I’m with the “make a stink” crowd. If they’re doing this, I wonder if they even have all the proper permits for the renovation. Report that address to the city and make sure they send a building inspector!
We get one can of trash per pickup, pay depending on the size of the can, and cannot put this kind of trash out. I’m definitely of the collect all the cans and lock them up variety. I’d also call your trash pickup service and tell them what is happening, and make sure that you and your neighbors are not getting charged more for this.
Is your pickup manual or automated? I’d have thought that the drivers should have figured out something fishy is going on. Is there a home makeover going on near you? I wouldn’t think the builder would want to drag the cans very far.
You might also check with your town about the codes. It is possible that this sort of thing is illegal in your town - if it is, you can sic the police on the assholes.
Excellent idea! A builder too cheap to haul away his own trash is probably unlicensed.
I’d call the city if this happened where I live. You’re paying for trash pick up one way or another. They aren’t, but should be.
You should put the cans back and next week stick a note on the cans saying "Please take these garbage cans as well as the trash in them 
Lock them up, as you did. When they come a-calling, say “You didn’t want them - you threw them out.”
mmm
That’s what I was thinking. Around here we don’t have the extra fees (Yet, they plan to bring it in once everyone has the generously sized black bins. Anything over and above the black bins must be specially tagged with prepaid tags.) but for contractors you need to have the separate bin for construction materials.
They’re probably rolling the dumping fees into their bill and foisting the actual garbage off this way to get some extra $$ in their pocket.
You might not disagree with what the construction guys are doing, but there’s no reason to clean the bins for them. Sheesh…
I do this with my recycling bags. Why you ask? Because my side of the street has recycling pick up on Monday mornings. And sanitation finds every excuse of a holiday it can to take off, and guess what day of the week 90% of holidays occur on? There have been times where my side of the street hasn’t had recycling pick up for 3 weeks straight, due to Labor day and those two Jewish holidays.
Ask for a cut of the profits. Everyone wins!
Whoops! I got a pm about what has happened on this front. So on the chance that more than one person is curious…
I spent a lot of time that afternoon looking out the window. I saw the guys in the truck come around, picking up the bins. The truck paused at my driveway for a few seconds, then continued on.
Okay, I figured, the employees weren’t sure what to do/say, so they’ll report in to their boss. So I waited, expecting to hear from someone.
Nobody came.
That evening I told my husband about it when he got home. He said picking up household trash is build into our real estate taxes. There are limits – you’re supposed to rent a dumpster for remodeling stuff – but at least it wouldn’t directly cost us any more for having had the extra bins there. But he agreed with me that this was intrusive on their part.
Time passed. I kept expecting someone to show up at our door, or leave a note (since we aren’t there during the day), or even call (we’re listed) but nope.
Over that weekend husband made a point of talking to a couple of the affected neighbors, the ones he’s most familiar with. Neither of them knew about the extra bins, hadn’t been asked permission, but they were both ‘Eh, who cares?’ about it.
The suggestions that I try to corral up all the bins were amusing, but we don’t have anything like enough room to store them. In fact, having just the three I already confiscated is making it awkward to get at some things we store in the garage.
The following Wednesday I did call my stay-at-home neighbor. She reported that the truck had dropped off bins as usual — except that they skipped my house. Well, I guess that’s a ‘win’ of a sort, yes?
And there’s been no further devopments since them. Tomorrow will be the next trash pickup day. In the morning husband will put the three bins out in our driveway. Empty, set apart from our regular trash can, but close enough to the street to be easily visible. And we’ve taped a sheet of paper to one bin that says, “Do NOT put your trash on our property.”
What we’re hoping is that the truck crew will notice and pick up those bins, and the implied “Or Else We’ll Do Something” threat will be enough for them to steer clear of our house.
If so, I’m happy to let it drop. I really don’t feel the need to become the Neighborhood Trash Avenger or anything. 
People are very nervy.
Thanks for the update!
If I were in the situation, I’d probably be more forceful with my note on the bins - something like ‘We’ve reported you to the city’ or something to try and scare them.
My town has a sticker program – $3.00 on the uppermost bag in a full trashcan. If you have more, they won’t pick up unless each bag has a sticker. We’re restricted as to what we can throw out – anything larger than a trash can, say, needs a special sticker from Town Hall. Plus there are other restrictions re appliances, construction debris, etc.
The next town over is municipal and doesn’t have any stickers or such.
We’re good friends with a man who owns a store on the town line. He, the fast food joint next door, and a few other stores on the next block all used to have trash cans out in front for their patrons. They all took them down last month because it seems that “a lot” of people from my neighborhood decided it was better to dump all their trash into those cans.
There was a major kerfuffle about it, believe it or not. One guy threatened our friend. To which our friend replied, “Then why do you live there if you obviously can’t afford a weekly $3.00 sticker?”