Santa Cruz County, CA Trash & Recycling: Bin Placement Rules (2026)

150 governs when a discarded-materials container, trash, recycling, or organics, can sit at the curb or roadway edge. Customers cannot place containers there more than 24 hours before the scheduled pick-up time, and once the County-authorized hauler empties the container, it has to come off the pick-up site within another 24 hours. The rule keeps carts from turning into permanent street fixtures on the county's rural and coastal-village roads, where a cart parked for days can block sightlines, drainage, or road shoulders. The same section authorizes the hauler to charge fees tied to a customer's use, care, and placement of collection containers, with those fees spelled out in the applicable franchise agreement rather than fixed county-wide in the code itself, so the exact charge depends on which authorized provider services that address.

130, so a cart left out past the 24-hour window can be treated as part of the same unauthorized-accumulation problem the county polices under that article.