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

The obligation in § 8.64.070(A)(1) falls on each entity who generates mixed solid waste from a residential property within the city, so the duty to separate travels with whoever produces the trash, owner or tenant alike. The required list runs from everyday packaging, meaning corrugated cardboard, glass food and beverage containers, metal food and beverage containers, newspaper, and HDPE and PETE plastic containers, to yard and automotive materials, meaning leaves, scrap metal, storage batteries, and waste oil. Plastics outside the HDPE and PETE categories are not on the mandatory list.

To make curbside separation workable, Bridgeport distributes a recycling bin to each dwelling unit for the glass, metal can, newspaper, and HDPE and PETE plastic streams. The bin remains city property even while it sits in a resident's garage.

The system is enforced at the truck as well as at the household. Collectors and disposal facilities must refuse loads in which recyclables are mixed with trash, so an unsorted barrel simply does not get picked up. And once recyclables are set out for city collection they are protected from poaching: § 8.64.150 makes it a violation for anyone not authorized by the city to remove them from the curb.