🗑️ Waste Collection Notifier

A Telegram bot that sends reminder notifications the evening before waste collection days. Built for the Panda Recycling Suttonfield 2026 bi-weekly schedule.

Runs daily at 8 PM via cron, checks a JSON schedule for next-day collections, and sends a formatted Telegram message listing which bins to put out — with emoji indicators, bin colors, and dates. If nothing is due, it silently logs and exits.

Install

pip3 install requests

For running tests:

pip3 install hypothesis pytest

Configure

Copy the example config and fill in your credentials:

cp config.json.example config.json

Then edit config.json:

{
    "bot_token": "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN",
    "chat_id": "YOUR_CHAT_ID",
    "schedule_path": "schedule.json",
    "log_path": "notifier.log"
}

config.json is gitignored — your token stays local.

• bot_token — get one from @BotFather
• chat_id — add the bot to a channel/group, send a message, then call https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates to find the chat ID (channels use -100 prefix)

Run

Test manually:

python3 notifier.py

Cron

Already configured to run daily at 8 PM:

0 20 * * * ~/.local/share/mise/installs/python/3.12.10/bin/python3 /home/mynz/projects/telegram_notifier/waste_notifier/notifier.py

Logs are written to notifier.log in the project directory.

Schedule Format

schedule.json contains the year's collection dates organized by waste type and month. Collections are bi-weekly:

{
    "year": 2026,
    "collections": {
        "recycling":     { "1": [9, 23], "2": [6, 20], ... },
        "general_waste": { "1": [3, 17, 31], "2": [13, 27], ... },
        "compost":       { "1": [10, 24], "2": [7, 21], ... }
    }
}

Each waste type maps month numbers (as strings) to arrays of collection day-of-month integers. To update for a new year, change the year field and update the day arrays.

Waste Types

Type	Emoji	Bin Color
general_waste	⚫	Black
recycling	♻️	Green
compost	🟤	Brown

Tests

python3 -m pytest tests/ -v