Yard Waste & Leaves
Look up your Set-Out Date
Set-Out Dates
Your set-out date for yard waste will be on a Sunday.
If your yard waste is not out for pickup on the set-out date, you may miss your collection opportunity.
When will the Streets Division collect my yard waste?
Yard waste is picked up sometime during the work week after your Sunday set-out date.
Many neighborhoods can share the same set out date. The work takes crews multiple days to complete, so please be patient while waiting for your pickup.
The set out date you see for your home are not necessarily the same set out dates for other neighborhoods.
What should I do with yard waste when crews aren't collecting it?
Take it to a drop-off site or compost it at home.
Yard waste has been banned from the trash for all of Wisconsin since the 1990s. Never put leaves, grass clippings, and so on in the trash.
Do not put yard waste in the recycling carts. Recycling carts are only meant for bottles, cans, paper, cardboard, and similar items.
How to Place Yard Waste
Please follow these guidelines to make sure we can pick up your yard waste.
- Pile your leaves and yard waste on the terrace, or on the grass at the edge of the street. Do not put leaves in the street.
- Keep yard waste at least 4 feet away from trees, cars, utility poles, mailboxes, fire hydrants, and other obstructions.
Covering & Bagging Leaves
You do not need to cover or bag your leaves. However, this helps keep leaves from blowing into the street.
- Compostable paper leaf bags (preferred): Keep your bags open at the top so we can see what is inside.
- Plastic bags: Keep your bags open at the top. We will cut open plastic bags and leave them on the terrace or in your trash cart.
- Tarp or plastic sheet cover: You can cover your leaf piles with a tarp to keep them from blowing away.
Yard Waste vs. Brush
- Please separate yard waste and leaves from brush. Yard waste and brush are separate collections.
- Yard waste is plant material raked or pulled from your lawn or garden, including:
- Leaves, weeds, grass clippings, and garden trimmings
- Twigs less than 18 inches long
- Pumpkins, black walnuts, crab apples, vines, corn stalks, pine cones, seed pods, etc.
- Brush is sticks and branches from trees, shrubs, or bushes.
Leave the Leaves
When possible, the Engineering Division encourages you to consider leaving leaves in place on your lawns and gardens.
This can help retain nutrients and moisture. Plus, you can help reduce carbon emissions associated with crews collecting so many leaves each year.
Benefits of Leaves & Yard Waste
The term "yard waste" is commonly used in Wisconsin to describe the plant material generated by our lawns and gardens. However, your fall leaves and other plant materials has many benefits.
They contain nutrients you can use for your lawns when you compost it.
When you use leaves as mulch, they can be homes for caterpillars and important pollinators for the winter months.
Protect Our Lakes
Leaves contain nutrients like phosphorus that are harmful to our lakes and rivers. They contribute to algae blooms and murky water.
When it rains on leaves in the road, the rain takes nutrients from those leaves into the storm drains. And the storm drains take the nutrients into our lakes.
You can help protect our lakes by changing the way you rake your leaves.
- Rake leaves out of the street and onto the terrace before it rains.
- Mulch leaves in your yard using a lawn mower.
- Compost leaves instead of setting them on the curb.
- Cover leaf piles to keep them from blowing into the street.
Will there be a leaf pickup in January or February 2026?
No, do not count on it.
Guaranteed curbside pickup will resume in the spring of 2026.
What happened? My leaves didn't get picked up in the fall of 2025!
The decision to suspend leaf pickup until the spring of 2026 came on November 30, 2025.
The November 29/30 snowstorm was very significant. The related cleanup work meant personnel typically on leaf pickup were instead needed for snowplowing duties.
There was additional snow during the week of November 30, too.
On top of all this snow, we had cold temperatures that froze piles solid.
With these factors, collection was not possible.
Wait a minute. It stopped snowing by mid-December and it warmed up by Christmas. Why didn't you get my leaves?
We kept an eye on an opportunity to do leaves to see if there was enough melting on the terraces to do the work.
There were still solid frozen berms along most streets and you couldn't tell what was leaves and what was solid snow.
Also, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day scrambled the trash & recycling schedules, meaning our trucks and people were needed to be on those duties.
Then on December 29th it snowed again. And threats of more snow on December 30, and again on December 31...
Will you pickup my leaves with my Christmas tree?
No.
Tree pickup is just for trees, and small brush piles. Crews grab the trees by hand and put them into the back of trucks for them to be ground into mulch. Our crews cannot shovel out armfuls of leaves to try to get them into the trucks.
Is leaf pickup really over until the spring of 2026? I mean, what if...
Yes, it is effectively over.
Crews and trucks are needed for the traditional tree pickup in early January, plus there's always the concern for snow.
