Data story · City services
Trash day in Newton
Newton’s trucks cover the whole city once a week, Monday to Friday, on 25 routes. We placed all 29,517 of the City’s address points on the route map to see how the week is shared out, and what that means for each village.
- 5,895
- addresses served on an average collection day
- 6,552 vs 5,095
- addresses on Tuesday vs Thursday
- 2.1×
- the biggest route (G247) vs the smallest (G147)
The City publishes its trash collection areas as a map layer: each area has a collection day, a trash route and a recycling route. On its own it answers “what day is my pickup?”. Combined with the City’s address points and village boundaries, it also shows how evenly the work is spread.
Collection day, by route area
Hover an area, or pick a day.
Addresses by collection day
- Monday6,325
5 routes · 10.48 km²
- Tuesday6,552
5 routes · 11.47 km²
- Wednesday5,584
5 routes · 12.32 km²
- Thursday5,095
5 routes · 6.13 km²
- Friday5,918
5 routes · 6.62 km²
Tuesday is the busiest day, with 22% of addresses; Thursday has 17%.
Addresses on each trash route
Routes are named by day: the G1xx routes run on Monday, G2xx on Tuesday, and so on.
The largest route, G247 on Tuesday, covers 1,753 addresses; the smallest, G147 on Monday, covers 843. Address points aren’t the same as carts at the curb (apartment buildings and businesses differ), so this measures reach, not workload.
Trash day, village by village
Villages as named in each address (its postal village); “Newton” is mostly Newton Corner and Nonantum.
Auburndale, Waban, Newton Upper Falls have a single trash day for the whole village (or nearly). 7 of 10 villages are split across two or more days, so neighbours in the same village can put their bins out on different mornings.
Read with care
- An address point is one address, not one household or one cart: a large apartment building counts once, a multi-unit house may count several times.
- 43 address points (0%) fall outside every route area, mostly on the city edge or where the route boundaries don’t quite meet.
- Holiday weeks shift collection by a day; the layer shows the regular schedule.
How we worked this out
- Sources: Garbage Routes, Addresses and Villages, all published by the City of Newton.
- Each address point is matched to the route area and the village it lies in.
- The figures are computed from the published data when this site is built, not typed in by hand.
- Want your own day? Look up your address.