Boise, ID Trash & Recycling: Holiday Pickup Schedule (2026)

The City of Boise Public Works Department publishes the holiday rule on its Curb It trash page. Six holidays trigger a delay: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. When any of them falls on a weekday, trash collection is delayed by one day. The page states the weekend exception in one sentence: if the actual holiday falls on a weekend, no changes will occur with the collection schedule. The City's recycling page repeats the same six holidays and the same one-day delay.

The Boise City Code does not list holidays in its solid waste chapter. Instead it delegates scheduling. Section 10-4-2-1(C) says that regularly scheduled collection days will be determined by the franchise hauler in conjunction with the City. Section 10-4-5-2(B) gives the Public Works Director authority to establish guidelines and policies for the operation of the solid waste collection system. The published holiday schedule is the policy that results from those two sections. Section 10-4-2-1(E) mentions holidays only for additional collection requested by a customer, which must be provided in a timely manner after the request, excluding nonbusiness days and holidays. That clause covers on-request pickups, not the weekly route.

The official page prints holiday names and the one-day rule but no calendar dates, so the page does not itself say which weekday a given year's holiday falls on. Thanksgiving is always a weekday, so it always triggers the delay. For the other five, check which day of the week the holiday lands on that year: a weekday holiday means a one-day delay, a Saturday or Sunday holiday means no change.

The same page sets the usual set-out rules. It tells residents to set carts out by 6:00 a.m. and remove them from the street within 24 hours, and to place the wheeled cart against the curb or along the alley with the handle pointing towards the residence without blocking the sidewalk. The code itself, in section 10-4-2-1(B), requires carts and cans by 7:00 A.M. on the regularly scheduled collection day, no sooner than the evening prior, and not left at the curb for more than twenty-four (24) hours. Setting out by the earlier 6:00 a.m. time on the City page satisfies both. The page also lists the hauler's number for bulky item requests, (208) 345-1266.