Columbia County, FL Trash & Recycling: Pickup Rules & Schedules (2026)

Columbia County Code section 90-113 governs how curbside collection actually operates for participants in the unincorporated county's designated pickup area. Subsection (b) bars a participant from placing or depositing waste into any county-owned or county-operated 'green box' or garbage collection receptacle, since those are reserved for the use of nonparticipants living outside the designated curbside pickup area; a participant who dumps into a green box is using a receptacle not provided for their service tier. Subsection (e) lets the Board of County Commissioners contract the day-to-day collection work out to a responsible independent hauler under a franchise agreement, and requires that agreement to prescribe the method, frequency, times, and places of collection, along with the fees charged for the service and how those fees are billed and collected, so the specific pickup day and route for a given address is set through that franchise contract rather than printed as a fixed schedule in the code itself.

Because the code channels those operational details into the franchise agreement, residents confirm their actual pickup day, accepted materials, and container placement rules through the county's solid waste division or its contracted hauler, rather than the ordinance text. Section 90-113(c) separately layers in the fee structure, basing charges on the class of user, the type and amount of garbage generated, and the county's actual collection and landfill costs, with the program required to be self-supporting.