on Century Court.

A household on city service pays $33 a month for all of it, on the city utility bill, and $34 from January 1. Outside the city limits, where many addresses with a Franklin mailing address sit, the city collects nothing, and households there hire a private hauler or drive to one of Williamson County's convenience centers.

02Find your day

The city's address map, My Government Services, gives an address's pickup day and leaf zone, and the Sanitation department's own page sends residents there. The lookup below asks the same map. Type a street address; it goes from your browser to the City of Franklin's map service, not to us.

The example is the Franklin Theatre's address. The days come from the city's Government Services map, whose notice says the city "is not responsible for any errors or omissions." If a day looks wrong, call Sanitation at (615) 794-1516.

The four districts divide the city roughly by compass. Thursday's is the largest, with about a third of the addresses on the city's map, and takes in downtown and most of the east side; Tuesday's is the smallest.

Our count of the city's address points in each of the Trash Pickup layer's four districts, and the subdivisions with the most addresses in each. A neighborhood near a line can have houses on two days, and downtown does: most of the blocks within a third of a mile of the Square are Thursday's, with Tuesday and Wednesday at the edges.

The department put its collection crews on a four-day week in the 2015 budget year, and the routes run Monday to Thursday. That leaves Friday, and on a bad week Saturday, to make up a holiday. A Monday holiday pushes every route that week back a day; a Friday holiday moves nothing. These are the ones left on the city's 2026 schedule:

The city's 2026 holiday collection schedule. On a holiday week the department says it "may or may not" collect yard waste and brush.

03The cart, and the rules at the curb

Every house on city service gets one 96-gallon cart. It belongs to the city and stays with the address when the household moves, and the truck empties only city carts. The city code sets the hours: out no earlier than 7 p.m. the night before and no later than 7 a.m. on pickup day, and back in by 7 p.m. that day.

The truck's arm needs room. The code puts the cart within two feet of the curb or the edge of the pavement, three feet from a mailbox, utility box or anything overhead, and five feet from a car parked on the street; a cart the truck cannot reach for parked cars is not emptied. The lid opens toward the street and has to close. Trash goes in bagged, not loose.

Some things never go in. The code bars hot ashes, flammable liquids, construction and demolition debris, yard waste, rocks, dirt, brick and concrete, and sharp metal; pet waste is allowed only bagged. It bars broken glass too, though the department's own list of do's and don'ts says to wrap broken glass in newspaper, bag it and put it in the cart. Tires, car parts, motor oil and oil-based paint go to the places in section 07.

A household that fills the cart every week has two choices. A second cart is $11 a month, $10.50 from January, plus a one-time $75 fee, and the code lets the director require one of a house that regularly puts out more than 90 gallons. For the occasional overflow, the city sells pink Buck-A-Bag stickers at $1 each, in sheets of five: a stickered bag set five feet from the cart is picked up, and an unstickered one stays at the curb. Sanitation sells them at 417 Century Court (check or money order only there), and so does the utility billing office.

A cart broken in ordinary use is repaired or replaced free; one lost or wrecked through neglect or abuse is replaced at the household's cost. The builder of a new house pays $75 a cart when the building permit is issued. On a move in or out, the city makes one courtesy pickup of the extra trash, on a call. And a resident whose medical condition makes the curb impossible can have the crew take the cart from the house at no charge, on an application renewed each year.

04Recycling: the blue bin

Curbside recycling in Franklin is opt-in. A household that wants it pays a one-time $75 setup fee for a 64-gallon blue cart, and pickup after that costs nothing more a month; it comes the same day as the trash. The cart belongs to the city and stays with the house, one to an address. Only houses on city trash service qualify, so most apartments, which use private haulers, do not. The city's page gives no order form; call Sanitation at (615) 794-1516.

The city's Blue Bin page, its "Yes" and "No" sheets and the label on the lid.

