Village Collection, Yard Waste and the Spring Clean-Up

Orland Park publishes better waste information than most towns of its size, and the sensible thing for a container company to do with that is to quote it rather than to summarize it badly. So that is what this page does. Everything below in quotation marks is the Village’s own wording, taken from the Village’s own waste management pages and press releases. Where the Village has not said something, we say that too, and leave it there.

Read the whole thing before your next big weekend of work. There are four or five programs here that will take material off your hands, in season, at the curb — and knowing which is which saves money on the part that has to go in a container.

The basics: set-out

The Village is precise about how and when material goes out, and the reasons are mechanical rather than fussy.

• “All items including yard waste must be placed by the curb no later than 6:00 a.m. the day of collection.”
• Carts should be placed with the handle facing away from the roadway and roughly three feet away from other containers or objects. In the Village’s words, “this separation allows room for the mechanical arm on the trucks to safely grab and dump your refuse and recycling carts.”
• “After collection, all carts should be removed no later than the evening of your collection day.”

Observed holidays are New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, and the Village’s rule is that “when your collection falls on or after one of these holidays, your pick-up will be one day late during the week.”

Refuse: the cart, three cubic yards, and one bulk item

Households on curbside collection get a 96-gallon refuse cart. Overflow may go in “either plastic bags OR containers that are no greater than 45-gallon in size and do not exceed 50 pounds.” Additional 96-gallon carts can be rented or purchased.

Two figures then set the boundaries of the whole service: the collection takes “up to three cubic yards of refuse per week”, and “one (1) bulk item will be collected with the weekly pick-up. A bulk item is considered an item the resident would take with them if they moved out of the residence (e.g., couch, small tables, mattress, etc.).”

That definition is the most quotable sentence any government in this market has written about waste, and what it means for a remodel — along with the state statute that stops the Village extending the service to construction debris at all — is worked through on three cubic yards a week and your remodel.

Carpet gets its own treatment as a bulk item: “must be cut and rolled into 4-foot lengths. Each roll must not weigh more than 50 pounds. All carpeting and padding must be secured with tape or string. Up to 8 rolls of carpeting and padding will be accepted each week.”

Paint is equally precise: “Paint must be dried out in the can in order to be collected. Only latex (water based) paint is allowed in regular trash once dried out.”

White goods, and why the Village asks you to phone first

The Village writes: “White good items such as refrigerators, washers, dryers, water heather, dishwashers, AC units, dehumidifiers, and dismantled toilets may be placed at the curb for collection. These items will be recycled. Please call Customer Service at (800) 964-8988 prior to collection.” The published customer service line is (800) 964-8988.

That instruction to call first is not administrative housekeeping. It is 415 ILCS 5/22.28 in practice. The Illinois statute is not a flat ban on landfilling appliances; it is a component-removal rule, and it says that “no person shall knowingly offer for collection or collect white goods for the purpose of disposal by landfilling unless the white good components have been removed.” The components it names are chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant gas, mercury electrical switches, PCB-containing devices such as capacitors and ballasts, and mercury-containing fluorescent lamps.

Somebody has to take those out before an appliance goes anywhere, and that means the appliance has to be handled deliberately rather than swept up with the rest of the week. Hence the phone call. The rule and the instruction are the same fact seen from two ends, and knowing that turns an annoyance into an explanation. The full set of Illinois restrictions is on what can go in a dumpster in Illinois.

Recycling, and the four refusals

Weekly, in the blue cart, at the curb by 6 a.m. with the rest. “No sorting is needed. Do not put recyclables in plastic bags. Containers that held food should be rinsed and free of food debris.”

Accepted, in the Village’s list: “Plastic bottles and containers · Food and beverage cans · Paper · Flattened cardboard and paperboard · Food and beverage cartons · Glass bottles and containers.”

Refused, verbatim and worth memorizing because these four are the ones that spoil a load: “No food waste · No plastic bags and film · No foam cups or containers · No needles.”

Yard waste: the season, the paper bags, and the refusal list

This is the section that matters most to anyone with a yard, a hedge line or a storm to clear.

The season. “Yard waste such as grass clippings, leaves, tree branches and brush are collected weekly on your scheduled pick-up day from April 1 through the second full week of December.” That window — the start of April to the middle of December — is very close to the working season anyone who operates outdoors in this village already keeps.

The bags. “Yard waste must be placed in Kraft paper bags, which can be purchased at local retail stores.” Ninety-six-gallon yard waste carts can also be rented or purchased through customer service.

The paper is not a preference and it is not about tidiness. 415 ILCS 5/22.22 says that “no person may knowingly put landscape waste into a container intended for collection or disposal at a landfill, unless such container is biodegradable.” A Kraft paper bag is that biodegradable container. The statute is written about the container rather than about the landfill, which is exactly why it reaches the bag on your driveway — and, for that matter, a steel roll-off. That is a story in its own right and it is told on why yard waste bags are made of paper.

Brush. “Brush and branches must be cut into 4-foot lengths and bundled with string or twine. Each bundle must not exceed 50lbs. Unbundled brush will not be collected. Whole trees and limbs greater than 4 inches in diameter and stumps are not included in the weekly pick-up.”

Read “unbundled brush will not be collected” twice. It is one of the flattest sentences on the Village’s site and it accounts for a lot of disappointed Monday mornings.

And the refusal list, verbatim: “Please note that sod, whole trees, stumps, and dirt are not part of the weekly yard waste program.”

