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

Section 14-34(h) lists the accepted recycling categories at Onslow County's landfill and convenience sites: "plastics, glass, aluminum cans, steel cans, newspapers, magazines, cardboard, and others as may be determined by the county solid waste department," and requires all of it to be clean and source-separated before drop-off. Once a recyclable is deposited, ownership passes to the county under Sec. 14-34(i), which is why Sec. 14-34(c) separately makes it unlawful for any person to scavenge, rummage through, or remove any item from a landfill or convenience site after it has been left there.

The same section bars anyone who collects solid waste for a fee from using a county convenience site for that waste (Sec. 14-34(d)), and it caps out-of-county and off-base waste: material from outside Onslow County or from a federal military facility cannot go into a county landfill or convenience site at all, except that up to 100 tons per month of commissary waste generated at Onslow County military installations, such as Camp Lejeune, may be accepted (Sec. 14-34(a)). That carve-out is the only point where the ordinance references the base, and it governs what the county's own facility may accept, not any activity happening on federal land.