ILvA (Intercommunale Land van Aalst) is the company that is responsible for collecting waste in the part of Flanders I’m living in. Once a year they provide a calendar on paper that, just like all other paper based materials, gets either lost or forgotten about. They also provide a digital version that you can consult on their webpage. However, it seems that nowadays they also provide the same calendar in an *.ICS file that you can subscribe to using Microsoft Outlook for instance.

However I also wanted to see this information on my windows smartphone. Here’s how I went about subscribing to it in Windows Live to get it to sync to my Windows Phone smartphone.

Download Schedule

First of all you need to get the correct ICS file for your home address. Go to the ILvA website and click on “Afvalkalender”:

Next you need to provide you home address details to get to the correct roster details:

You can then download the agenda for your specific location.

Import Schedule

Go to your Windows Live calendar.

Click on the subscribe link:

Import the *.ICS file in you main calendar. Note: this is the calendar of the main Windows Live account I use for my smartphone. I do not use Hotmail and/or the calendar on this account for anything.The advantage is that I can have these entries stand out by using a different color scheme

This is what it looks like:

Verify Settings

Check you phone settings; ensure syncing is turned on for your Windows Live Calendar. I’ve also chosen a color that is different from my professional (which is blue because that’s the main color in the Xylos logo) and personal (mango because there some of that in the Office365 branding) agendas.

There it is. No need to monitor the neighbors anymore