If recent years are any indicator, our weather also tends to get very snowy and active from around mid-January to mid-February, which likely eliminates that window of time.
A spring 2026 collection is likely your next curbside pickup chance.
Could the impossible happen and there be a collection in January or February 2026? It is so very unlikely at this time, it would be wise to assume it just won't happen this winter.
This is disappointing!
You got that right.
We know the leaves fell later in some neighborhoods. And there is roughly 1/3 of the city that had their final set out date scheduled for November 30, and then winter arrived early.
This is not how anyone would have drawn up the switch from fall to winter. But this is the situation that the weather dealt us.
Why can't I see yard waste set out dates?
Here are the two most likely reasons why you cannot see a set out date for leaves.
Before we get into the reasons, let's say this important thing first: If you have yard waste and we are not collecting it, take it to a drop-off site or compost it at home.
Reason 1: You May Be Looking for Yard Waste Set-outs After All the Set-out Dates Have Passed
The spring set-out dates are typically published online sometime in late February or early March.
We perform the spring collection in April and May in most years.
Then there is a pause in yard waste pickup.
The fall set out dates are usually published to the website time in late August or early September.
We perform the fall collection in October through November.
If you are looking for yard waste set out dates during the summer, or after your final pickup date in the spring or the fall, the system will default to telling you that the yard waste season is over.
Reason 2: Tech Issue or a Data Entry Issue?
Most often cause is that there was a small error in how the address was entered into the form.
You just have to enter your street address into the form - just house number and street name. That's it.
There might be a technical hiccup, too. Tech issues generally sort themselves out in about an hour. If it's still not working after you give the computer a little timeout, contact the Streets Division.
When do you collect yard waste?
We collect yard waste during two periods.
We pick it up in the spring. The first pickup is usually in April and the second pickup is in May.
There is a pause during the summer as crews are needed elsewhere.
We collect again in the fall. Usually the fall collections start in October. There are three guaranteed pickups during this season. And then we have another pause in the winter as crews are needed for snow duties.
Why isn't there year-round yard waste pickup?
Take yard waste to a drop-off site when collections are not occurring.
The Streets Division performs many other duties and we need to move staff around to perform them.
For example, crews that collect yard waste in the spring are needed for other work in the summer - typically road repair.
In the fall, we stop brush pickup so we can shift that personnel over to help collect the fall leaves.
The set out date form isn't recognizing my address. What do I do?
Call us at either 608-266-4681 or 608-246-4532. Our office hours are Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 4pm.
Usually it's a temporary tech issue that resolves itself or maybe a subtle data entry issue (like an extra space or more information than what is necessary).
Either way, give us a call and we will help.
My neighbor put yard waste in the street! I know that's wrong. What should I do?
That's an ordinance violation.
Let Building Inspection know so they can notify the property owner of the problem and give them a chance to fix it before they need to issue a fine.
You have three ways of reporting this. Choose the one that works best for you.
- Send a report a problem of yard waste in the street (this is in the Yard Waste Collection section).
- Call Building Inspection directly at 608-266-4551.
- Email Building Inspection directly.
The website is showing the next set out date, but my yard waste still hasn't been picked up yet. What is going on?
The set out date lookup is a simple tool.
If a set out date has passed, then the system will default to showing you the next available set out date where you can get yard waste out for pickup.
You can't use the set-out date look up to track the progress of where crews are working.
If you put yard waste out on the Sunday assigned to your home, crews have that whole work week to collect from all of the neighborhoods. It takes multiple days during a work week to get to everyone.
If you are sure your pile is missed, please use the the report-a-problem form or contact us to let us know.
Why is there so much debris in the road after pickup in the fall?
We will clean it up when conditions allow for it.
The final step in leaf pickup is street sweeping. In the fall, we work to have our sweepers trail behind leaf crews to collect debris created by leaf collection crews.
There are far more leaf pickup crews than sweepers. And sweepers move much slower than leaf pickup crews, too.
There will be a gap between collection and sweeping.
It can be a few days between collection and sweeping.
We do our best try to keep the sweeping window as narrow as possible, but there will be a gap.
The cause for leaf debris in the street is varied. It can be related to road condition, weather, and even equipment issues.
Whatever the cause, if weather conditions allow for it, our sweepers will be there during following the three guaranteed leaf pickups.
If you remain concerned, you can submit a Yard Waste Collection report-a-problem form to let us know so the field supervisor can look into the matter.
What happens to the leaves and yard waste after the city picks it up or I drop it off?
The material is taken to Purple Cow Organics to be composted.
Not only is that just the right thing to do since leaves & yard waste contain a lot of nutrients that can be returned to soil as compost, but this material has been banned from Wisconsin landfills since the 1990s so it cannot just be put into the trash.