The lid's rule is "Keep it clean, dry & loose," and under it, "When in doubt, throw it out!" For plastic bottles it adds "Check the neck!": the opening has to be narrower than the base. The lid and the city's FAQ disagree on one point. The lid takes plastic bottles and jugs only, "No tubs/clamshells," and the FAQ accepts "any clean and dry Plastic 1 & 2 containers," produce boxes among them. The city has published no rule about tagging or skipping a contaminated bin. The code lets it give written notice and up to ten days to fix a violation, then stop service until it is fixed.

The department counts 59 percent of its households as recycling, up from 58 in 2021 and short of the 60 percent it once set as its goal for 2020. In the year to June 2025 the recyclables earned the city $5,807. Until November 2025 the city trucked its recycling to the Marshall County Recycling Center, 2,822 tons of it in the year that ended June 30, 2025. Since then it has gone to Waste Management: first under a temporary contract, then under a term contract the aldermen approved on their August 25 consent agenda, for which Waste Management was the only bidder. The staff memo puts the stream at about 250 tons a month, mostly plastics 1 and 2, mixed paper, cardboard and cans, and the contract adds charges for a load that arrives half or more contaminated.

Glass, and cardboard too big for the bin, go to drop-off sites. The glass bins opened September 8, 2025; a contractor, Recycle Services, empties the 30-yard containers and pays the city $10 a ton for the glass. Leave out ceramics, ovenware and trash. Cardboard goes in flattened, through the side slot.

The city's cardboard and glass recycling page. Williamson County's convenience centers (section 09) also take glass, cans, paper, cardboard and plastic bottles and jugs.

05Brush, yard waste and leaves

Brush goes out weekly on the trash day, by 7 a.m., at the edge of the street. The weekly limit is a pile 6 feet long, 4 feet wide and 2.5 feet high, 2.22 cubic yards, "approximately 20 wheelbarrow loads" in the city's words. A knuckle-boom truck lifts it, so the pile goes five feet from the cart, the mailbox, a fence, the water meter or a parked car, and not under low limbs or power lines. Stack it end to end, not tangled, and only brush from that address. Lumber and building scraps are left behind.

A bigger pile costs $125 a load, a charge the city suspends after major storms. After Winter Storm Fern in late January, crews spent months collecting nearly 4,200 tons of brush, against a usual year's 2,800 or so. Brush from a landscaper or a tree service is the contractor's to haul, and if the city hauls it, that is $125 too.

How long the pieces can be depends on which city document you read. The code allows lengths up to ten feet and says limbs 15 inches thick or more must be cut to six feet and under 75 pounds. The department's FAQ says six feet at most, with limbs six inches or thicker cut into two-foot pieces, and its list of do's says six to eight feet. A pile cut to the FAQ's limits meets all three.

Grass clippings, leaves and small yard waste go out on the trash day too, in brown paper yard waste bags, five feet from the cart. The code allows bags up to 33 gallons and the department's page asks that they weigh no more than 25 pounds. Plastic bags and cardboard boxes are refused, and nothing loose is picked up from the ground.

From October into January the Streets Department's vacuum trucks work the Green zone, north of Highway 96, and the Orange zone, south of it, a week each in turn. Rake the leaves to the grass strip or the gutter in front of the house by 7 a.m. on the Monday of your zone's week; the truck comes on any weekday that week. Keep the pile ten feet from the mailbox, a car or anything else, five feet from a storm drain, and clear of sticks, pine straw, rocks and pumpkins, or it is skipped. Leaves at the side of a corner lot, in an alley, on a median or in a subdivision's common area are not collected. Bagged in brown paper, leaves go out with the trash all year.

The Streets Department's leaf collection page, which it updates each Monday in season. Bad weather can suspend pickup. Questions: leafcollection@franklintn.gov or (615) 791-3254.

A Christmas tree goes to the curb on the trash day with no lights or ornaments, five feet from the cart and out from under power lines. Williamson County says it will set up tree drop-offs at City of Franklin parks after the holidays, and its convenience centers take trees all year. Neither had posted this season's dates by October 17.

