Pitt County, NC Trash & Recycling: Recycling Requirements (2026)

Section 5 of Pitt County's Solid Waste & Recycling Ordinance (No. 3) requires 'all persons, firms, or corporations using the waste handling facility, transfer station and recycling centers' to separate their waste into nine listed categories before it is accepted: whole tires, aluminum cans, yard waste, white goods, lead-acid batteries, used oil, corrugated cardboard from nonresidential establishments (except cardboard packaging contaminated by its contents), noncombustible construction debris, and 'any other materials which the Pitt County Board of Commissioners may require to be separated' (§ 5(I)).

Section 6 puts the waste handling facility's and each recycling center's hours of operation on the Board of Commissioners' posted schedule, and § 7(C) lets the Solid Waste Supervisor inspect incoming loads and require a hauler to remove prohibited or unseparated material on the spot. Enforcement runs through Section 16: employees of the Solid Waste Department 'are hereby empowered to issue civil citations upon the observance of a violation,' and the ordinance treats the owner of a vehicle used to dump or litter as responsible for that violation regardless of who was driving.

The Department may let a violator perform cleanup work of a quantity and at a time it sets in lieu of prosecution or civil penalties. Two of the ordinance's numbered penalty categories apply directly to recycling separation: illegal dumping, defined to include 'placing recyclables in inappropriate containers, or garbage in recycling containers,' and a dedicated failure-to-separate penalty tied to the § 5 list. Both scale with repeat offenses rather than staying flat, so a business or hauler that keeps mixing loads pays substantially more each time it is cited.