North Charleston, SC Trash & Recycling: Collection Schedule (2026)

Section 9-45(a) defines garbage as household waste, including food-handling and cooking waste and other organic matter such as small cardboard containers, cans, paper products and plastics. Subsection (b) sets the residential rules: the city provides one 96-gallon rollcart per household, with a smaller 65-gallon cart available for lower-volume households on request, and the city owns and maintains every cart. The lid must stay closed to keep out flies and rodents, the cart and its contents cannot exceed 200 pounds (150 pounds for the smaller cart), and only city-issued rollcarts count for collection, not homeowner-purchased cans.

A household generating more garbage than one cart holds can pay for an additional container. If a cart is damaged through normal wear the city repairs or replaces it at no charge, but the occupant pays for a cart that is maliciously destroyed or damaged through neglect. Subsection (c) requires commercial and institutional properties, from stores to churches, to provide their own sufficient garbage receptacles, kept off public property and out of the right-of-way. that morning, cannot be set out more than twelve hours before the scheduled collection, and must be pulled back onto private property within twelve hours after pickup.

Owner-occupied condos, townhomes and other multi-family complexes are treated as residential under (d)(3), while rental multi-family complexes of more than five units are treated as commercial under (d)(4).