Salt Lake County, UT Trash & Recycling: Bin Placement Rules (2026)

160 contains two independent prohibitions, and a container can break either one on its own. The first is the distance rule: no receptacle for the storage of garbage, market waste, trade waste, or other refuse may be placed within twenty feet of any occupied dwelling. The section says any occupied dwelling, so the twenty-foot buffer runs to the container owner's own house as well as the neighbor's, and the word occupied limits the rule to dwellings people actually inhabit. The second prohibition has no tape measure at all: a container may not sit in a locality or position where it is filthy, unsightly, or offensive to any person inhabiting premises contiguous to the storage spot.

160 through its condition or its placement. The rule's reach is equally broad on who it binds, naming any person, group of persons, or commercial establishment, which sweeps in a single household's garbage cans and a business's market-waste and trade-waste containers alike. The section then does one more thing: it declares that such conditions constitute a public nuisance, which is what lets the board of health order the condition corrected on top of any citation.