Every one of those four — sod, whole trees, stumps and dirt — is a classic container load, and all four are heavy. Sod and dirt in particular are among the densest material anyone puts in a roll-off, and on ground the Illinois State Geological Survey describes as an “extensive surficial clay-rich stratigraphic unit” they are heavier here than the general rule of thumb suggests. If you are regrading, taking a hedge line out or having a stump ground, that is yard waste removal and it wants its own conversation about size. The same goes for limbs over four inches, which is most of what comes down in a storm; see storm debris cleanup in Orland Park.

Curbside Spring Clean-Up

Once a year the Village runs a curbside clean-up week on residents’ regular garbage pick-up days. For 2026 the Village published the week of April 6 to 10. Dates move from year to year, so treat that as a 2026 figure and confirm current dates with the Village at 708-403-6100 or on orlandpark.org.

What the Village publishes that the Clean-Up takes: durable goods and household items — “furniture, textiles, carpets” — and white goods, naming “washers, dryers and refrigerators.”

The conditions: items must be at the curb by 6 a.m. on the scheduled pick-up day; items must be “bagged, contained or bundled, with no loose garbage”; and “doors must be removed from all appliances before being placed at the curb.”

What the Village says in terms is not included: “Electronics are NOT included in the Curbside Spring Clean-Up event.” Residents are directed to the At Your Door program to schedule a pickup for electronics and other materials not accepted during the week.

And now the honest part, because it is the question everybody asks. Construction and remodeling debris is not on the list of what the Clean-Up takes. Note the exact shape of that sentence. The Village publishes an inclusion list — furniture, textiles, carpets, washers, dryers, refrigerators, appliance doors removed — and one express exclusion, which is electronics. It does not publish a statement about construction debris one way or the other, and we are not going to put words in its mouth. What we can tell you is what is on the list, and drywall, cabinets, decking, tile, shingles and framing are not.

Electronics, and the best local fact on this page

Covered electronic devices cannot go to a landfill in Illinois, under the Consumer Electronics Recycling Act. The Village publishes its own list of covered devices under the heading “Electronic Waste Ban”, naming televisions, monitors, printers, computers of every description, electronic keyboards, fax machines, videocassette recorders, portable digital music players, DVD players, video game consoles, small scale servers, scanners, electronic mice, digital converter boxes, cable receivers, satellite receivers and DVD recorders.

We do not publish a date for the Illinois ban, because three published sources give three different dates and we could not resolve it. The device list is not in dispute and that is what we quote.

Then the genuinely useful part. Cook County lists only two permanent county electronics drop-off sites, and one of them is here in Orland Park. The Orland Township Electronics Recycling site is at 16125 S. Wolf Rd, Orland Park, IL 60467, run by the Road District of Orland Township on (708) 403-5148, open Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. That is forty hours a week, for a county of more than five million people. From the county’s own flyer: “All televisions and computer monitors require either a prepurchased coupon from recycle.eworksesi.org or at the gate at drop-off (credit card only).” The county advises calling ahead to confirm hours and accepted materials, and so do we — we could not retrieve that site’s own item list.

One point of order, because the names collide: the Road District of Orland Township is not the Village of Orland Park, and Orland Township is a different unit of government from the Village entirely. The Township runs health, senior, youth and assessor services from 14807 S. Ravinia Ave on 708-403-4222; the Road District maintains roads in unincorporated Orland Township and runs the recycling programs. Neither is the Village.

At Your Door, for the awkward things

The Village publishes an “At Your Door Special Collection Service” for “certain hard to dispose of items”, covering eleven categories: household chemicals, automotive products, consumer electronics, paint products, batteries, garden chemicals, fluorescent light bulbs, thermometers and thermostats, flammable items, syringes and lancets, and swimming pool chemicals. Collections are scheduled on 800-449-7587.

Two honest limits. The Village’s page does not say who pays for the service and does not publish a list of what it excludes, so we will not tell you either way — ask when you book. And separately, the Village Code contains a chapter at Title 6, Chapter 5 titled “Landscape Waste Disposal”, one of whose sections is titled “Prohibited Items.” We could not read its text, so we name the chapter and publish none of its terms. Ask the Village.

What the Village handles, and what it cannot

• Weekly household refuse — the cart, plus up to three cubic yards, plus one bulk item.
• Carpet — four-foot rolls, under 50 pounds, taped or tied, up to eight rolls a week.
• Appliances — at the curb, after a phone call.
• Yard waste in season — Kraft paper bags, bundled brush under four-foot lengths and 50 pounds.
• Recycling — weekly, unbagged, rinsed.
• The Spring Clean-Up week — furniture, textiles, carpets and white goods with the doors off.
• Electronics — not at the curb, and not in the Clean-Up. Wolf Road, or At Your Door.
• Sod, whole trees, stumps, dirt, limbs over four inches — expressly outside the weekly yard waste program.
• Anything that used to be part of the building — not on any of these lists.

Everything in the first six lines is already paid for and already scheduled. Use it. What is left over is what a container is for, and if you want a straight answer about which of your piles is which, call (708) 928-8633 and describe them. See also junk removal, residential containers and what size dumpster do I need.

A closing note on scope. Everything on this page is the Village of Orland Park’s program. It is not Orland Hills, which is a separate village with its own hall on 94th Avenue, and it is not Tinley Park, Mokena or anywhere else. Nothing we verified establishes any other municipality’s collection program, and we will not describe one. Check with your own village or city.