Porter County, IN Trash & Recycling: Bulk Item Disposal (2026)

Sec. 18-82, the opening section of Article IV, Refuse and Recycling, in Chapter 18, Solid Waste, adopted by Ord. No. 04-18, sets the baseline duty for any company that runs a residential refuse collection service in unincorporated Porter County: it must collect and dispose of refuse, de minimus amounts of yard waste, rubbish, and bulk items produced by households, in accordance with the rest of Article IV. Bulk items, meaning large household discards, are folded into the same collection duty as ordinary weekly trash rather than left to a separate program.

Before a company may run that service at all, it must file an annual letter of intent to operate along with required insurance certificates with the Porter County Solid Waste Management District. That filing is due every January 15, and once the district accepts it, the district issues a certificate of registration good through January 14 of the following year. Missing the January 15 filing deadline is itself a violation under Sec. 18-86, separate from any failure in the actual bulk-item pickup service. The registration and bulk-collection duty do not apply to government agencies collecting their own waste, to people who transport, transfer, compact, shred, compost or bale their own general waste, or to businesses that only handle recycling.

The Solid Waste Management District, created under Sec. 18-53 pursuant to IC 13-21-3-1, oversees the registration process and can pursue an unregistered or noncompliant hauler in court, in addition to the civil penalty track in Sec. 18-86.