Yellowstone County, MT Trash & Recycling: Bin Placement Rules (2026)

Section 27-303(G) of the Yellowstone County Zoning Code covers every neighborhood-district building of five or more units, from an NX2 fourplex to a large NX3 apartment building. The trash, recycling, and other refuse area has to sit in the rear yard or the interior side yard of the lot; the code does not allow a front-yard or street-facing enclosure for these buildings. As an alternative, the operator can bring the containers inside the building itself, but only if the access doors open off the rear or interior side facade and are opaque enough to screen at least 80 percent of the doorway opening.

The section hands off the finer screening design, fencing height, planting buffers and materials, to Article 27-1200, Landscaping, which the county's landscape plan review process checks before a building permit issues. Buildings with fewer than five units, meaning most single-family and duplex lots in the county's rural residential and N4 districts, are not reached by Section 27-303(G) at all; the zoning code sets no cart-placement or set-out-time rule for those smaller lots. The zoning coordinator, acting as the code's enforcement officer under Section 27-1701, reviews compliance during site plan review and can act on complaints once a building is occupied.

Because the standard sits inside the general regulations for Article 27-300, it applies in every neighborhood zoning district in unincorporated Yellowstone County, N1 through N4, RR, and the NX series, rather than being tied to a single district's dimensional table.