Bridgeport, CT Trash & Recycling: Recycling Requirements (2026)

The residential mandate in § 8.64.070(A)(1) reaches each entity who generates mixed solid waste from a residential property in the city. Those generators must pull corrugated cardboard, glass food and beverage containers, leaves, metal food and beverage containers, newspaper, scrap metal, storage batteries, waste oil, and HDPE and PETE plastic containers out of the trash and set them out in the city-issued bin. Businesses carry a parallel separation list that also includes office paper, so a Bridgeport office cannot lawfully send its paper out with the garbage.

Administration sits with the director of public facilities, who runs the program citywide, and Bridgeport participates through SWEROC, its regional recycling partner.

The refusal rule gives the mandate teeth at every handoff. A load containing designated recyclables mixed with regular refuse must be turned away by the collector at the curb and again at the disposal facility, so unsorted waste has nowhere lawful to go until it is separated.

Haulers themselves are regulated under § 8.64.160. A collector who dumps recyclables illegally or combines them with trash faces civil penalties of $1,000 for a first violation, rising to $5,000 for repeat violations. That keeps separated material from being quietly recombined in the truck after Bridgeport residents have done the sorting.