Texas Requires Every City and County to Recycle

The mandate runs to governments, not households. Every Texas county, city, school district, special district, university system, and state agency must, working with the Comptroller or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), separate and collect the recyclables its own operations generate. The floor is five materials: aluminum, steel containers, aseptic and polycoated paperboard cartons, high-grade office paper, and corrugated cardboard. Each entity must set up collection and storage, line up buyers, evaluate the tonnage recycled, modify the program to recycle everything practicable, and run employee education and incentive programs. Texas imposes no statewide requirement that residents or private businesses recycle; those rules are set locally.

The statute imposes a flat duty to establish and maintain the program, with no fine written into the section. TCEQ tracks compliance through the reporting rules it sets, and each entity must keep modifying its program until all practicable recyclables are captured.