Forgetting trash day is annoying—especially when different waste types (plastic, paper, organic, general waste) are picked up on different dates. Luckily, Home Assistant can solve this with a simple setup: a waste collection dashboard plus an automation that reminds you the evening before pickup.
In this tutorial, we’ll use the Waste Collection Schedule integration (via HACS) to pull pickup dates from your local provider, then create two extra sensors—Waste Today and Waste Tomorrow—and finish with a 7 PM phone notification so you never forget to put the bins out.
⭐⭐⭐ NOTE: ⭐⭐⭐
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What You Need
Before you begin, make sure you have:
- HACS installed
- Mushroom installed (Mushroom Template Card) via HACS
- Studio Code Server installed (Home Assistant add-on)
These tools make it much easier to install integrations and edit YAML safely.
Step 1: Install Waste Collection Schedule (HACS)
- Open HACS
- Search for Waste Collection
- Select Waste Collection Schedule
- Click Download → confirm download
- Go to Settings → Restart required → Restart Home Assistant
At this point, the integration is installed and ready to configure.
Step 2: Add Custom Waste Icons to Home Assistant
To make the dashboard look clean, store your icons locally:
- Open Studio Code Server
- Open the /config/www folder
- Create a new folder named: waste
- Upload your waste icons into:
/config/www/waste/
✅ When referencing these images in Home Assistant, use:/local/waste/plastic.png
(Not /www/!)
Step 3: Configure the Waste Collection Schedule Integration
- Go to Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration
- Search for Waste Collection Schedule
- Select your country
- Choose your service provider
- Enter postal code + house number
- Enable detailed configuration options
- Select the waste types you want (plastic, paper, etc.)
- Customize each type:
- Set an alias (example: “Plastic”)
- Set picture:
/local/waste/plastic.png
- Name the sensor (example: upcoming)
- Choose generic format + enable Add days to
- Finish setup
You now have:
✅ sensor.upcoming containing the upcoming pickup schedule and a daysTo value.
Step 4: Create Waste Today + Waste Tomorrow Template Sensors (YAML + Jinja)
Next, we create two template sensors:
- Waste Today (shows which waste is collected today)
- Waste Tomorrow (shows which waste is collected tomorrow)
Enable a templates file
In configuration.yaml, add:
template: !include templates.yaml
Then create a new file:
templates.yaml
Restart Home Assistant after saving.
These sensors read the first (and second) item(s) from sensor.upcoming attributes, calculate the day difference, and return:
- State: waste type or “Nothing”
- Attributes: date and
entity_picture(or an empty-bin icon when nothing is collected)
This makes the dashboard and automations much cleaner.
Step 5: Build the Waste Dashboard
Create a new dashboard view:
- Title: Waste
- Max sections wide: 1
Upcoming pickup cards (Mushroom Template Card)
Create a Mushroom Template Card showing:
- Primary: waste type from upcoming list item
[0] - Secondary: days until pickup
- Picture: icon path
- Layout: vertical, single column
Duplicate the card and change the index:
- Card 2 uses
[1] - Card 3 uses
[2] - Card 4 uses
[3]
Adjust the number of cards depending on how many waste types exist in your area.
Today/Tomorrow cards (Tile Cards)
Add Tile Cards for:
sensor.waste_todaysensor.waste_tomorrow
Enable Show Entity Picture
Conditional cards (show only when needed)
Use a Conditional Card so the “today” and “tomorrow” cards only appear when the state is not “Nothing”.
Step 6: Automation — 7 PM Reminder for Tomorrow’s Pickup
Now the final (and most useful) part: a reminder the night before.
Trigger:
- Time: 7:00 PM
Condition:
- Entity:
sensor.upcoming - Attribute:
daysTo - Value: 1
Action:
- Use your phone’s notify service
- Message example:
Tomorrow, {{ states('sensor.waste_tomorrow') }} will be picked up.
Now you’ll always get a reminder the evening before pickup day.
Final Thoughts
This setup is one of the most useful Home Assistant features in daily life. Once it’s running, it’s truly “set and forget”—you’ll always know:
And you’ll get a reminder at the perfect time
What waste is next
Whether it’s today or tomorrow
3 responses to “Home Assistant Waste Collection Schedule: Dashboard + 7PM Trash Day Notifications”
Hi Ed,
thanks for the good idea and the code, with the download support by Ko-fi.
I supported the code download 15th of June.
So I used these code snippets, but unfortunately only thing went wrong.
The picture of the upcoming waste collection is missing. But I did not made any changes according to your TUBE video.
Can I sent a hardcopy of my dashboard? Or how can get in contact?
Best regards
Thomas
You probably saved them in the wrong folder.
Dear Ed,
70% of the failures are sitting in front of the display!
My failure was a missing file-attribute for the organic waste picture in the setup of the integration.
BR
Thomas