Trash bin cleaning in Weston

Weston writes its cart rules into the city code. Under Chapter 110, a garbage cart may not go out before 6 p.m. the evening before collection and has to be put away by 9 p.m. on collection day — 8 p.m. for the recycling cart. Between pickups it must be shielded from view of the street and of the neighbors, by landscaping, by screening or inside an enclosed garage. In practice that puts most Weston carts in the garage.

An enclosed cart is a tidier cart and a smellier one. Without sun or moving air, the interior stays damp and warm, and the odor that would drift off in an open side yard concentrates in the garage instead. In Weston the issue is rarely how a bin looks. It is what happens when the garage door goes up.

Republic Services collects garbage twice a week under the city's contract, on a pair of days that depends on your street, and the city redrew every route on June 3, 2024 — a day remembered from before then may be wrong. Twice-weekly pickup means the cart is in use nearly every day, so residue never gets a long dry spell. The city's own recycling guidance asks for containers to go in empty, clean and dry, because food residue draws rats and other pests.

Weston is also a city of water. By the city's count, more than 2,000 catch basins feed 2,214 acres of lakes and canals, and its stormwater page sums up the rule in four words: only rain down the drain. That is why our wash water goes into a collection tank on our truck or trailer and never into the swale.