Elizabethtown City Clean-Up, Brush and Leaf Collection

The City of Elizabethtown runs three collection programs, and between them they will take an extraordinary amount of material off your curb for nothing. Brush most of the year. Leaves every fall. And for five weeks every spring, junk and debris, plus appliances on call-in.

Then read them closely, and you find that each of the three contains a written line that excludes almost exactly what a renovation produces. Not by accident, and not unreasonably — the City is running a residential service, not a disposal utility for construction work. But the boundary is real, it is published, and a great many people in this city discover it on the morning the truck goes past their pile.

This page sets out all three programs, quotes each exclusion in the City’s own words, and says plainly what the county’s alternatives are. Everything here is a City of Elizabethtown program rule — it is not state law, and it does not apply in Radcliff, Vine Grove or unincorporated Hardin County. And every date moves: confirm current dates with Public Works, (270) 737-7890, before you plan around anything on this page.

Program one: the Spring Clean-Up

This is the big one, and it is the reason many Elizabethtown households never need a container at all.

As published for 2026, the City’s clean-up ran “March 30th thru May 1st — junk and debris,” with “April 27th thru May 1st — appliances.” That is a five-week window for general junk with the appliance week folded into the end of it. The 2026 dates are the ones the City published; the schedule is set fresh each year, so do not carry a date forward from this page or any other. Public Works, (270) 737-7890.

The zones are drawn off the highway

The City splits the clean-up into four collection areas, defined geographically west and east of US 31-W and north and south of KY 1357 or KY 251. If you are not sure which area you are in, that is a Public Works question, and it is worth asking rather than guessing — the areas run on different days within the window.

US 31-W is Dixie Highway. It is worth noticing that the City organizes its own clean-up around a state route, which is a small illustration of how layered this place is: the same road is the City’s zone boundary and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’s right-of-way. More on that in the permits guide.

How the City asks you to set it out

The published set-out rules are specific, and following them is the difference between collection and a pile that stays where it is:

• “Secure loose items in good quality, clear plastic bags, not to exceed 50 pounds.”
• “Place items near the street, not to interfere with traffic.”
• “Avoid placing items under overhead power lines.”
• “Place bulky items in open areas (within ten (10) feet from edge of street).”

Appliances — dehumidifiers, washers, dryers, ranges, water heaters — are collected on a call-in basis during the appliance week, on (270) 737-7890. Anything containing freon requires a removal tag before it will be collected. That last requirement catches people out on refrigerators, freezers and window units every year, so make the call early rather than on the last day.

And here is the refusal list, in the City’s own words

“No garbage, hazardous materials, liquids (paints, oil, antifreeze, etc.), construction debris, tires, or automobiles.”

Read that once more with a project in mind. Construction debris is refused. Tires are refused. Liquids and hazardous materials are refused. Garbage is refused.

So the City’s free annual clean-up will take your old couch, your broken bookshelf, your worn-out treadmill and, on call-in, your washing machine — and it will not take your drywall, your shingles, your tear-out cabinets, your tile or your paint cans. And it runs in the exact five weeks when renovation season starts in this county. Every remodel, roof, deck and basement project in Elizabethtown collides with a window in which the City will take almost everything except the thing the project actually makes.

Program two: brush collection

Brush is the year-round program, and its rules are the tightest of the three.

What the City accepts: “debris resulting from trees and shrubs which have been pruned or trimmed at residential and small commercial properties.”

Size limits: brush must be “less than twelve (12) inches in diameter and/or five (5) feet in length.”

Set-out: “Brush shall be placed within twelve (12) feet of the street curb line or at the edge of the paved street surface” — and it must not block driving lanes, sidewalks, drainage, utilities or mailboxes.

Schedule: a “four (4) week rotating schedule” across four service areas, effective 1 October 2024, subject to weather, equipment and emergencies. That rotation changed on that date, which is recent enough that plenty of long-time residents are still working from the old pattern. Check the current rotation with Public Works on (270) 737-7890 rather than from memory.

The two lines that decide whether your job qualifies

First: the service “does not include collection of cut trees and shrubs or debris resulting from the clearing of land.”

That single clause separates pruning from removal. Trimming the maple is in. Taking the maple down is not. Clearing a fence line, a back corner or a lot is not. And oversize material — anything past the twelve-inch, five-foot limits — “must be delivered to the Public Works Facility at 1600 Nicholas Street” by you.

Second, and this is the sentence that ends most arguments about it: “Licensed contractors must remove and dispose of debris from their own work professionally.”

That is the City telling contractors, in writing, on its own brush page, that the City’s brush truck is not their disposal plan. It is not ambiguous and it is not new. If somebody is doing paid work on your property, the debris from that work is theirs to remove.

Where that leaves a real yard job

The common Hardin County situation: a storm brings down a limb, then you decide the whole tree should come out, then while you are at it you clear the overgrown corner behind the shed. The first part is a brush-collection job. The second and third are not. That is when a yard waste container earns its keep — and it is worth knowing that Kentucky’s own definition of construction and demolition debris, at 401 KAR 47:005, expressly includes “vegetation resulting from land clearing and grubbing, utility line maintenance, and seasonal and storm related cleanup.” In Kentucky, land-clearing brush and storm debris sit in the same regulatory category as building waste.

Program three: leaf pick-up

The fall program, and the simplest of the three.

• “The City’s Leaf Pick-Up Program occurs during the fall season.”
• “Place loose and bagged leaves as close to the street as possible.”
• Bagged leaves go in “clear plastic bags that do not exceed 50 pounds.”
• The City will collect loose leaves at the curb.

And the exclusion: “Please separate brush and debris from loose leaves piles.”

