Yard waste

Florence Brush Pickup: What the City Will and Will Not Take

The City will collect your brush pile for free — up to a specific size. Go over it and the pile gets left. Knowing exactly where that line sits saves people money constantly.

The rule, plainly

The City of Florence collects heavy trash and brush from the curb, and it is a genuinely good service. But there is a size limit, and it is specific.

That is the whole rule, and it is worth committing to memory before you start cutting. A pile that is under it costs you nothing. A pile that is over it is entirely your problem, and you find that out after the truck has been past.

What that pile size actually looks like

Four by ten by five is 200 cubic feet, which sounds like a lot until you start stacking limbs.

In practical terms it is roughly a trailer load and a bit. A decent hedge trimming round fits comfortably. Cutting back a few overgrown shrubs fits. One mature hardwood coming down does not — not remotely. Neither does a full landscape overhaul, or clearing an overgrown lot, or a storm that takes out several trees at once.

Two practical notes. Cutting to shorter lengths packs the pile far more efficiently, so you may fit inside the limit with material that would otherwise sprawl past it. And the limit is per pile — do not assume that splitting one enormous pile into three along the kerb is within the spirit of it, because the crews have seen that before.

What else the City does and does not take

Does:

• Residential garbage in the green cart and recycling in the blue cart, on your assigned weekly day
• Heavy trash and brush at the curb within the size limit above
• Bagged grass clippings placed at the curb, clear of obstacles
• Trees and limbs from city rights-of-way after storms
• Free business recycling — worth a call if you run a business generating cardboard

Does not:

• Construction debris. The City does not collect it. Contractors are responsible for disposing of what they generate. This is the big one.
• Tree and yard debris from businesses, apartments, churches or non-profits — those are all responsible for their own
• Debris a contractor generated on private property
• Debris on private property after a storm, as opposed to in the right-of-way

Requesting an oversized collection

Worth knowing before you assume an oversized pile is automatically your problem: if your yard debris pile exceeds the size guidelines you can request a collection from the Public Works Department, or through the MyFlorence-style online service request route the city operates.

That will not cover every situation — it is a residential service, not a route for contractor debris or commercial property — but plenty of people skip that step entirely and go straight to renting a container they did not need. Ask first.

When a container is the right answer

There is a real threshold, and past it a container is straightforwardly better:

• A large tree removal. One mature hardwood produces far more than 200 cubic feet of brush.
• A full landscape overhaul, where beds, shrubs, stumps and edging all come out at once.
• Clearing an overgrown property, common on estate and rental turnovers.
• Anything a contractor generated. That debris is theirs to remove and the city will not take it.
• Business, church or apartment property. Explicitly outside the residential service.
• Rural addresses outside the city limits, which are not on the city route at all.
• When you need it gone on your schedule rather than the collection schedule.

Keeping a vegetation load clean

If you do rent a container for brush, the money is in keeping it clean.

Clean vegetation goes to a cheaper route — the county landfill on Highway 157 North takes trees and limbs. Contaminated vegetation gets handled as mixed debris, which costs more per ton. The contamination that causes it is usually trivial: a few bags of household trash, some old fence panels, a bit of construction material thrown on top.

Two specific things catch people out. Plastic bags — if you bag leaves, empty them and dispose of the bags separately. And soil — a large volume of dirt mixed into a brush load adds serious weight, so if you are removing beds or stumps with a lot of earth attached, tell us and we will plan for it.

Treated timber is the other one. A fence panel or old decking is construction debris, not yard waste, even though it came out of the garden.

Sizing for brush

Brush is the material people misjudge most, because it does not stack. Limbs trap air, and a pile that looks like a pickup load routinely needs a 15 or 20 yard.

• Heavy trimming round, one lot: 10 or 15 yard
• Shrub bed removal: 15 yard
• One large hardwood: 20 or 30 yard
• Full landscape clearance: 30 yard

Two things nearly double what fits. Cut to length — four feet or so — rather than throwing whole limbs in. And load deliberately, filling the gaps rather than building a lattice.

One weight note: wet brush is much heavier than dry, and this is a humid climate. If you can let a pile dry for a few days before the container arrives, do.

Outside the city limits

Everything above is the City of Florence residential service. If your address is in unincorporated Lauderdale County — Central Heights, Underwood-Petersville, Greenhill and the rural areas — or in Killen, Rogersville, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, Tuscumbia or anywhere else we serve, you are on your own town or county's arrangements instead.

The county C&D landfill on Highway 157 North does take trees and limbs, which is the usual route for rural vegetation. But there is no city kerbside brush truck coming to a rural address, and that surprises people who have moved out from town.

Call and describe what you are clearing. If the free city route will handle it we will say so — and if it genuinely will not, we will put you in the right size container.