Dakota County, MN Landscaping Rules: Composting (2026)

931 is the state yard waste law, and it reaches every county in the seven-county Twin Cities metro, including the unincorporated area of Dakota County, which leaves this ban to state law rather than duplicating it locally. Under paragraph (a), the prohibition on placing yard waste in mixed municipal solid waste, in a disposal facility, or in a resource recovery facility applied metrowide starting January 1, 1990, two years ahead of the January 1, 1992 deadline for the rest of the state; the only exceptions are placement for reuse, composting, or cocomposting, or activity the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency separately authorizes.

A second, newer layer addresses bags: paragraph (c), effective January 1, 2010, bars anyone in a 'metropolitan county' (Dakota County qualifies under Minn. 121, subdivision 4) from delivering yard waste or source-separated compostable material to a transfer station or compost facility in an ordinary plastic bag; the bag must meet every specification in ASTM Standard D6400 for compostable plastics. Paragraph (d) exempts anyone who empties the bag on-site and hauls the empty plastic bag back out with them, so the compostable-bag mandate only bites when the bag itself reaches the composting stream.

Dakota County's own Solid Waste Ordinance No. 03, separately exempts backyard compost sites and yard-waste piles under 200 cubic yards a year from the county's composting-facility licensing and design standards, so a resident composting in their own yard needs no county permit at all; state law only controls what happens once that material leaves the property in the trash or in a bag.