06A sofa, a refrigerator, a clean-out

Furniture and mattresses go out on a Tuesday, after a call to Sanitation at (615) 794-1516, by 7 a.m., five feet from anything else and out from under trees and power lines. The city asks that they be clearly marked as trash. Refrigerators, freezers, washers, dryers and water heaters go out on a Thursday, also after a call, with the doors secured, and the city recycles every appliance it collects. The department's page lists no charge for either. It charges $125 for what it calls specialty items: wooden play sets, playground equipment, patio furniture, basketball goals and fencing. The fee schedule in the code lists $125 for each bulky waste pickup, so ask about the cost when you call.

What a contractor tears out or replaces, from windows and doors to an old appliance, is the contractor's to haul, and the city's code officers can cite a homeowner who leaves it at the curb.

For a clean-out or a remodel the homeowner does, the city rents an 8-cubic-yard dumpster for $110 a service, up to 2,800 pounds, with no hazardous waste, concrete, brick, tile or marble. The department's FAQ gives it a 30-day limit and the code three weeks, and the FAQ asks residents of a subdivision to clear it with the homeowners association first.

A mattress cannot go to the county landfill. Williamson County recycles them at its Nolensville, Grassland and landfill convenience centers for $20 each, by card only.

07Paint, batteries, electronics and the rest

The city's drop-off for what the carts cannot take is called BOPAE, for batteries, oil, paint, antifreeze and electronics. It is at Sanitation's yard, 417 Century Court, Monday to Thursday from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the first Saturday of each month from 8 to noon. Drive to the BOPAE gate, not over the scales; leaving things outside the gate after hours counts as illegal dumping.

It takes car and rechargeable batteries, motor oil and strained cooking oil, oil-based paint, stains and varnishes, antifreeze, computers, TVs, phones and most household electronics without a compressor, microwaves and small appliances, power tools, light fixtures, fluorescent tubes and CFL bulbs, discharged fire extinguishers, and needles in an approved sharps container. The daily limits are 15 gallons each of antifreeze, oil-based paint and clear sealer, 5 gallons of oil, 5 computers and 5 bulbs or tubes. Wipe a computer's drive first. In the year to June 2025 it took in 97,304 pounds of electronics and 32,480 of batteries.

It does not take latex paint, alkaline or lithium batteries, gasoline, kerosene, aerosol cans, pesticides, cleaners, propane tanks, smoke detectors, thermostats, ink cartridges or tires. Latex paint goes in the trash once it is dry: an empty or dried can with the lid off can go in the cart, and a can with more than an inch left can be stirred with an equal amount of cat litter and left to set. An oil-based can goes in the cart only when it is completely empty.

For the rest, the county. The convenience center at its landfill, 5750 Pinewood Road, takes car batteries, latex paint, antifreeze and up to six residential tires a day, and every convenience center takes used motor oil and cooking oil. Five of its convenience centers take old electronics free. Williamson County's yearly household hazardous waste day, for the pesticides, solvents and other chemicals BOPAE turns away, was May 2 at 1320 West Main Street and is next set for spring 2027; the state runs others around Tennessee that any resident may use. The Sheriff's Office, at 408 Century Court, takes prescription drugs weekdays from 9 to 3:30.

08What the $33 pays for, and why it keeps rising

Most of what the fee buys is a truck stopping at the curb. The city's 2024 cost-of-service study put the cost of serving one household at $31.03 a month for the 2025 budget year: $26.66 for collection and administration and $4.36 for hauling the trash away and burying it. Collection, it estimated, is 84 to 86 percent of the cost, and the share that changes with how much a household throws out is about 15 percent. That is the case for one flat fee per cart. In August 2024 staff put alternatives before the aldermen, among them pricing by cart size or by weight, pickup every other week and letting households drop services they do not use. None was adopted.

