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Easy Garbage Truck Birthday Party Bash DIY Ideas!

An easy and fun garbage truck birthday party for boys! Tons of trash bash party ideas including favors, invitations, cake, and invitations!

For my youngest’s third birthday he wanted a garbage truck birthday party.  He loves all trucks and anything with wheels but he really wanted a garbage-themed party.

Throwing a trash truck birthday party is super easy on a budget. You don’t need a whole lot and I ended up using some actually trash (save that recycling stuff!))

So if your birthday boy is wanting a garbage truck theme party, I hope you get some inspiration here!

garbage truck birthday party

The party was supposed to be at our local park but it ended up being over 100 degrees that day so we changed it to our house.

Since it was supposed to be at the park, we didn’t have a lot of activities planned but the kids just ended up playing on the trampoline and some went swimming.

Garbage Truck Birthday Party Ideas

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Invitations

I still love paper invitations even though I know most people send out evites nowadays.

For the garbage truck party invitations, I cut the garbage trucks out with my Cricut and printed out the invitations and then glued them to green cardstock.

garbage truck birthday party invitations

Trash Truck Party Decorations

Since it was a garbage truck theme party, we used a lot of garbage for decorations!  

garbage truck birthday party decorations

We filled black trash bags with anything (like newspaper and tissue paper) and placed them around as decorations.  I cut a few garbage trucks out with my Cricut and we also used a lot of garbage truck toys as decorations.

garbage theme party decorations

If your little boy or girl is a fan of garbage trucks then I’m sure you have plenty of toy garbage trucks that you could put out as decorations.

garbage truck party

I printed out an easy Welcome to a Garbage Truck Bash sign so kids and their parents knew to come on in.

easy trash bash party

And since we have a trampoline and pool in our backyard, we had a few junkyard rules!

junkyard rules sign

Of course, using your large trash bins as decorations is a great way to save money! Just tie some blue and green balloons to make them festive.

In the front, we rolled out the garbage cans and put some balloons on them.  

trash truck theme party

We also made a Happy Birthday banner out of recycled paper and I cut out the letters with my Cricut Explore.  We used a blue and green color scheme since our garbage truck and recycling trucks in town are green and blue.

(You probably notice I do a lot with my Cricut!  Check out my post here on why I love it so much!!)

garbage truck birthday party

Garbage Truck Cake

I got the idea for the cake on Pinterest!

To make it easy, I ordered a birthday cake from Costco with just chocolate frosting and I drew a picture for them to go by to just decorate it with brown frosting and a black road down the middle. Then I did the rest.

I added crushed oreos on top for the dirt and sour gummy worms and M&Ms (kind of like our dinosaur dirt cups!).  I put some tissue in small pieces of black garbage bags and put them next to a little garbage truck that was driving down the road.  

It was fun to decorate and so much easier not to have to make it!

garbage truck birthday party cake
trash truck birthday cake

Garbage Party Activities

For one activity we put out a bunch of old boxes, paper, egg cartons, bottles, milk jugs, anything from the recycled bin and they created whatever they wanted with it.  

Just give them some glue and scissors and their creativity was amazing! The little kids made all sorts of amazing recylced art that they could take home.

trash truck ideas

You could also put out our transportation color by number sheets for the kids to work on.

Another fun activity would be a trash toss game. Amazon has a cheap banner you could purchase here.

Trash Party Favors

For garbage truck birthday party favors, I found these cute garbage pails at the dollar store.  

I cut out all the kids names with vinyl from Expressions Vinyl on my Cricut and applied it. Then I also cut out Thank You for coming favor tags and attached them to the front of the trash pail.

I filled the trash cans with garbage bubbles, recycling coloring book, and some other goodies and they were a big hit!

trash truck birthday party favors
garbage truck birthday party favors

And of course I had to make my little guy a personalized garbage truck birthday shirt with iron on vinyl.  I cut everything out with my Cricut and ironed it on a t shirt.  

garbage truck birthday party shirt

The shirt was huge, which was good, because he wore the trash truck birthday shirt for a few years after!  Check out my post by clicking here on how to make your own t shirts!

Overall it was an easy party to put together and it turned out cute!  Everyone had so much fun! Gotta love garbage!!

If you’d like some more inspiration for boys birthday parties, check out our dinosaur party here and Star Wars party here!

garbage truck birthday party ideas

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Have a great day!

partysignature

Danielle

Monday 11th of September 2023

Hello, where did you find the mini garbage can containers? Thanks!

Leap of Faith Crafting

Friday 15th of September 2023

Hi, this was several years ago but I found them at the Dollar Tree! I would think they would still have something similar, but not totally sure!

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