Olmsted County, MN Trash & Recycling: Pickup Rules & Schedules (2026)

Section 3505.03 requires every Commercial and Residential Site in the county, other than Agricultural Sites, to arrange for waste collection: either by engaging a Licensed Hauler for Designated Waste or by acting as a Self-Hauler. A commercial property that chooses to self-haul must first become a Registered Hauler under Section 3504.05 before hauling its own waste. Any Self-Hauler, commercial or residential, has to take the waste to a Designated Point of Delivery, meaning an authorized disposal or processing facility, and keep the disposal receipts for one hundred eighty days in case the Environmental Resources Department asks to see them.

Licensed Haulers set their collection fees on a volume or weight basis rather than a flat rate, a structure the ordinance says is meant to give households and businesses a financial incentive to generate less Mixed Municipal Solid Waste. Class A Licensed Haulers that serve residential customers also have to provide curbside collection of recyclable materials alongside trash for any customer who signs up, and must give those customers recycling education materials at least once a year under the related Section 3504.12. Agricultural Sites are the one category the mandatory-service rule does not reach, though they remain subject to the separate storage and open-burning restrictions elsewhere in the ordinance.

A property that neither contracts with a hauler nor properly registers to self-haul is out of compliance with Section 3505.03 itself, independent of whatever it does with the waste once collected, and the Environmental Resources Department can pursue that gap through the Chapter 4000 enforcement process or, in serious cases, as a criminal misdemeanor under Section 3511.01.