Palmdale, CA Landscaping Rules: Composting (2026)

Palmdale's solid waste code, adopted by Ordinance 977 in 1992 and amended through Ordinance 1587 in 2022, requires every residential household to use the city's exclusive franchised collector for trash and recycling. Section 5.52.160, the "Residential Householder Exclusion," carves out one specific exception: a resident is free to compost green waste generated on the property without engaging the franchised hauler, or any other solid waste enterprise, for that material. The same section lets a householder haul occasional loads of solid waste and sell or give away recyclables generated on the premises, but it draws a hard line at using an outside hauler, other than the city's own franchisee, to transport waste to a transfer station or landfill.

The 2022 organic-waste update, Article IX of Chapter 5.52, reinforces the exemption for single-family generators. Section 5.52.420(A) requires every single-family household to subscribe to the city's three-container collection system, but subsection (C) expressly preserves the right to reduce waste generation, manage organic waste on site, or use a "community composting site" instead of putting green waste in the cart, so long as the composting complies with 14 California Code of Regulations Section 18984.9(c). A qualifying community composting operation is capped at 100 cubic yards and 750 square feet of feedstock and finished compost on site at any one time under the definition in Section 5.52.410(E), a limit that matters for anyone running a shared neighborhood compost pile rather than a single backyard bin.

Because backyard composting is a franchise exemption rather than a permitted activity, the code imposes no city compost-bin fee, application or inspection on an individual household's pile.