Costa Mesa, CA Trash & Recycling: Holiday Pickup Schedule (2026)

Section 8-81(a) of the Costa Mesa Municipal Code sets the holiday rule in one sentence: in the event of a holiday, pickups are completed one day later than the regularly scheduled collection day. The next sentence closes the list at six holidays: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. The subsection opens with "In all areas of the city," lets the director grant a temporary waiver from these service standards for good cause, and was last amended by Ord. No. 21-16 on 10-20-21.

Residential curbside service runs through the Costa Mesa Sanitary District, whose franchise § 8-77(h) continues for single-family and multi-family residential curbside service. The District's holiday page says its hauler, CR&R Environmental Services, observes the same six holidays and adds a weekend rule: if the holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, trash is collected on your normal collection day with no delays. If the holiday falls during the work week, collection for the remainder of the week is delayed by one day. The District's FAQ states that there will be no trash collection on the listed holidays and walks through a Monday holiday: a Monday collection moves to Tuesday, a Tuesday collection moves to Wednesday, "and so on."

In this cycle the calendar puts Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 26, 2026, Christmas Day on Friday, December 25, 2026, and New Year's Day on Friday, January 1, 2027, so none of the three falls on a weekend. The District's Christmas tree answer confirms that trash collection is delayed by one day following each of the holidays on December 25 and January 1. Neither the code nor the District prints a route-by-route table for these weeks, and neither names a Saturday make-up day, so a Friday customer should confirm the make-up day with District staff at (949) 645-8400.

Veterans Day, Wednesday, November 11, 2026, is on neither list, and neither source prints a delay for that day. The day after Thanksgiving is not a listed holiday either; the District's rule moves collection one day for the remainder of the holiday week, and its page prints no separate entry for that Friday. Christmas tree pickup happens during the first 2 weeks of the new year on your weekly trash collection day, and the District program is open only to its own residential customers with CR&R carts.