Mount Vernon, NY Trash & Recycling: Recycling Requirements (2026)

City Code § 140-2(C) is Mount Vernon's core recycling separation rule: ashes, bottles, glass, stone, bricks, plaster, construction debris and other nonburnable refuse may not be mixed with or deposited in the same receptacle as garbage and other burnable refuse. Each material has to be separated out and placed in its own container, and every receptacle holding refuse must stay covered with a tight-fitting metal lid and filled no higher than four inches below the rim so contents do not spill during collection. The Commissioner of Public Works may issue further standard rules under § 140-3 governing how refuse is sorted and removed, filed with the City Clerk and effective 10 days after filing.

Since 2022, the City Council's Refuse Sustainability Fee, added by Local Law No. 3-2022 as City Charter § 112-c, funds the collection, transportation and disposal of solid waste and recyclables from improved real property citywide, billed as a line item on the biannual property tax bill; only commercial and industrial property owners may opt out, and only by written notice to the Commissioner of Public Works before September 30 for the following year. Together these sections establish both the separation duty at the household level and the funding mechanism that pays the Department of Public Works to actually collect the segregated recyclables.