A mixed pile is not a leaf pile. Leaves with the season’s prunings thrown on top, or with a broken lattice panel and a bag of yard trash in the middle, is the classic way to have a pile left at the curb through November. Keep leaves clean and separate, and put the brush out on the brush rotation.

Fall is also the practical season for the rest of a yard: it follows the driest month of the year here — September, at around three inches of rain against May’s roughly five and three-quarters — and it is the last comfortable stretch before winter. Public Works on (270) 737-7890 for the current leaf schedule.

The pattern, once you see it

Three programs, three exclusions, and they line up:

• Spring clean-up: takes junk and debris and appliances — refuses construction debris, hazardous material, liquids, tires and garbage.
• Brush: takes pruning and trimming — refuses cut trees and land-clearing debris, and tells contractors to handle their own.
• Leaves: takes leaves — refuses mixed piles.

Put together, the City of Elizabethtown has, in its own published rules, drawn a fairly precise boundary: it handles the ordinary output of living in a house, and it does not handle the output of working on one. That is a reasonable line for a city to draw, and knowing exactly where it falls is worth more to a homeowner planning a project than any amount of general advice.

The county’s alternatives, and the word that matters is “annual”

For the material none of the three City programs will take, Hardin County has its own routes — and their frequency is the whole story.

• Household Hazardous Waste Collection Event — once a year, free, for paint, chemicals, batteries, pesticides and cleaning supplies.
• Electronic Waste Recycling Event — once a year, for computers, televisions, phones and printers.
• Seven recycling drop-off locations, open 24 hours a day — at Eastview, Elizabethtown, the Farmers Market, Glendale, Radcliff, Sonora and Vine Grove.

The drop-offs take four things: rinsed #1 and #2 plastics, rinsed aluminum and tin cans, non-greasy cardboard, and newspapers. And the county states the rest plainly: “Items not listed above are not accepted at any drop-off location.” They are a household recycling service, not a project disposal route.

“Once a year” is the sentence to plan around. Clean out a house in March and the hazardous waste event may be six months away; you have nowhere to put the paint in the meantime except a shelf in a garage you are trying to empty. That is the honest limit of what a container does: it solves the debris problem completely and the chemical problem not at all. Plan the chemicals separately, from day one, on the county’s calendar. Hardin County Solid Waste: (270) 360-9207. Dates are published by the county — ask them, and do not take a date from a website. The county is at hardincountyky.gov.

“Can I just burn it?” — inside the city, mostly no

On the rural fringe of Hardin County, burning is a live option and plenty of people use it. Inside the Elizabethtown city limits, for anything but clean wood and yard trimmings with approval, it is a public nuisance.

City code § 92.031(I) is specific:

• It is a nuisance to burn garbage anywhere in the city — always, with no exception.
• It is a nuisance to burn debris or rubbish anywhere in the city “except in an approved incinerator.”
• Wood, tree branches and yard trimmings may be burned, with conditions: the location must be approved by the Fire Chief and a permit issued if required; the fire must be no closer than 50 feet from any structure; it must be monitored by an adult with adequate extinguishing agent at hand; and it must be completely extinguished before it is abandoned.
• The Fire Chief may prohibit all burning when conditions make fires hazardous or the smoke objectionable.

Elizabethtown has its own fire department — three stations, 74 personnel, ISO Class 2 — and the number is (270) 765-2121. Again: this is a City ordinance. It does not tell you what any other city or the unincorporated county permits.

And the code does not let you simply let it sit

Waiting for next spring’s clean-up is not a plan either, and the city code says so with unusual directness.

• § 92.031(F) makes it a violation to fail to dispose of all garbage, debris and rubbish “at least one time per week.”
• § 92.031(A) gives 96 consecutive hours for anything “subject to decay,” except in a tightly covered metal or plastic container.
• § 92.031(B) requires anything “that can be blown away by the wind” to be in a covered container.
• § 92.030: “Violation of this subchapter shall be deemed a public nuisance.”

In Elizabethtown, accumulating material on your property is itself the offense. The code is published at the Elizabethtown code library if you want to read the subchapter yourself.

One practical note from § 92.031(A) that is genuinely useful during a project: do not put kitchen waste, food or anything that rots into a roll-off that is going to sit for a week. Bag that and put it out with your regular household collection. The container is for the debris.

Outside the Elizabethtown city limits, none of this applies

This bears repeating because it is the most common mistake made with this material.

Radcliff publishes its own leaf and tree pickup and is a separate government with its own rules — (270) 351-4714. Vine Grove is another — (270) 877-2422. So are Sonora, Upton and West Point. We have not established any of their collection programs and we will not assume Elizabethtown’s carry over.

In unincorporated Hardin County — Rineyville, Cecilia, Glendale, Stephensburg, White Mills — there is no city brush truck and no city clean-up at all, because there is no city. The county is the answer, and the county’s answer is the annual events and the drop-offs above. Which side of which line you are on is the subject of this guide, and it changes more than you would think.

How to use all three programs properly

• Time non-project cleanouts to the spring window if you can. Furniture, household junk and appliances are free that way.
• Call about appliances early in the appliance week, and get the freon removal tag sorted first — (270) 737-7890.
• Prune on the brush rotation; rent for removals and clearing. The twelve-inch and five-foot limits are the test.
• Keep leaf piles clean. No brush, no bags of trash, no lattice.
• Hold the chemicals for the county’s annual event, and start looking for the date before you start the project, not after.
• Rent the container for the part the City refuses — the construction debris. Sizing is in the Elizabethtown sizing guide.
• Confirm every date with Public Works, (270) 737-7890. Schedules move every year and the brush rotation changed in October 2024.

If your pile is the free kind, use the City — we would rather tell you that than sell you a box you do not need. If it is the other kind, call (270) 900-6891 and ask for Wes, and we will get the right size to the right side of the curb.