Knoxville, TN Public Health Rules: Syringe Disposal (2026)

Section 13-171(a) of the Knoxville Code of Ordinances lists substances "prohibited and shall not be deposited in containers serviced by the city or its contractor," and subsection (7) classifies "infectious wastes" by category, including item e, "Discarded sharps," defined as "All discarded sharps (e.g. hypodermic needles, syringes, Pasteur pipettes, broken glass, scalpel blades) used in patient care, medical research, or industrial laboratories." The same subsection bars other infectious categories from city-serviced containers: isolation wastes from patients under CDC isolation precautions, cultures and stocks of infectious agents, human blood and blood products, pathological wastes such as tissue and organs, and contaminated animal carcasses used in research. Subsection (8) separately bans placing human or animal remains in garbage containers, and subsection (6) requires that any human or animal waste placed curbside be secured in a plastic or paper bag. Subsection (b) makes it unlawful to move, reset, tamper with, deface or otherwise interfere with a garbage container, reaching anyone who tries to dispose of prohibited waste by damaging or bypassing normal collection.

Practically, the ordinance means residents and small medical or personal-care users cannot drop loose needles, lancets or syringes into a curbside cart; sharps need to go somewhere other than a city-serviced solid waste container, consistent with how the chapter treats them as infectious rather than ordinary household waste. Industrial and hazardous waste generators, including any institution producing pathogenic waste, are separately required by Section 13-170 to dispose of it under state-approved methods rather than through the municipal system. Knoxville's code does not contain a separate needle-exchange or harm-reduction program siting ordinance; the only sharps-related local text found is this disposal prohibition.