OpenStreetMap Cheat Sheet

siiky

2021/07/12

2022/07/28

en

Here you'll find some personal notes I've gathered, or am still gathering, to

ease and quicken creating and correctly tagging common features on

OpenStreetMap.

If you can't find what you want to map here, have a look at [_How to map

a_](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/How_to_map_a).

Water Source

For sources of water to be used (mainly) by humans. Water sources to used by

animals require a different tag

(amenity=watering_place).

Likewise for water to be used to refill RV's deposits and the like

(amenity=water_point).

• drinking_water=*:

after defining the type of water source, you may specify whether the water is

drinkable. Apart from the obvious yes and no, conditional means "don't

know" or "drink at your own risk".

• drinking_water:legal=*

(optional): additionally, you may use to specify whether the water source is

officially (un)safe to drink.

Other possibly interesting tags to take a look at are

natural=water and

natural=spring.

Simple Water Source

• amenity=drinking_water:

specifies the feature is a simple source of water. Check the documentation

for examples.

• drinking_water=*

(optional; yes): specifies whether the water is drinkable. From my

understanding, together with

amenity=drinking_water,

not using this tag is the same as using drinking_water=yes.

Ornamented Water Source

• amenity=fountain

(PT):

specifies the feature is a fountain. Check the documentation for examples.

• natural=water

(optional): commonly used together to specify bodies of water next, around,

under, etc the fountain.

Waste

Features related to [waste

processing](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Waste_Processing), such as of

trash and recyclables.

Recycling Container

• amenity=recycling:

specifies the feature is of some sort of recycling type.

• recycling_type=container:

specifies the feature is a recycling container, similar to [this one][0] or

[this one][1].

• location=* (optional):

specifies where the feature is located, i.e., on the surface, under the

surface, etc. Two common ones are

location=overground

([pic][0]) and

location=underground

([pic][1]). It seems to be optional in the case of

location=overground,

as it seems to me to be implied by

amenity=recycling.

• recycling:<material>=yes/no: a list of materials can be found on

amenity=recycling,

and as is mentioned on that page, if recycling:X=* is omitted, then it is

assumed to be no, as if recycling:X=no was present; unless a tag of a

supergroup of X is present and yes, in which case it's as if

recycling:X=yes was present.

The Big Three

By "big three" I mean paper, plastic, and glass:

• Paper container ("papelão"): alongside paper itself, all kinds of

paper-related and paper-derived materials, like cardboard, can be deposited.

• Plastic container ("embalão"): all kinds of plastic and metal materials can

be deposited. These include plastic bottles, plastic bags, tin cans, milk

cartons, ...

• Glass container ("vidrão"): all kinds of glass objects, like glass bottles,

glass cups, etc, can be deposited.

Some of these containers also have batteries containers ("pilhão") next to

them, where you can deposit used batteries.

The correct recycling:<material>=yes/no tags, based on [amenity=recycling

(PT)](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Pt:Tag:amenity=recycling), are the

following:

recycling:plastic=yes

recycling:plastic_bags=yes

recycling:plastic_bottles=yes

recycling:plastic_packaging=yes

recycling:cans=yes

recycling:PET=yes

recycling:paper=yes

recycling:paper_packaging=yes

recycling:beverage_cartons=yes

recycling:cardboard=yes

recycling:cartons=yes

recycling:magazines=yes

recycling:newspaper=yes

recycling:glass=yes

recycling:glass_bottles=yes

• NOTE*: I think styrofoam is allowed in the plastic container. However, I'm

not sure it actually is, nor if it's implied by the tags above.

And in case there's a batteries basket, include also the following:

recycling:batteries=yes

recycling:car_batteries=no

Clothes & Footwear

The correct recycling:<material>=yes/no tags, based on [amenity=recycling

(PT)](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Pt:Tag:amenity=recycling), are the

following:

recycling:belts=yes

recycling:clothes=yes

• NOTE*: Footwear is accepted, according to the comments, even though there's

no recycling:footwear=yes or similar. I guess it's implied by