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

706 of the Florida Statutes is the state law letting counties and cities regulate how residents and businesses must set out trash and recyclables for pickup. Subsection (21) authorizes local governments to enact ordinances that require and direct all residential properties, multifamily dwellings, and apartment complexes and industrial, commercial, and institutional establishments to establish programs for the separation of recyclable materials designated by the local government and to provide for their collection, and lets those ordinances prohibit any person from knowingly disposing of recyclable materials designated by the local government.

Subsection (1) separately divides responsibility: counties operate the disposal facilities serving both incorporated and unincorporated areas, while municipalities collect and transport waste generated within their own boundaries, which is why Pinellas' cities, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Largo, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs and the rest, run separate collection programs from the county's own curbside program. Pinellas County exercises this state authority through section 106-1 of its own code, which defines the county's designated recyclable materials and collection-center and curbside programs and makes it unlawful for anyone other than an authorized recycling agent to remove recovered material from a collection bin or vehicle, or to discard non-designated solid waste into a recycling container or at a collection-center site.

The state statute also requires each contract a county or municipality signs with a residential recycling collector to spell out how contaminated recyclable material, meaning material commingled or mixed with solid waste or other nonhazardous material, will be identified, managed and reduced.