Port St. Lucie, FL Landscaping Rules: Composting (2026)

Section 80.14 of the Solid Waste chapter lists acts no person may commit with solid waste in Port St. Lucie, and subsection (f) singles out yard debris. The general rule bars accumulating bulk waste, yard waste, industrial waste, commercial waste, junk, garbage, rubbish, or other solid waste on property a person owns or controls, and the code declares any such accumulation a nuisance outright. But the same subsection carves out an exception for composting: creating or maintaining a backyard compost pile counts as recycling rather than disposal, so it isn't automatically an unlawful accumulation the way a pile of trash would be.

That protection has one condition built into the text: the compost pile can't become a nuisance. If the pile draws pests, produces persistent odor, or otherwise creates conditions a code compliance officer would call a nuisance, the exception no longer applies and the pile reverts to being an unlawful accumulation of solid waste under the same subsection. The Solid Waste Director also retains general authority under Section 80.11 to regulate matters relating to the collection and disposal of waste, and Section 80.16 makes the property owner, occupant, tenant, and any agent jointly responsible for complying with the chapter, so more than one household member can be cited for a compost pile that becomes a problem. There's no separate compost permit, bin design standard, or size limit written into the code; the only line residents have to stay on the right side of is the nuisance test in Section 80.14(f) itself.