Olympia, WA Trash & Recycling: Dumpster Rules (2026)

The dumpster standard in the City of Olympia sits in the landscaping and screening chapter of the Unified Development Code, § 18.36.060(I). Solid waste containers, defined there as dumpsters, carts, drop boxes and compactors, in industrial, commercial, multi-family and mixed-use projects must be screened from public view by a Type II Visual Screen if they would otherwise be visible from adjoining streets. The rule has one exception: where a Type II screen would interfere with access and service, a Type III Visual Buffer must be provided instead.

The code defines both screens. A Type II Visual Screen is vegetation or a landscape structure, or both, creating a visual separation that is less than one hundred percent sight-obscuring. Its listed purposes include screening commercial and industrial use waste containers, mechanical and electrical equipment from the street. Vegetation is evergreen, or approximately sixty percent evergreen and forty percent deciduous trees, interspersed with large shrubs and ground cover, and a sight-obscuring fence or other landscape structure can be required if necessary to reduce site specific adverse impacts to adjacent land uses. A Type III Visual Buffer provides partial visual separation, with landscaping consisting of no more than forty percent deciduous species, and the code says waste containers can be buffered using vegetation or a landscape structure or both. The same subsection requires outside storage areas to be fully screened by a Type I Solid Screen a minimum of five feet in width, unless the Department finds the storage material is not visually obtrusive.

On the collection side, § 13.12.110(C) lets hotels, restaurants, boardinghouses, eating places, apartment houses, schools, hospitals and businesses in the business district use large containers for bulk collection with the approval of the director of public works. Those containers are supplied by the city and stored in a location the director determines.