McLean County, IL Landscaping Rules: Composting (2026)

The county's sanitation standard for keeping hens, § 350-43GGG(6), requires the coop or coop-with-run to stay clean, dry, and sanitary at all times, and mandates that excrement, uneaten or discarded feed, feathers and other waste be removed at least twice a week, with any excrement stored on-site removed from the property at least once a week, § 350-43GGG(6)(a). The composting allowance sits right after that removal duty, at § 350-43GGG(6)(b): excrement that the owner chooses not to haul off the property may instead be composted, but the compost cannot be located within 30 feet of a neighboring structure.

That 30-foot buffer is measured from the nearest structure on an adjoining property, not from the property line itself, so a compost pile can sit closer to a shared boundary if the neighbor's house, garage, or shed happens to sit farther back. This is the only composting standard McLean County's zoning code contains; the code does not separately regulate yard-waste or food-scrap composting bins for households that do not keep chickens, and § 350-43GGG(6)(c) rounds out the sanitation section by requiring hen feed to be stored in a fully enclosed, rodent-proof container.