Boston trash & recycling 311 requests
Trash & Recycling 311 requests filed in Boston since January 2021.
Current release
Data through April 11, 2026
Data from January 2021 through April 11, 2026
Source data: Socrata ↗
File a 311 request in Boston → This page shows historical data only.
Total Requests
245.2K
in the trash & recycling category
Latest Month
1.4K
April 2026
Share of total
16.8%
of all Boston 311 requests
Median Resolution
14.0h
half of requests close faster
Monthly trash & recycling requests
How many trash & recycling 311 requests Boston residents file each month.
How this category is defined
What counts as trash & recycling: Missed garbage pickups, recycling and composting issues, bulk-item collection, cart maintenance, and household hazardous waste.
In Boston’s raw 311 data, the following 7 service_type values are counted as trash & recycling:
- Improper Storage of Trash (Barrels)
- Missed Trash/Recycling/Yard Waste/Bulk Item
- Recycling Cart Return
- Request for Recycling Cart
- Schedule a Bulk Item Pickup
- Schedule a Bulk Item Pickup SS
- Sticker Request
To reproduce these counts against the raw feed
SELECT count(*)
FROM <boston_311_raw>
WHERE service_type IN (
'Improper Storage of Trash (Barrels)',
'Missed Trash/Recycling/Yard Waste/Bulk Item',
'Recycling Cart Return',
'Request for Recycling Cart',
'Schedule a Bulk Item Pickup',
'Schedule a Bulk Item Pickup SS',
'Sticker Request'
)Analyst tip: Austin prefixes everything 'ARR -' (Austin Resource Recovery): 'ARR - Garbage', 'ARR - Recycling', 'ARR - Compost', 'ARR - Bulk', 'ARR - Household Hazardous Waste'. Calgary uses a mix of 'WRS -' (Waste and Recycling Services) and 'GFL -' (the contractor Green For Life). NYC doesn't break sanitation out into its own category in our mapping — expect NYC sanitation requests to appear under 'other' or 'street_cleaning'.
See how trash & recycling is defined for every tracked city →
Source & provenance
Counts on this page are derived from Boston’s official open 311 data feed, covering January 2021 through April 11, 2026. Category assignment uses an AI-generated mapping from the city’s raw service types to a normalized cross-city category. View the underlying dataset at data.boston.gov.