Residential Yard Waste Program

Green waste collection is provided to customers that reside within the counties of Yuba and Sutter. Customers receive one 96 gallon green waste cart which is collected on the same day as your normal recycling and garbage collection.

Green waste is used in a number of recycling processes, such as composting. Green waste recycling produces rich compost which can be used by local residents and farmers, rather than going to waste in a landfill.

Please contact us for more information.

Acceptable Green Waste Materials Only place green waste materials into your green container!
Accepted Yard Waste Grass clippings Leaves Tree and shrub prunings Weeds	Important Green Waste Notes! Plastic bags must not be placed inside your green cart. Tree and shrub prunings must be cut small enough to fit inside the cart with the lid completely closed. Extra tree and shrub prunings may be bundled no larger than 1' x 3' using twine (no wire), then placed next to the green cart on your collection day. Please, do not place items on top of the cart.

Unacceptable Green Waste Materials Please do not place the following materials into your green container!
Construction Debris Concrete, rocks, dirt, asphalt Electronic / Universal Waste Televisions, computers, cell phones, batteries, fluorescent light bulbs, mercury switches Garbage Un-recyclable items	Household Hazardous Waste Paints, solvents, motor oil, cleaners, corrosives, used syringes Organic Material Animal feces or manure, painted or treated lumber, plywood or particle board Recyclable Material Recyclable glass, metal, paper and plastic

Putting Recyclables in Plastic Bags Hurts, not Helps!

Putting plastic bags in the blue and green recycling carts hurts the recycling effort. This is the story of how a lightweight grocery bag becomes a heavyweight problem at the Yuba-Sutter Transfer Station. For years we have asked residents to put garbage into plastic bags before dumping it in garbage carts. This lesson has been well learned as this practice is second nature to most of us by now. But when it comes to recycling, plastic bags are on the list of BIG offenders in Yuba & Sutter Counties, along with garbage. Why is this so?

When residents place cans, glass, plastics and newspapers in plastic bags they deposit in recycling containers, the recyclables travel to the MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) trapped in those bags. As the bagged recyclables enter the processing line there is no time to remove them from the bags and it's unsafe for our employees to open them. The recyclables thus cannot be sorted and end up moving down the line...right into the garbage. A sad story on all counts: the time you spent recycling is lost, material revenue is lost, and disposal costs run higher.

Plastic bags are considered "contamination," that is, foreign material that has mixed in with recyclables, reducing the quality of recyclable materials and raising processing costs.

Of course, you can recycle your plastic grocery bags PROPERLY by returning them to the store they came from. Question: Does this mean that plastic bags are actually desirable recyclables that will somehow make their way back to the store via your local residential recycling cart? They Don't. And now you know the rest of the story.

Additional Information

Questions About Recycling?

Please read the Recycling Frequently Asked Questions page.

Can I discard oil, oil filters, paint, paint thinner, batteries, insecticides, or similar materials in my carts?

NO!! Never discard hazardous waste in any of your carts. For information and instructions, please visit the Household Hazardous Waste, page for more information.

The curbside recycling program is partially funded by the Yuba-Sutter Regional Waste Management Authority and the California Department of Conservation. For more information about beverage container recycling, please call
1-800-RECYCLE or visit the Department of Conservation.