Trenton, NJ Trash & Recycling: Illegal Dumping (2026)

The Littering chapter draws a sharp line between ordinary littering and dumping. Section 150-2 defines DUMPING as the unauthorized throwing or depositing, in a public place or upon private premises, of litter or other waste material, or of commercial, construction, industrial or solid market waste, where the nature or quantity of the material requires mechanical means of transport to move, meaning dumping covers truckloads and large-scale disposal rather than a dropped wrapper. A. 40:49-5. The Police Department and other designated City officials enforce Chapter 150 under § 150-14.

Because a dumping violation is defined by the mechanical-transport threshold rather than a location, it reaches dumping on both public streets, alleys and City-owned open space and on private vacant lots, tying it directly to the vacant-lot litter prohibition in § 150-6A. The court retains discretion under § 150-13A to reduce penalties generally where a defendant shows reasonable, diligent efforts to prevent the offense, though that discretion clause is written into the litter subsection rather than the dumping subsection.