Washington County, MD Trash & Recycling: Recycling Rules (2026)

Section 1-704 of the Code of Public Local Laws of Washington County, part of the county's public general enabling statutes, authorizes the County Commissioners to regulate recycling countywide by ordinance. Subsection (a) states the general grant of authority, and subsection (b) goes further, specifically authorizing the ordinance adopted under that authority to impose penalties on any person who places materials that are not recyclable into a recycling bin. The County Commissioners exercised this authority through the Solid Waste Collection Licensing Ordinance, first adopted June 22, 1995 and revised effective July 1, 2005, which builds the county's actual recycling program on top of this state-law grant, including requirements that haulers segregate recyclables and file tonnage reports.

Because Section 1-704 is an enabling statute rather than a self-executing rule, it does not itself set out a dollar figure or a specific prohibited act; it hands the County Commissioners the legal basis to write and enforce those specifics in ordinance form, and it was added to the Code by Chapter 26 of the Laws of 2002. Any ordinance the Commissioners adopt under this authority is enforceable the way any other Washington County ordinance is, through civil fines and license actions carried out by the Director of Solid Waste and the courts, once the specific rule and its penalty are spelled out in that ordinance's own text.