Nash County, NC Trash & Recycling: Dumpster Rules (2026)

2 of the UDO applies whenever a solid waste collection dumpster sits on a site used for multi-family residential, commercial, institutional or industrial purposes and abuts a residence, a residentially zoned lot, or a road right-of-way. In that situation the dumpster has to be screened from the view of the adjoining residence, residentially zoned lot, or road right-of-way. The Ordinance does not mandate a single screening method: natural vegetation, fences, walls or berms are all acceptable, and the code's only performance standard is that whatever is chosen must be installed, located and constructed so it creates an effective screen, not just a token barrier.

This dumpster-screening rule sits inside Article XI's broader landscaping and screening section, which also requires parking lots of ten or more spaces to include roadside and, where they abut residential property, property-line buffer yards; a site plan that clusters its dumpster pad against a residential boundary has to satisfy the dumpster screen on top of any buffer yard already required for the parking area. Concrete pads are separately required beneath and in the approach to every stationary refuse container under the county's parking-facility paving standards, so a screened dumpster enclosure in Nash County also needs a hard surface for the container and the truck approach, not just planted screening around it.