Santa Barbara County, CA Landscaping Rules: Composting (2026)

Sec. 17-10 lists unlawful acts under the county's solid waste chapter, and subsection (e) specifically bars anyone from having on site at any one time, a backyard composting bin with more than fifteen cubic yards of any combination of green material feedstock, food processing residue feedstock, active compost, and stabilized compost. That fifteen-cubic-yard ceiling applies per parcel, regardless of how many bins are used to hold the material. The chapter's definitions section, Sec. 17-1, separately defines 'community composting' as an activity that composts green waste, agricultural material, food material and vegetative food material where the combined feedstock and finished compost on site does not exceed one hundred cubic yards and seven hundred fifty square feet, tracking the state cap in 14 CCR Section 17855(a)(4); a backyard operation under Sec.

17-10(e) is a much smaller-scale allowance meant for a single household, not a shared composting site. 2(a)(4) as the product of controlled biological decomposition of source-separated organic solid waste. Residents who exceed the fifteen-cubic-yard cap, or who otherwise run what amounts to an unpermitted community composting operation, are subject to the same unlawful-acts enforcement as any other Sec. 17-10 violation, since the resource recovery and waste management division and the department of public works administer Chapter 17 countywide in the unincorporated area.