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Smart waste collection reminders in Home Assistant without duplicates

One reminder to put the bin out, one to bring it back in, and no notifications at all when you are on holiday or have already done it.

Published
Reading time
3 min read
Level
Advanced
Tested on HA
2026.10
Lees in het Nederlands

The bin reminder is many people's first real Home Assistant project, and often the first one they switch off again a fortnight later. Sending a notification is the easy part. The notification you do not send is the hard part. You do not want nagging when the bin is already out at the kerb, and on holiday you want to hear nothing about it whatsoever.

The source

There are integrations that pull collection days from Dutch waste companies. When your collector changes the schedule, by merging fractions for instance, those integrations sometimes lag for months. As a stopgap you can use your collector's iCal calendar through the calendar integration. So build your automations in a way that keeps the source swappable, because you will switch back at some point.

A state machine per collection

Plenty of people build this with on/off switches that get reset at midnight. Give each collection its own status instead:

idle → placed (put out) → returned (brought back in)

Use date + fraction as the key, for example 2026-10-07_pmd, and store the status in a helper or a to-do list. Because the status belongs to one specific collection, you never have to reset anything at a fixed time and nothing can be left hanging.

The notifications

  • The evening before, say 19:00: "Plastic is collected tomorrow." Only if the status is still idle.
  • Front door opens on collection day: the same reminder, but not if it has just been sent. You are walking outside anyway, so this is the best moment you are going to get.
  • From 15:00 on collection day: "Bring the bin back in", only if the status is placed. Here too, the front door makes a better trigger than the clock.

Put an action in the notification ("Done") and you set the status to placed or returned straight away, without unlocking your phone.

Holiday mode

When input_boolean.vakantie is on, send no push notifications. Do leave the collection in your inbox or briefing, so you can see what happened once you are back without getting a notification about plastic recycling while you are in Spain.

On the dashboard

A tile showing the next collection with a colour per status works well:

  • nothing done: neutral, and red on the day before;
  • put out: orange;
  • brought back in: green.

Use a different green for garden waste, leaf green for instance, or every garden waste collection will look like it has already been dealt with.

Frequently asked questions

Which integration do I use for my municipality? Search HACS for your waste collector's name, or simply for "afval". If nothing turns up, almost every collector offers an iCal calendar that you add with the standard calendar integration.

Why a state machine instead of a switch? A switch has to be reset at a fixed time, and that falls apart the moment a collection runs late or you only put the bin out in the morning. A status that belongs to one collection cannot be forgotten.

Where do I see what I missed? Put collections in your dashboard inbox or your briefing as well. How to get notifications to the right person is covered in notifications per person.

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