The fee pays for a department with a fund of its own. Sanitation and Environmental Services has 49 full-time positions, 34 of them in collection, and a budget of $14.4 million for the year that began July 1, covered by $10.8 million in residential fees and $4.2 million in tipping fees from haulers who unload commercial trash at the city's transfer station. Property tax money used to fill the gap, $4.4 million in 2009 and $1.75 million as recently as the 2024 budget year. Then in June 2024 the aldermen raised the fee from $23 a month to $31 in January 2025 and $33 in January 2026, 43 percent in two steps, on votes of 5 to 4 with Mayor Ken Moore breaking the tie. This year's budget says no General Fund tax dollars support the department any longer.

The ordinances, as adopted, and the five-year plan the aldermen adopted June 9, 2026. A plan is not a rate: each year past 2028 needs its own ordinance. The fee was $16.50 until July 2017.

This June the aldermen voted 7 to 0 for the next two steps and adopted the plan, which reaches $40 in 2031. The staff memo and its slides gave the reasons. The landfill's price per ton rose on July 1 from $20.23 to $29.50, a step written into the contract in 2022. Hauling rises with inflation. And staff projected salaries growing 5 percent a year and benefits 7.5, in a department where people and trucks are most of the cost. Without increases, they projected the fund running $520,712 short in 2027 and $2.47 million short by 2031. The plan caps equipment purchases at $1 million a year. At the June 9 hearing, Alderman Greg Caesar suggested charging larger homes more.

Households enrolled in the state's property tax relief program, for low-income older and disabled homeowners and disabled veterans, have the fee waived. It is billed on the city utility bill, and whether the 10 percent late penalty applies to it depends on which city document you read; the water bill explainer has both.

The trash itself leaves the county. Trucks empty at the city's transfer station on Century Court, where it is compacted and loaded for Mr. Bult's, Inc., an Illinois hauler, to drive to the Bi-County landfill near Clarksville, which has taken Franklin's trash since 2012 under agreements that now run to June 30, 2032. City Administrator Eric Stuckey told the aldermen in April that it has about 11 years of capacity. In the year to June 2025 the station sent it 74,878 tons, commercial loads included. Brush and bagged yard waste stay in town. The city composts the yard waste with brush, burns some brush in air curtain burners, and sells the compost at $30 a cubic yard screened and $20 unscreened, with a voucher bought first at the billing office.

09Outside the city, and inside it without city service

The city's service stops at its limits, and many Franklin mailing addresses, Grassland and Leiper's Fork among them, are outside them. Williamson County runs no curbside pickup and publishes no list of private haulers. A household out there subscribes to a hauler on its own or drives its trash to one of the county's ten convenience centers.

The centers are free to county residents. Each takes household garbage, brush cut to three feet or less, construction debris from your own home, and recycling: metal, cans, plastic bottles and jugs, glass, paper, cardboard (sorted, never in the trash, since August 2025), motor oil and cooking oil. Bring a physical driver's license and proof of residency. The limit is 3 cubic yards, about a level pickup-truck load, from your primary home, at one center once a day. Waste from a rental property counts as commercial and goes to the landfill at commercial rates. Since July 6 the centers have been open 9 to 5 on weekdays and 7 to 3 on weekends, and the landfill Monday to Saturday from 7 to 3:30.

Williamson County Solid Waste's convenience center page. Grassland, Nolensville and the landfill take mattresses at $20 each; Fairview, Grassland, Nolensville, Thompson's Station and the landfill take electronics.

More than 3 cubic yards goes to the landfill, and what that costs is unsettled. The county's page says that since May 4 every load there pays the regular tonnage fee, and a paragraph later still offers residents up to five free tons a year; the Williamson Herald reported in May that the free tonnage is suspended until January 2, 2027.

Inside the city, not every home is on city service. The code counts apartment complexes of three or more units, and condominiums whose units open off a shared hallway, as nonresidential, and does not require them to use it. Most apartment complexes hire private haulers, and their residents cannot get a blue bin. A house, duplex or townhome is the other way around. The code says the fee for residential service "shall be mandatory" inside the city while the service itself "is not mandatory for use," so a house that hires its own hauler still owes the $33.