Each city's garbage bin in the size chosen below (about 20, 32, 64 or 96 gallons), collected weekly at the curb. Where a city's bin differs from that size, its actual size is noted.
City limits shaded by the rate for the 32-gallon bin. Hover over a city to pick out its bar below, or a bar to outline its city here. Click a city or bar to keep it selected on every chart; click it again, or the map off the cities, to clear. Double-click a city to zoom to its region, and double-click again to zoom back out.
The rate in effect each July 1 for the 32-gallon bin. Gray lines are individual cities (click one to select that city); dashed stretches are interpolated between documented rates. The green line shows where the 2016 median would be if it had only kept pace with Bay Area inflation. Fewer cities have a documented history for the 20-, 64- and 96-gallon bins.
The 20-, 32-, 64- and 96-gallon garbage bins in each city that publishes the 20- and 32-gallon rates and at least one larger size. A long line means volume is priced steeply; the figure at the end is the largest bin's multiple of the 32-gallon bin. In cost per gallon, a dot further left means that size is better value.
Transfer stations and landfills are open to the public: anybody can bring a car trunk or truck bed full of trash, without an appointment, for a disposal fee.
It would be highly valuable to compare this across the region, as it provides an important backstop to illegal dumping in addition to free bulky-waste pickup.
This is tricky because cities bundle different bins into the trash rate. For example, Oakland's Waste Management trash rate includes an organics bin (up to 96 gallons) but bills recycling separately, while Piedmont's Republic Services trash rate includes recycling.
This website displays current trash rates for Bay Area cities, and historical rates too.
This is only possible with AI assistance using “deep research”. I am not aware of any other central source that has compiled the current and historical waste collection rates across Bay Area cities.
There are absolutely bound to be some errors in the data above. Please let me know if you find any, and I will do my best to correct them (see email in footer), to help create an increasingly well-curated database that's been vetted for accuracy. The most useful notes name the city, the bin size and a link to the current rate sheet or the bill.
Open this section for every figure and its source, and how they were gathered.
Select a column heading to sort. Monthly figures for quarterly or bimonthly bills are divided out.
Rates come from city and hauler rate schedules in effect in October 2026, read from the original PDFs or pages wherever they could be retrieved. Several South Bay city sites block automated access, so those figures carry a lower confidence grade.
San Leandro is split between two service areas: about 60% of homes are under the city's franchise with Alameda County Industries, and about 40% are served by WM through Oro Loma Sanitary District. Each has its own row. Oro Loma bills recycling and organics as a separate per-home fee, which is added to its bin rate here. On the map, the Oro Loma area is the part of the city inside the Oro Loma Sanitary District boundary, from the Alameda County Registrar of Voters sanitary district map.
Not included: low-income and senior discounts, backyard service, extra-bag tags, and the sewer or stormwater charges some cities put on the same bill. Apart from Alamo, an unincorporated community in RecycleSmart's service area, unincorporated areas are not covered.
Past rates come from archived copies of city and hauler rate pages and PDFs (Internet Archive), council staff reports, Proposition 218 notices, a hauler's published rate history, regional rate surveys by HF&H Consultants for RethinkWaste (2011–2018), the Sunnyvale council survey (2025), and a San Francisco Budget Analyst survey from about 2001. Each record lists its source in the table above.
The yearly series takes the rate in effect on July 1. A documented rate carries forward for a year, or longer where a later record confirms it stayed flat. Larger gaps of up to seven years are filled by geometric interpolation and shown as dashed lines; wider gaps stay blank. Inflation is the BLS Consumer Price Index for San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward (annual averages; 2026 uses the months published so far). Santa Clara's older survey figures cover garbage only and are left out of the series.
I made this website because I knew Oakland's trash bills were expensive, but I wanted to quantify how expensive.
A major contributor to illegal dumping in Oakland is high rates and small trash containers, as noted by the 2025–2026 Alameda County Grand Jury Final Report.
And not all illegal dumping in Oakland is done by residents. With lax enforcement and high trash rates across the region, the city is seen as a dumping ground by neighboring cities.
Oakland's contract with Waste Management runs from 2015 to 2030.
Now is the time to get involved to bring down East Bay trash bills and end illegal dumping systemically.
The scourge of illegal dumping in Oakland is a multi-faceted issue. Here are some ideas:
This is not just an Oakland problem. People from outside Oakland have been caught renting U-Hauls to dump within Oakland. We need to work together to address the cost of waste management in neighboring cities, certainly including San Pablo, Orinda and Piedmont. Their high rates hurt the region. This may mean that people in Emeryville pay slightly more, but they already pay less than half of Oakland's rates.
If your rate surprised you, pass the page on to a neighbor, your neighborhood group or your city council member!